Ideology and the construction of the objective enemy: a reading of the Brazilian political conjuncture from Arendtian categories

Abstract

In Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) warns us that totalitarian governments are different from tyrannies and dictatorships and, therefore, this form of political regime must be intended as something unprecedented in history. Even in the face of this novelty, our bet in this text is that other forms of government of exception, such as tyrannies and dictatorships, make use of methods of domination used by totalitarianism, such as ideology. The "nature" and modus operandi of ideology – the logic of an idea – constitute the axes of support on which my reflections will gravitate, which will have as a guiding thread the philosophical and political contributions of Hannah Arendt. These two axes of support will enable me to shed light on the attempt to dissolve the contradictions that are inherent to human life, which has as its core objective the promotion of a fictitious world, built from logically accepted premises. The construction of the fictitious world prevents memory from storing the past as it occurred, transforming the past into a deception. In the construction of the fictitious world, the construction of the persona of the "objective enemy" constitutes an essential movement, since it will be this "idea" that will sustain both the rise and the permanence of regimes of exception, such as the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship, which took power with the promise of destroying the communist threat that hung over Brazilian society and its unbreakable values:  God, family and homeland. I will also try to explain how the "ideology" of communist danger constitutes itself as a phenomenon that underpins part of today's political practices in our country.