October 3, 2021

12:10

Iury Lima and Gabriel Abreu – from Cenarium

VILHENA (RO) AND MANAUS (AM) – Experts heard by CENARIUM repudiated, this Saturday, 2, one of the “crutches” used by the President of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro (No Party), to generate charisma and please supporters: the use of children in political acts and the association of their image to the use of firearms. “Absurd that would cause indignation in any civilized country, here it has been naturalized”, lamented the political scientist Carlos Santiago.

The most recent controversial episode occurred last Thursday, 30, at an event held in Belo Horizonte, state of Minas Gerais, in celebration of Bolsonaro’s one thousand days in office. A boy appears sitting on the president’s shoulders holding a replica of a rifle.

The repercussion earned the president an ear pulling through a note from the Brazilian Society of Pediatrics (SBP). Entitled “Gun is not a toy”, the document pointed out that children do not have the ability to distinguish a fake gun from a real one.

“What is at stake is the life and physical and emotional integrity of thousands of children and adolescents. Therefore, pediatricians call on the authorities for a deep reflection on the effects of these media and marketing actions, which should be based on legislation and ethics, and never be greater than the commitment to the dignity of the Brazilian population”, says an excerpt from the SBP text.

The manifesto also cited a recent study that revealed that almost 60% of a group of children aged between 7 and 17 years did not know how to differentiate real weapons from toy guns and that, in addition, every hour a child or adolescent dies in Brazil, victim of gunfire. “The SBP regrets that scenes such as those shown on the eve of children’s month are increasingly frequent”, says the pediatric society.

However, the appearance of children with toy guns, dressed in military uniforms and making ‘gun’ signs with their hands is one of the trademarks of the head of the National Executive, viewed with disapproval by political scientist Carlos Santiago. “It is a strong image. It even looks like from areas or zones of armed conflict. President Bolsonaro is neither a statesman nor a good administrator. He is only, as the image shows, a terrible example as a person and as a government”, evaluated the political scientist.

For the expert, the image in question demonstrates that evil has taken over politics and the daily lives of Brazilians. “This photo represents much of the profile of the current president of Brazil: he created nothing praiseworthy to remove thousands of children from the streets, tried to divide education between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ children when his minister said he saw difficulties in including students with disabilities in classrooms. He, in the middle of a pandemic, never visited the hospitals and had no compassion for the dead, said he prefers guns and that beans are not a priority”, he pointed out.

Unethical behavior

For sociologist and lawyer Helso Ribeiro, Bolsonaro’s behavior as president is unethical. “I find it deplorable to the cube. I challenge the 40 traditional democracies, all the European countries, Canada, the United States, the democracies of America, Oceania (…) no head of state will pose with a child and a machine gun”, Ribeiro said.

Ribeiro also compared the president’s stance to that of violent and extremist groups. “This you will find there with the Shiites, the Taliban, the Boko Haram, which are extremist groups with little appreciation for democracy and much less values. You put a child with a gun exceeds all limits”, said the indignant lawyer and also a sociologist.

Doctrine of violence

The sociologist and professor at the Federal University of Amazonas (Ufam) Luiz Antonio evaluates how the “normalization of barbarism”, as he himself says, affects the formation of the little ones as people. “What Bolsonaro proposes is to educate children to be aggressive and violent since childhood. This should be repudiated by all good people, regardless of ideological or partisan position”, he declared.

“The photos of Bolsonaro with children reproducing military uniforms and holding rifles in their hands only reveal one thing: human misery is not yet overcome. The misery, cruelty and perversity of some figures are not overcome. There is a specific type of people who think this is normal, and this cannot be admitted as normal”, continued the specialist.

He also claims that the photos starring Bolsonaro influencing children generate a charge of violence and hatred. “A charge that identifies the other, different from me, as my enemy. And what do you do with your enemy? You eliminate. And that is barbarism reestablished, because we have overcome this since the 17th century”, he evaluated.

“What Bolsonaro does all the time is call into the field of conflict and call into the field of armed conflict. The field of armed conflict only results in hate and pain”, lamented Luiz Antonio, pointing out that almost 600,000 people have died in Brazil since 2001, victims of gunfire, according to data from the Ministry of Health (MS).

“And the absolute majority of these deaths are the result of conflicts that could have been resolved through negotiation”, he concluded.

Parents are also to blame

Gésica Bergamini, who has a Master’s degree in Psychology, evaluates the parents’ conduct in this context, coming to the conclusion that it is not enough for them to authorize the participation or the exposure of their children, but that there must also be consent or, at least, assent, which leads her to another reflection: do the children have the capacity to choose and decide for their own wills? Neither do they. This is when adults should turn on the filter and decide which reality they would like to present to those who are still in the process of forming their own personality and behavior.

“The child doesn’t yet have the psychological structure, the maturity, to know if he wants to be exposed in this way, in terms of media and social networks. So what impact is this going to have on the child’s future? An adult can say that he wants to appear or not, it’s a question of consent”, Bergamini evaluated.

“We understand that children are born without experiences. So, if we show this child a violent, aggressive world, that it is okay to use weapons, that it is okay to kill people, in this sense, he will see all this as normal. It doesn’t mean that they will kill people, but for them it will be normal, part of their everyday life”, explained the psychology major.

The specialist explains that the entire external social context ends up structuring the behavior pattern of children, which can generate serious negative results if they grow up in an aversive environment.

“This certainly has a negative effect in the short, medium, and long term on the child’s own understanding of the world, as they still lack cognitive maturity, in terms of brain development, to distinguish what is right and wrong, moral, amoral, and immoral, so they still lack these basic elements of their cognitive structure”, added Gésica Bergamini.