SPEECH BY THE MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, AMBASSADOR ERNESTO ARAÚJO, AT THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION SEPTEMBER 11, 2019
FUNDAÇÃO ALEXANDRE DE GUSMÃO "BRAZIL IS BACK" SPEECH BY THE MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, AMBASSADOR ERNESTO ARAÚJO, AT THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION *
Good afternoon! dominate and to harness, but went out of It’s a pleasure to be here. I’d like to express control, fortunately, and became a revolt my thanks for Heritage [Foundation], it’s really against a whole system whose corruption was an honor to be here in this august hall. still not totally clear, but of which the people, in My thanks to President Kay James; Vice their wisdom, had the intuition already. It was President Jay Carafano, and all the staff that a revolt against the political-economic system, made this possible. which didn’t deliver services or economic I would start by saying that I just realized opportunities that people wanted, in spite of its it’s 9/11 so, before really starting, I’d like to social-oriented rhetoric, but also a cultural express our sentiment in memory of the revolt against the ownership of public victims of that terrible day. I also remember discourse by politically correct media. one year afterwards – so, 2002 – I saw the In an information society, whoever controls cover of, I think it was “Foreign Policy” the discourse controls the power. People magazine, and the cover article said, about started to realize that in Brazil, back in 2013. 9/11, “The Day Nothing Much Changed”. It’s a People went to the streets to protest against way of seeing it, right? I think then we were something, they didn’t know exactly what, I trying to get a sense of what happened that think (that’s what protests normally are, I day, and what changed and what did not think) and they didn’t get what they wanted change, and some of the things I’m about to because they didn’t know exactly what it was, say may be also a part of an ongoing but when they came home, they went into speculation about everything that changed in social media, and they never left! And they are the world in the last two decades. still there. We are still there. This is changing So Brazil is back – I believe that’s the title I the country and is part of a world change. The gave to this speech. Back to where we never people trying to ascertain their power over the were, but where we feel that we belong – and discourse, against the political-economic where we think all nations belong. In any case, system and against the media which control we feel we are back to the center of the fight. each other, the political-economic system and And we feel that Brazil is part of a global the media, and still try to control the people. process, that I’ll try to describe a little bit. This spontaneous movement reemerged in We can say that it started back in 2013, 2015 in the shape of the protests for Dilma when Brazilians went to the streets Rousseff’s impeachment and destitution. It spontaneously, by the hundreds of thousands, had already a strong nationalist vein, which maybe millions, without being able to voice went beyond the simple removal of a detested entirely what they were rising against, and for leader. It was against the regime of the reasons that were certainly far larger than the Workers’ Party (which is an Orwellian immediate reasons of the revolt – more or designation, since we are at it, because no less like the Boston Tea Party, perhaps. It was workers were ever seen inside the Workers’ a rise of the equivalent to 5 cents in the price Party). It was against the Gramscian state in of bus tickets that sparked a movement – a which Brazil had turned, a system of state movement that, in a sense, is still going on in control of the economy and media control of Brazil, a movement that at first the Left tried to the culture. ______
* Speech by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Ernesto Araújo, at the Heritage Foundation, in Washington, D.C., held on September 11, 2019. Source:
They got Dilma removed from office (I think I But what is it that mobilized Brazilians, can say we got Dilma removed from office, all Brexiters and US MAGA voters? Brazilians), and some people back then I think it’s, to put in a more elegant term, it’s thought: “Well, this is it”, but it was not it, it was a revolt against ideology. The realization we not over. The Workers’ Party was replaced at had been lied to, that we had been despised the top, but the system stayed on. People by an élite that tried to rule us and abate us in continued to strongly support the fight against the name of social justice, or in the name of corruption which was going on, the “Lava Jato” European integration, or in the name of a operation, which later got Lula convicted for borderless world, in the name of progress or corruption and sentenced to 11 years in jail, a whatever. All high-sounding names that are term that he is now serving, as you know. there not to describe the reality, but to impose People embraced the rule of law as a banner, a certain power structure into reality. like never before. And they kept pressing for a If you believe in Toynbee’s theory of total cleaning-up of the system. So they civilization advanced by challenge and realized that it was more than removing a response, what is the challenge, the big president from office; what was at stake was threat, that not only Brazil or the US, or the the connection between the age-old system of United Kingdom or any other country, but the the economical-political “give and take” system big threat that our civilization now faces? and, packed with that system, some sort of Some people would say ‘climate change’, but hegemonic social project. it’s not, absolutely not true. The big challenge That was Brazil, but then, in 2016, came of is ideology. course the Brexit vote and Trump’s election. In 1989 and immediately afterwards, it Few people realized back then, but I think this seemed that Western civilization had overcome showed Brazil was already part of something its biggest challenge, Soviet communism. In bigger, something more universal in nature. the ensuing peace, without a challenge, the There was – and still is, I think – some sort of West started to stagnate. It started to splurge. “Zeitgeist” for freedom across the world. Without the need to fight for life or death, it The same movement reemerged around started to make mistakes without any Jair Bolsonaro’s candidacy. From 2017 it consequences, or thinking they did not have became increasingly clear that he was the any consequences. It made a huge mistake in only political leader capable of bringing the the diagnosis of what had ensured its victory. people to power, the only one who believed in It thought it was only the economy that had freedom, in nationhood, and in God, and in ensured the West’s victory, and ignored the their interaction. culture. It ignored, for example, Ronald We may say that Trump and Bolsonaro are Reagan’s advice in his farewell speech. It part of the same insurgency, what I would call through the Christian faith had nothing to do the universal insurgency against bullshit. with it, when it clearly was a huge part of the Here and there and elsewhere, in Brazil, in West’s success, as Saint Pope John Paul II’s the US, elsewhere, people fight for something fight clearly shows. His action against else than the economy, something else than communism was not a political action under just getting rid of corruption. Something else religious pretexts, but rather a religious, faith- than just getting their jobs back. based action with some political instruments. 2
Speech by the Chancellor Ernesto Araújo at the Heritage Foundation
In any case, the West opened the ground for first real chance we ever had to really have a the emergence of the new challenge, in the prosperous economy inside a healthy, shape of what today I believe we can call confident society. I am sure that only in a globalism. society of trust and confidence, you can have In general, we can say that globalism is a thriving open economy, only on top of what came to be the amalgam of the nationhood, family, traditional ties, you can globalized economy with cultural Marxism have a functioning capitalist economy. infiltrated in the institutions. So, basically, Globalism wants to sell us the incompatibility economic globalization hijacked by cultural of those goals, and we are disproving that Marxism. thesis. In Brazil globalism took the shape of a In the US the globalist program worked slightly different amalgam, that of the traditional differently – not, mainly, I think, through state corrupt system of patronage dominated by a control, as in Brazil, but mainly through the Gramscian left infiltrated in the cultural destruction of American manufacture and its institutions. In Brazil they infiltrated what we technological base, thanks to globalization, used to call the “physiological state” – I don’t also coupled with the destruction or erosion of know if it makes sense in English, but traditional ties and values. But, just like in Brazilians here know what I mean. “Physiolog- Brazil, it was also about a subservient ism” is the way we name this system of insertion in the globalized economy and the patronage, of State-controlled economy. So shutting up of dissenting voices at the cries of what we had in Brazil was basically a more or fascist or racist. less disguised state control of the economy So, one way of seeing it, a slightly different and control of public discourse. A closed way of seeing this, the challenge facing our economy and its subservient insertion in a civilization is the following: our civilization is globalized system inside the sort of political losing its symbols, it is losing its symbolic control of the means of discourse production. dimension. I am not talking about religion, but When people realized what was going on, religious life requires the symbolic dimension. the system tried to sell a bunch of more or We don’t seem to be able to generate less centrist candidates, promising all of them symbols or to live symbolically nowadays. half-heartedly to fight a little bit the corruption What are symbols? Symbols are basically and to liberalize a little bit the economy. figures that guide us from above, that make People didn’t buy it and went to the only one our life complex and three-dimensional. outside of the system, the one who is really Symbols are like signal towers or satellites there to break the corrupt system and to that allow us to find our way in reality like create a real capitalist economy, the one who some sort of intellectual GPS. is breaking the politically correct spell that was So, I was reading recently a very important used to keep people inside of the system book to understand what is at stake, the book without noticing it. I think we are creating in by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe about Brazil what we call the liberal-conservative the concept of hegemony. Those are people amalgam (liberal in the Brazilian sense, not in who try to reinvent Marxism and whenever we the American sense, liberal in the sense of talk about the cultural Marxism, like we are economic liberalism), and this amalgam is the talking here, it is an important reference to 3
Speech by the Chancellor Ernesto Araújo at the Heritage Foundation
understand it. I found a note that I made on This is the new “logic of the social”, to the side, it is a kind of “too good to be mine”, quote from that book. The new logic of the so I don’t think I wrote that, but to quote from social is basically that: Marxism without the this unknown source in a comment to that people. The revolutionary avant-garde is not book: “since Rosa Luxemburg, at the where economic theory would determine beginning of the 20th century, communism because there’s the capital labor relations (it ceased to be an economic theory and never was, maybe, but today it’s clearly not became a process of symbolic confiscation”. what the theory prescribes). So, today, What is this theory of hegemony that I revolutionary avant-garde is whatever the talked about? The theory of hegemony is a resistance of the enemy, the common people, combination of that process. Laclau and is wherever the resistance is weaker, actually. Chantal Mouffe are basically, as I said, the So avant-garde is in moral values, for creators of 21st century socialism so that’s example, due to people’s natural kindness, it basically the theory that you have to transfer is in the realm of immigration also where the social strife from the economy to other people by nature tend to be kind and not realms of society, and a good example of notice ideology penetrating. Very seriously in what it brings to is Venezuela. Venezuela was Latin America today, the avant-garde is considered to be a successful example of 21st associated with organized crime, if not drug century socialism. And it is a very successful trafficking and so forth. So, that’s also part of example of 21st century socialism. Why? the design, I mean, they want to be whatever Because they just don’t care at all about they can be, the most brutal and the most economic success as long as they attain that shocking. So to close that digression into 21st symbolic success, that success in destroying century socialism, we can say that 21st the symbolic. They want to destroy society to century socialism is basically that: prove and to impose their power. In a way, it’s Gramscianism meets the drug cartels. like the cultural revolution of the 60s. So back to the question of the symbols and Destruction is the goal, not the byproduct. losing the symbols. You may say that “what’s They want to create terror to break the limits the problem, without symbols we still have of decency and still hold to power, and thus reality”, but we don’t, that’s wrong. Without show their power. What bigger affirmation of symbols we have only what is in front of us, power can there be? and that is not reality. Without symbols we So hegemony also means that: it means have only words left, words without reality, that the left lost the people and they don’t words as mere triggers for hatred or fear. care. So, “let’s replace the people”, they say, Without symbols we fall prey to self-replicating like Brecht used to say in one of his plays – sub-ideas, those that Richard Dawkins used first he said that as a mockery and a criticism to call memes before the word meme of bourgeois regimes. But as in many cases of acquired the sense that has today over the left-wing theory, what they’re criticizing is internet. actually what they’re preaching. So the idea is Without symbols we are the unidimensional let’s despise the people and let’s humiliate its man of Herbert Marcuse, and here we come values, let’s humiliate the people in order to again to that example of Marxists, because he break their spirit and to subjugate people. wrote that book in the 60s denouncing the 4
Speech by the Chancellor Ernesto Araújo at the Heritage Foundation
consumerist society. But actually I think it was itself as a natural phenomenon scientifically a program for establishing the unidimensional observable. Another is gender ideology, and man. I think the whole Frankfurt school is another is what some people call oikophobia, about that, is about denouncing what, deep to distinguish from xenophobia: it’s the hatred inside, they want to create. See, for example, of one’s own nation and, as a part of that, the also the book “Empire”, by Hardt and Negri, or theory of or the claim over for a borderless the idea of biopolitics in Michel Foucault and world. But let’s concentrate on what is more the “Panopticon”. Although people say Michel pressing today, I think, of those, which is Foucault is not a Marxist – but I think it’s part climatism or climate change ideology. Just to of the same cultural universe. The idea of the insist, one thing is what I call climatism, the panopticon which he described as something other is climate change. terrible, a dystopian future where from a So is there climate change? Yes, certainly, central point you can control the whole there has always been. Is it man-made? Many society, but that’s what they are trying to people say yes, we don’t know for sure. The create. Also Georg Lukács, “The Destruction computer models based on the assumption of of Reason”, is where he tries to describe how a high sensitivity of temperature to CO2, are the rise of National Socialism in Germany almost all of them wrong, according to doctor destroyed thinking, and I think that’s also Patrick Michaels, if I’m not mistaken: among program of action, they want to destroy the 102 computer models that try to simulate reason. It’s not by accident. the behavior of temperature in function of So for the unidimensional man there are CO2, among the 102 models, 101 are wrong, only words and words are the reality. For him, overestimated the increase in temperature. for example, men and women are only words, But that’s ok, I mean, that’s something that and they are interchangeable. So that’s what scientifically observable or can be discussed gives rise to the gender ideology. For them or should be discussed. But in any case, is there is no essence because essence this change catastrophic to the point of belongs to the realm of the symbolic. And requiring the worst sacrifices as it is said that’s where we’re at Globalism, is the world nowadays? It doesn’t seem to be so, without symbols, that’s another way of saying according to one of the main documents of it. That’s where nationalism comes in as, the climate debate which is the IPCC’s last maybe, the main convergence of forces that report; the 2018 IPCC report in its summary oppose globalism, because the nation is still for policymakers says the following (I’m sorry I one of the very few symbols that we have left have to open here my plan to quote), it says: although battered and attacked but there’s still “trends in intensity and frequency of some a symbol that makes sense and that sends climate and weather extremes have been signals from above to help us organize reality detected over time spans during which about in a more complex way. 0.5º C of global warming occurred, medium So coming back to the instruments of confidence”. Because every statement in the globalism, today I think globalism works IPCC report classifies high, medium or low through three main instruments. One is confidence. So there is medium confidence climate change ideology or climatism – to use that trends in intensity and frequency of some another word distinct from climate change climate and weather extremes have been 5
Speech by the Chancellor Ernesto Araújo at the Heritage Foundation
detected in a period basically since 1950. So it President Bolsonaro, because they are the doesn’t seem like a climate catastrophe to me main ones, probably fighting the system. at least. But from the debate that’s going on it Brazil is out of the globalist pact. The US is would seem that the world is ending, and out of the globalist pact. So, they come after that’s the whole point of climatism. us, trying to reduce us and lead us back into The whole point of climatism is ending the pact. normal political democratic debate. The In the case of Brazil, the reasoning runs like conveyors of that ideology want to create a this: there is a climate crisis; the catastrophic “moral equivalent of war”, in order to impose climate crisis is due to global warming; global policies and restrictions that run counter to warming is due to CO2 emissions; CO2 fundamental liberties. Because Brazilians, emissions are due to deforestation; deforesta- Brexiters and most Americans, among others, tion is due to Brazil burning the Amazon; so are no longer buying the traditional lies of the “let’s invade Brazil”, as was proposed in an system, the traditional power scheme in its article in Foreign Policy. Of course, everything ordinary package, now the system is trying to is good and everything is advisable against a change the package and to paint it in more country that is destroying the planet. War, dramatic colors. They want us to believe that trade sanctions, what else? we are in a war for the survival of the planet, The fact is that many, if not all, steps of that and any sacrifice is warranted – including the reasoning are wrong or at least questionable. sacrifice of freedom of speech, which is Brazil is not burning the forest. Fires are on probably the main goal of the system, since average. Deforestation is responsible for only they want above all to control the discourse, about 11% of CO2 emissions worldwide, and as we have seen. Brazilian deforestation is responsible for less After all the awful experiences around the than 2% of CO2 emissions worldwide. Even if world with socialism, how can someone we assume that CO2 emissions directly dream of imposing socialist control of the control temperature, which the computer economy in a country like the United States, models do not show, Brazil is not the culprit. for example? Never through democratic And even if CO2 directly controls emissions, debate, of course. Only through a declaration there doesn’t seem to be a climate crisis, not of emergency. “Climate crisis!”, they cry. How according to the IPCC report. But it doesn’t can someone in time of peace dream of matter. The word “climate” has been breaking the sovereignty of a country like pronounced and debate has been silenced. Brazil over its own territory? By saying “the Now only the masters of discourse can speak. Amazon is on fire”, again and again. Because “Shut up”, they explained (that’s not my of ideology, because of this primeval cry of expression; I read it somewhere). climate crisis, “let’s save the planet”. The system still manages to maintain a lot “Climate” became not a scientific concept; it of people in some kind of collective hypnosis. became a debate shutter. A word that, when you The system shows the word “nation” and the pronounce it, you end debate and you win the hypnotized crowd responds: “no, no; bad; argument without having to prove you are right. Hitler”. The same system shows the word The system turned the climate change “migration” and the crowd responds: “good, batteries against President Trump and against good; diversity”, without the possibility of 6
Speech by the Chancellor Ernesto Araújo at the Heritage Foundation
discussing that there are pros and cons to Based on that same sort of Stalinist migration, there are pros and cons to reasoning, the media and some politicians are nationalism. But that’s impossible to discuss. starting to demonize meat, for example. There are only the automatic reactions that Someone suggested we should resort to are allowed. cannibalism to save the planet by not The system shows the picture of a forest on consuming bovine meat, which “destroys the fire, a picture from 20 years ago, but pretends it Amazon”, in their narrative. So did we really is Brazil today, and people react: “Brazil is bad, come to that point? Do they want us all to eat bad; lungs of the world; let’s invade it.” It’s like “Soylent Green”? After using climate change we are living in some sort of zombie apocalypse to control energy supplies, to limit countries’ where people cannot discuss things. sovereignty, do they want to use it to control The system can train less and less people what people eat? What’s more invasive, and to respond automatically like that in hypnosis, more “efficient”, than that? Where is human but they still have the media (I’m sorry the dignity, where is the sense of justice, where is media here; I’m not talking about you; the common sense? media in general). And the media is still an The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan said: “If echo chamber influencing other media and God does not exist, nothing is permitted.” It is some decision makers – some key decision the opposite of the traditional Dostoevsky makers, including some corporate decision quote, where he said: “If God does not exist, makers, who can make completely wrong everything is permitted” (which the book itself, decisions, like senseless threats of boycotts, Crime and Punishment, shows is not true). for example, against Brazil, because they are But Lacan said “if God doesn’t exist, nothing is hypnotized. Because many decision makers permitted.” And that is what we are seeing. don’t react to real people, they react to the Take away man’s symbolic dimension, (I don’t media and think the media conveys the voice mean God is a symbol, but in a way you need of the people. International law itself is under the symbolic dimension to relate to God and serious threat when a leader tweets a 20-year to perceive the idea of God and the reality of old picture saying it is the Amazon on fire God); so take away man’s symbolic now, and the echo chamber immediately dimensions where God inhabits, I think, and starts calling for the breaking of Brazil’s not even eating meat is permitted anymore. sovereignty, or for retaliations against our The destruction of the symbolic dimension products, without any base on any treaty or is an old objective of Marxism, as we saw, or instrument. It looks like a Stalinist revolu- as I tried to suggest. First, they tried it by tionary justice to me. Accuse, execute. But reducing man to an economic animal, the you would say: Where is justice, where is the reductio ad oeconomicum. Now they have rule of law?” People say: “climate crisis, shut something else, even more powerful, the up.” It is the precautionary principle, in a way. I reductio ad climaticum. And together, thanks think Stalin and other dictators used very well to “hegemony”, the concept that all the the precautionary principle: they just killed a “causes” are linked, the banners of the left, lot of people without bothering if they were when you accept that sort of reductio ad really a threat to their system. I think that is a climaticum, there come together gender good use of the precautionary system. ideology and oikophobia, the other 7
Speech by the Chancellor Ernesto Araújo at the Heritage Foundation
instruments of globalism. So everything that issues, we can say that the main thing at you can use basically to divide the people and stake now is the dignity of the human being, to subjugate the people is good. and not anything else. Today, because of the It is curious because, for some time, at way they use climatism as their main fighting least in theory, the left wanted to unify the instrument, the Amazon is ground zero of the people, or so they said. But now they realized fight against globalism and for the recovery of to people are against them. And so they try to the human being in its fullness. fragment the people, to destroy the unit of Thank you very much. nation, to destroy the family and to destroy the unity of human thinking itself. Q&A In the past, there used to be social problems. There still are social problems. But Moderator: Thank you very much for those history showed that they could be addressed introspective and deeply philosophical remarks. without resort to Stalinist dictatorship, as has I wish I had a pen and paper with me to take been the case to a large extent, especially in notes but I will make sure to rewatch this developed countries, but also developing event again. We have about fifteen minutes countries. What was the social question? It for question and answer. We have some was not the real drive for people who wanted microphones going around. So, if one… do establish socialism or communism. The please wait until I call on you, and if you could social question, social problems, social please identify yourself with your name, the injustice was only a pretext for dictatorship. organization you are affiliated with. And Now they are doing the same with climate, or please keep your question in question form. trying to. You don’t have to disrupt your whole The only person to make remarks here is the economy to reduce emissions, even assuming Foreign Minister. Thank you. Let me see if that emissions control the temperature. you could please raise your hand if you have Actually the United States is the only a question. We have a gentleman here... developing country reducing emissions, Member of the media, I think we’ll have about although it is not trying to, just because of a few minutes at the end of the event. But, technological advance. For some reason, or for you know, I called on you first, I will give you reasons that we think we understand, the most an opportunity. Can you wait for the drastical solutions are sold, as if they were the microphone? We have a microphone coming only ones that can face the challenge. up right here. Thank you so much. So what happens is that Brazil is being “otherized”, to use the term dear to some Luiz Fernando da Silva Pinto: Minister, thinking of the left. We are becoming, together you said two things that are very rare to hear with President Trump, President Bolsonaro is in presentations like this. One is the symbolic becoming this big other, the one that it is dimension. The other one is the dictatorship of lawful to hate. Another mark of this sort of the climate, or climatism. Would you...would leftist ideology, they always need this sort of you explain why you decided to have those big enemy. We are being otherized, because, topics in this presentation and would you as I said, we are trying to stray away from the explain a little bit more about them? Thank globalist pack. For us who care about those you. 8
Speech by the Chancellor Ernesto Araújo at the Heritage Foundation
Minister: Sure. Thank you, Luiz Fernando. alarmism. And what we see today in the Well, I always think it’s important to try to go political debate around the world, for me it beyond the surface and try to explore the seems a question of ideology, it’s a question intellectual and spiritual, so to say, of using the impression of a phenomenon in infrastructure that is beneath the economic order to attain some political goals, without and political events and developments. So I going back to the real, serene, calm scientific try to make a suggestion of a way of research; study of the phenomenon. And I think, in the I don’t think I have the truth about anything. past that has been the mark of, yes, maybe It’s just a suggestion of trying to look at some dictatorships, where you don’t realize reality sort of deeper dimension. I do think that the because you don’t have the symbolic human being is governed by its thought, call it dimension, but you just react to impulses, and interior, call it soul, or spirit, or whatever, or are led sometimes to wrong decisions, reasoning, and that’s where things actually because you don’t analyze things. So that’s happen, right? So the economic, political basically it. phenomena are consequences of what people think. I think that’s basically it. So, if Moderator: Right, let’s go to this side of the people like, I think it’s the case today, have so room… the gentleman in the front…if you much difficulty (I guess it’s not the case of could just wait for the microphone… thank people here, I know... but, in the culture as a you. whole), people have so much difficulty in thinking beyond the immediate reality, have Alfonso Aguilar: Thank you, Mr. Minister, so much difficulty in analyzing things, in a for your presentation. [I’m] Alfonso Aguilar, non- emotive way, and they react immediately International Human Rights Group. One of the without reasoning, without looking for frustrating things about the criticism of new information about impulses that they receive, I populist leaders like President Bolsonaro, think that we have a problem and we should President Trump, by the Left, is this immediate analyze that, and I try to formulate that as the attack that they’re autocratic; sometimes they loss of the symbolic faculty. even go and say, and use the word even And regarding climate, what’s the fascist. As you said in your presentation, expression? “Climate dictatorship”, did I use President Bolsonaro, just like President that expression? Basically, as I said, I try to Trump, have embraced liberal economic put it, I want to distinguish what is the policies which call for less government phenomenon of climate change, and the way intervention. Ironically they propose policies we should study it, which I think is that would call for more government scientifically, looking at the value of the theory intervention in the lives of people. So, in a that it’s basically controlled by CO2 emissions, sense, what they’re proposing is more which, from what I have studied, not being a autocratic than what the new populist leaders scientist, I think there is some lack of evidence are proposing. Could you comment on that a for. But people think there are a lot evidence. I little bit? think it’s a question of scientific debate, but my problem is not with that; it’s with the Minister: Yeah, sure. Thank you, Alfonso. political use of climate change and the climate One way of approaching that is this traditional, 9
Speech by the Chancellor Ernesto Araújo at the Heritage Foundation
in this case not Stalinist, but Leninist dogma climate change has been captured for political or advice to his followers that you should purposes. And I think that question points criticize your enemies on what you do and call exactly in that sense. I think in order to impose your enemies what you are. So the autocratic all kinds of control that people sometimes slander is basically that, I think. And I think advocate because of a perceived climate you’re totally right: how can you be autocratic crisis, you need to have some sort of strong when you are for more opening? How can you evidence for that, right? If you say, “Oh, our be autocratic (like people who know Brazil country is at war and we need to break the here know) when there has never been the rule of law, we need to imprison potential amount of independence among the three spies”, okay, that’s tenable, but then at least branches of power – and the Executive is just you have to see the war somewhere! But now one of them? And we try to navigate 100% we just… okay, it’s like you’d say, “Oh, there’s inside the Constitution to try to do the things a war and, okay, let’s imprison everyone that the President has been elected to do, and who’s a threat”, but where’s the war? No one his team is trying to help him. It’s very hard to saw the fires being shot! (So just to argue with that. But then we come to the exaggerate a little bit!). And unfortunately question of words without reality behind. We trade can be a victim of that sort of ideology. just say the word “autocratic” and people react But, for example, countries like Germany are to that, “Yeah! It’s autocratic”. Ok, but prove very sensible and there was lots of good me, or at least give me a hint of why is it sense in the dialogue we have had with them autocratic, right? Sometimes it’s a vague since this episode started, they want to do thing, but there never appear really the base trade with us, we want to do trade with them. I for people who call us autocratic. So I think we believe they committed the European come back to the question of the misuse of Commission to make a study about the real words, the use of words as tools for that sort impact, or real dimension of fires in the of collective hypnosis, and not tools for Amazon, and it showed that it’s basically on examining and studying reality. average: some fire a little bit more than last year and a lot less than a few years back. So I Moderator: Right, we have a question over think it’s a good example of non-ideology, of here on the left side of the room, thank you! looking at the problem and situation and trying to examine it according to the data of reality Isabela Patriota: Hi, thank you, Minister! and not just jumping to conclusions and say, My name is Isabela Patriota, I’m a PhD “Oh Brazil’s destroying the forests, so let’s student at the University of São Paulo. I’d like harm Brazil!” I think it’s a real question of to know if treating the climate change as reality versus ideology here. Thank you. ideology, or in some part denying it, cannot turn the international trade of Brazilian meat Moderator: Time for one more brief harder in this situation. question. The woman right here with the black jacket, thank you! Minister: So, everything I said, or most of, or a good part of what I said, was trying to Claudia Trevisan: Hi, Minister, how are explain why I consider the phenomenon of you? Claudia Trevisan, I’m a non-resident 10
Speech by the Chancellor Ernesto Araújo at the Heritage Foundation
fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute at SAIS. failures. And we’re also trying to address those I’d like to talk about a subject that’s discussed imbalances from our point of view. And our a lot on this city, which is China. In your view coming visit to China is part of the effort to of this fight for the West civilization, where do address that, to have more access to the you see China? And a more concrete Chinese market in sectors that we were not question is what can you expect from present, and to negotiate in the same way, with President Bolsonaro’s visit to Beijing later this the interest China has in Brazil. What we want year? Thank you. is to perform a normal set of negotiations where each one has his cards and we try to Minister: Thank you, Claudia, nice to see arrive at a common beneficial result. We do you again. I think China is a country that have the feeling that in the past Brazil didn’t navigated very well the globalization, that’s negotiate well with China, we didn’t use well totally their merit – I think they’re probably the our cards – and I mean, again, no fault of country that got the most out of globalization China, fault of our negotiators, and now we’re and became a much more prosperous nation trying to build that to keep what we have, to thanks to all those economic changes, and build from that. So I don’t see at all this sort of that’s part of reality now. Of course this adversarial relationship with China, I think it’s created some imbalances – if that’s the case, I also a cooperative relationship that can come don’t want to comment on the US trade policy, in mutual benefit. By the way, China, through, but that seems the case from a US point of for example, their Chargé d’affaires in Brasilia, view – and it’s not, I think, China’s fault, but during all this turmoil about the Amazon, it’s a problem for some people, in this case, in expressed very clearly their support for Brazil’s the US. So, I basically see it in a very practical sovereignty. That’s been extremely important way, for Brazil it’s being different, Brazil has to us, and we do recognize that. So that’s benefited a lot from trade with China; there is basically how we approach it. Thank you. some downside in terms of some sectors that we lost to Chinese competitiveness, but then Moderator: Perfect, and with that, Foreign again nothing against China, that is just a Minister, thank you! It’s been an honor and a recognition of their success and some of our privilege to hear from you today. Thank you!
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