PT councilwoman impeached for accusing citizens of giving Nazi salute

The City Council of São Miguel do Oeste (SC) punished councilor Maria Tereza Capra with the loss of her mandate for breach of decorum when she called a greeting gesture by a group of supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro a “Nazi salute” in a video from November last year. Only she herself voted against the impeachment, against 10 votes in favour. The session in which she was suspended lasted more than eight hours and was broadcast over the Internet on Friday (3), extending into the early hours of Saturday.

Speaking in self-defence, Capra says he has been the target of threats and appealed for “women’s representation”, complaining that his housemate Cristiane Zanatta (PSDB) was absent from the session. Bureau members said that during the parliamentary inquiry process, she chose to remain silent.

“All defense statements were made after the deadline,” said the commission of inquiry’s report. “The councilor’s conduct, initially of imputing a crime to those people, completely extrapolated the limits of what is acceptable, since, in a preliminary investigation and later confirmed by the state Public Prosecutor’s Office, the absence of any Nazi act or apology was fully proven,” adds the document. .

As an additional argument for the breach of decorum, the report cites that the councilor was sentenced in second instance in 2015 to six years of detention in an initial semi-open regime for a crime against the bidding law, when she was municipal secretary. “Such conduct is antagonistic to the exercise of the mandate”, comment the parliamentarians.

The councilor’s lawyer, Sérgio Graziano, told Estadão that the process is political persecution. “I’ve never seen such injustice” in 31 years of acting, he commented. The president of the Workers’ Party, Gleisi Hoffmann, insisted this Saturday (4) on the lawyer’s thesis, on Twitter: “she suffers political persecution and was impeached for questioning the Nazi salute made by Bolsonaristas”. Gleisi adds that the “PT will appeal against this absurdity”.

The National Socialist German Party, under Hitler, which ruled Germany between 1933 and 1945, killed millions of people it considered inferior, especially Jews, Gypsies, disabled people and homosexuals, as well as political dissidents. The Nazi salute, with the right hand raised and palm down, was accompanied by the expressions “Heil Hitler” (“Hail Hitler”) and “Sieg Heil” (“Long Live Victory”).

A saluting gesture with the right arm outstretched and straight hand with palm down, usually made towards the flag and associated with patriotism, is not superficially similar to the Nazi salute only in Brazil. In the United States, the Bellamy salute, made by children together with the oath to the fatherland (“pledge of allegiance”, in English), was invented by the Socialist Christian cleric Francis Bellamy in 1892. Both Bellamy and the Nazis were apparently inspired by the Roman salute depicted in the painting The Oath of the Horatii (1784) by the French artist Jacques-Louis David.

Other Brazilian cultural habits can be confused with those adopted by intolerant people: annually, in the historic city of Goiás, Catholics hold the Procissão do Fogaréu on Holy Thursday, in which they dress in pointed hoods. The similarity of the clothes of the faithful with those of the members of the American racist group Ku Klux Klan has already caused intrigue and the banning of photos of the religious event on social networks in recent years.