Prominent criminal judge Carlos Alexandre has announced that activist Mamadou Ba, leader of SOS Racismo, will even have to go to court to answer the charge of “defamation” brought against him by the former leader and activist of the “nationalist movement (read -se logo: Nazi -fascist) in Portuguese, with references to Hammerskins, Mario Machado. Questionable is the fact that in 2020, Ba used social media to call Machado a “murderer” due to his involvement with the group skinheads who in 1995 killed a native of Cape Verde, the Portuguese Alcindo Monteiro.
Mario Machado, let me remind you, was in the group that killed Alcindo on June 10, 1995, but, oddly enough, he was not convicted even for participating in the murder in the trial of the transferred case. Therefore, he believes that in this case his “honor” (?) has been offended. Isabelle Duarte, lawyer for SOS leader Racismo, understands, according to a newspaper report Publicthat “there is no honor that can be offended.”
This case obviously needs to be analyzed from both a legal and a political point of view. Anyone who believes grandmother’s tales that law and politics are not connected is at least naive. However, it is already too late in the face of trends such as justice and others to insist on such naivete.
However, I will start with the legal side of the issue. Without knowing the details of the trial of the murderers of Alcindo Monteiro, it is hard for me to believe that someone involved in the group of material perpetrators of the crime was not held accountable, at least for participating in it.
In addition, attention is drawn to the dual criterion of justice in relation to two cases, which from a formal point of view can be considered identical. I am referring to the decision of another Portuguese investigating judge who decided that another far-right figure, the notorious André Ventura, should not be held accountable for saying that historian and leftist activist Fernando Rosas “tortured men and kidnapped women in 1975.” year.” Two decisions, it should be emphasized, were taken on the same day.
To draw: On the same day, a judge decides that an anti-racist activist will stand trial for alleged defamation of a Nazi fascist leader, while another judge decides that a far-right leader will not be tried despite the fact that he is accused by the actor of an identical act, from a legal-formal point of view. If this is not a clean and hard policy, then we are all wrong, and the Earth must indeed be flat.
Coming back to the main topic of this column, Mario Machado’s statements of racist, fascist and Nazi content are known to be public, so I have no doubt that this nefarious figure of the Portuguese far right is co-responsible (at least morally) for the murder of all alcindos, those who have already died, and those who, we have no doubt, will be killed in the future, to the complacency of liberal democracies. Isn’t there a figure of “incitement to crime” in the Portuguese legal system?
This all brings us back to a problem that should concern us all: the systematic attack on democracy around the world. One of my hypotheses is that such an attack has to do with the relationship between democracy and diversity: the enemies of diversity, like the machetes that exist in all societies, do not like democracy because the latter, as a permanent construct, must necessarily presuppose expanding diversity within the framework of full equality for all.
Most worryingly, democracy is in danger of being invaded and undermined by “democracy” itself (quotes needed), as evidenced by the rise to power through elections in various countries of the world of undemocratic leaders whose strategy is to demoralize or even destroy democracy. This is facilitated by the condescension (Judge Carlos Alexandre probably knows the legal meaning of this term) of the so-called liberal currents, but ideologically close in many areas to neo-fascist forces.
Racism is one of those perverse and dangerous similarities.
Angolan writer and journalist, director of Africa 21 magazine.
