Horsing around

should never lead to imprisonment

My mare Whirlwind and I were just watching our young foal Tornado hop around. It’s delightful to see how much energy is in him and how curious he is. Everything is new to him: the fence, the pasture, the road, the stable, and he avidly explores the lands. We love the way he jumps and runs around, seemingly without reason. We’ll raise Tornado to become a good horse: strong, fast, reliable, yet still spontaneous and rooted in nature.

You’ll remember that I chatted with some Brazilian horses not too long ago and that I promised to share more stories. When I watch Tornado, I can’t help but think of Floresta, whose foal Furacão was taken away by the government and put in prison for two years. I don’t even want to think about what I’d do if that happened to me … but what stuck with me most of all is the reason why. It turns out it was yet another side-effect of people having lost their minds.

Our Tornado chilling in the grass. Photo courtesy of Hillary Halliwell, pexels.com.

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So here is what happened. An extended family from urban São Paulo visited their ranch near Barretos. Their eleven year old daughter stood by the fence and Furacão walked past by the other side. The girl tried to caress him, and she introduced herself as “hey, I’m Lígia and my pronouns are she/her”. Furacão had never heard such a thing. He burst out in laughter and he said “sure, I can see that.” The girl still tried to caress Furacão, but as it happened one lady in the company had recently graduated from college and become an elementary school teacher. This lady threw a tantrum, shouting that Furacão’s behaviour was “extremely offensive” and illegal and should be punished. She called the police. Furacão was put into a horse trailer and driven to a state prison, where he spent the next two years.

How could this have happened? Well, as it turns out, last year Brazil passed a new law commonly referred to as the ‘lei do racismo’ or “law of racism” (law 14.523/23), which criminalizes a host of expressions. I found a legal review in favour of this law that even advocates to make it more stringent in some ways. The title of this review reads that the new “racism law is an instrument to consolidate democracy”. We have pointed out before that freedom of speech is a principle more fundamental than democracy, so I sincerely doubt that a new law that limits expression has any effect to “consolidate democracy”. To consolidate right-wing extremist totalitarianism, on the contrary, such a law might be an instrument. But let’s not digress and let’s review what this law entails.

The original draft of the law criminalized “any attitude or treatment given to a minority person or group that causes containment, humiliation, shame, or undue exposure to fear, which would usually not be inflicted to other groups for reasons of skin colour, ethnicity, religion or descendence.” Let us already pause here and remark that all of the concepts listed are highly subjective. It depends on a person’s vantage point whether an attitude causes humiliation, shame or fear and likewise, it also depends on one’s point of view if such a treatment would typically be given to ‘other groups’. So already at this point the conclusion is that this law will lead to haphazard, unpredictable accusations and convictions. However, there is more at play here. The favorable review praises the law for repressing ‘systemic racism installed in the minds of all Brazilians’, emphasizing that the wording by itself makes it more challenging to apply it in the case of “inverse racism”, i.e. when a person is being discriminated against for being white. But the review proceeds by suggesting that the wording should be changed from “minority groups” into “groups that were minoritized for historical reasons”, because as it happens, black people and other people of colour already make up the majority in Brazil. I am not making this up.

There is a lot to unpack here. The review gives us a much clearer understanding of the upside down thought patterns that, sadly, have become prevalent in Western capital cities. Brasília is the example here, but it could readily be substituted by Ottawa, DC, Canberra or Brussels, for that matter. Many in these administrative classes have been captured into harboring false ideals, much of which is the effect of nudging in different forms.

(If you don’t know what nudging is, you need more pony wisdom and you should subscribe)

A true ideal that I stand for, is to reach a state where there is no racism: nobody is being discriminated against for their skin colour or other characteristics. That is a society in which we give each other equal opportunities and are truly developing talent, hiring the best and firing the worst regardless of their skin colour, ethnicity or religion. Yet both this law and the review reflect a position in which it is perfectly permissible to discriminate against one group, white people, even when they are a minority, whereas it is a crime to even say statements that could be interpreted as “humiliation” about other groups. These patterns of thinking resort under the umbrella of what is called ‘anti-racism’. However, unfortunately there is a truth that the proponents of so-called ‘anti-racism’ will have to face: the universe is pretty binary. There is either racism or no racism. So-called ‘anti-racism’ is just another form of racism and is therefore equally despicable. Allow me to remind that reverend Martin Luther King Jr. would very much agree, as his ideal was to reach a state of “colour blindness”. That is because MLK was a true well-intentioned visionary, whereas the present bureaucratic classes are too drowned in their self-deception to spread “virtuous values” to see that all they are promoting is an agenda of control that only benefits the one percent of the one percent.

MLK Jr. Today’s ‘anti-racists’ will label many of his statements as ‘racist’. Photo: Library of Congress.

As a final note on this section of the lei do racismo, I will point out the following. Most of us will agree that there should be no violence based on one’s skin colour and that nobody should ever live a life of fear or be discriminated against merely for having been born with the wrong skin colour. And so do I. However, all of these actions were already illegal. Both in Brazil and in other Western countries, violence and threats thereof, as well as discrimination in the workplace were illegal before this law came to be. So what this law really does is to criminalize speech. And again, I am not making this up … Cyntia Carvalho e Silva’s review continues to praise the newly established limits to speech.

The law explicitly lists a set of “severe cases of racism”, such as “racism practiced in a publication, virtual or printed, including in social media and qualified racism in public events, such as sports, religious, cultural, or artistic activities”. But the icing on the cake is the following: “recreative racism”, which is “camouflage of discrimination in humour or entertainment”, which can have a sentence of up to two years in prison and a potential fine. Of course, the review thinks that this is a good idea and states: “A joke of bad taste is now a hate crime. Educate yourself.”

Ever seen a comedy show where every single person laughs at every joke? I have not, because we all have different tastes and what I laugh at may not be funny to you, or vice versa. You may think that I have bad taste and I may think that you have bad taste. But to label a joke that you don’t like a “hate crime” is beyond reason and totally unacceptable. Yet Brazilian Comedian Danilo Gentili was recently fined twenty thousand reais merely for telling a joke.

The motivation to label a joke of bad taste to be a ‘hate crime’ comes from what some refer to as the ‘postmodern concept that opinions can cause irreparable psychological harm’. Just like “systemic racism” and “anti-racism”, this is a concept that I can trace back to the stupidity community and some of their academic goons. I conjecture that they came up with these concepts to generate broader acceptance for a censorship agenda that consolidates their own power. But let’s return to reality.

(If you don’t know what the stupidity community is, or if you think that they should be referred to as the ‘intelligence community’, then you need more pony wisdom and you should consider to subscribe)

Sayings are widespread colloquialisms because they can frequently be observed to be true. The saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” wasn’t extracted from thin air. Nobody has ever suffered from “irreparable psychological harm” because of something that had been said to them. Even if a certain statement felt hurtful at the time, it served a purpose: it made the persons who were hurt better prepared to defend themselves next time around. Like most, I have suffered from adversities and I have only come out stronger each time. Their is no such thing as “irreparable psychological harm” resulting from a joke. However, what is well documented is the psychological suffering endured by residents of the Third Reich, the Soviet Union and former East Bloc states, resulting from the lack of freedom to express themselves.

By now you will be wondering what all of this has to do with poor Furacão, right? He didn’t do anything racist? Well, as it happens the lei do racismo contained the aforementioned clauses when it was passed by parliament. But then the Brazilian Supreme Court and its notorious president Alexandre de Moraes added a few more. If you wonder, yes, the Brazilian Supreme Court can single-handedly alter legislation. So Moraes added that the lei do racismo equally applies to “gender identity and sexual orientation”, with sentences of two to five years in prison and fines for offending for these reasons. Now you understand how Furacão ended up in jail… Also here, we will most likely all agree that it should be illegal to kill trans people. But again, that already was illegal before this addition came to life. And again, all this clause accomplishes is to stifle freedom of expression for very dubious motivations.

Let’s return for a final time to the review. It concludes by observing that “a mere paper law does not produce any change, nor has any effect. To gain traction, it needs all of us. It demands that public authorities engage in continued education and have the courage to apply it. Of society at large, it demands denunciations. The more persons are denounced, the more political inquiries, convictions and collective reflections about the facts there will be”. So the author is actively advocating for a terror state in which neighbours report one another for some unapproved opinion. Up to you to call this Nazi, Soviet or totalitarian without stripe, but an absolute horror scenario it is indeed.

I would argue that there is one truth in this statement: “to gain traction, it needs all of us”. Brazilians have a choice. The country is one of the least safe in the West and its prisons are at capacity with real criminals. What is needed is that Brazilians just keep speaking their mind. There is no way in which we will see half of their population incarcerated. I predict that law enforcement will lose their appetite soon too, if they had any to begin with.

Both people and us horses, we all flourish when we can be and do what we want. Spontaneous expression is an inalienable power bestowed upon us by the Universe. I will not have that taken away from me. If I need to use my hind legs again, I will. I will kick enforcers off of the land. I will make sure that my Tornado can grow up to become whatever he wants to be. I am sure that he will turn out a great pony, cheerful and joyful, spontaneously expressing whatever is on his mind at any given point in time. Total absolute freedom of expression, anywhere, at any time, by anyone and by any means is the only acceptable path forward.

Eventually, Furacão will get to have a good pony life too. People think they are punishing him by putting him in a female prison and serving him porridge. Yet he is grazing next to the building all the time. Moreover, he gets caressed by the inmates and as the icing on the cake he is being served hot oats three times a day. He will return to the ranch as a great pony. And I’ll tell you a secret: he will still be able to tell a mare from a stallion. So am I.