• Brazil’s Secretary of Culture Roberto Alvim was fired on Friday after he appeared to paraphrase Nazi propaganda in his announcement of a national arts initiative.  
• Several of Alvim’s sentences were strikingly similar to those of Joseph Goebbels, who served as the Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany.
• Additionally, the music playing in the background of Alvim’s address was from an opera that Adolf Hitler found imperative in his life. 
• After much backlash and call for the culture secretary’s termination, President Jair Bolsonaro announced that he dismissed Alvim from his position.

Controversial Address

Brazil’s Secretary of Culture was terminated from his role on Friday after an official video was released of him seeming to paraphrase Nazi propaganda remarks. 

Roberto Alvim, who was appointed to his position by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, announced a new initiative for increased funds dedicated to national art awards. In the 6-minute video, which has now been deleted from all Brazilian government official pages, Alvim was seen sitting at a desk beneath a portrait of Bolsonaro, a wooden cross to his side.

“The Brazilian art of the next decade will be heroic and national,” he said to the camera in Portuguese. “It will be endowed with great capacity for emotional involvement, and it will also be imperative since it will be profoundly connected to the urgent aspirations of our people — or it will be nothing.”  

Parts of Alvim’s phrasing was almost identical to those of Joseph Goebbels, who served as the Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany. The similarities can be seen in a speech of Goebbels’, quoted in a biography by historian Peter Longerich.

“German art of the next decade will be heroic, steely but romantic, factual without sentimentality,” Goebbels said in 1933. “It will be nationalistic, with great depth of feeling; it will be binding and it will unite, or it will cease to exist.”  

The music playing in the background of Alvim’s address was also noteworthy. It came from Richard Wagner’s opera “Lohengrin,” which Adolf Hitler described in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, as being decisive in his life.

Reactions to Alvim’s Speech  

It wasn’t long before people began to notice the likeness of Alvim’s rhetoric with the Nazi propaganda, and individuals across the political spectrum expressed outrage. Some — including prominent Brazillian politicians — publicly called for Alvim’s immediate professional termination. 

Alvim first defended his speech in a Facebook post, saying, “what the left is doing is a remote association fallacy.” He called his controversial sentences a “rhetorical coincidence.” 

But a few hours later, Alvim softened his defensive stance with an apology to the Jewish community. In another post, he claimed that the speech was brought to him by advisors who pulled various ideas tied to national art and that he had no idea of the fascist origin of those few lines. Alvim called the criticized phrases an “involuntary mistake” and said he was sorry from the bottom of his heart.

President Jair Bolsonaro announced on his official Twitter page that he had dismissed Alvim from his position on Friday. Bolsonaro wrote that despite Alvim’s apology, his remarks made his tenure “unsustainable.” 

The Brazilian leader emphasized his “rejection of totalitarian and genocidal ideologies” and expressed full support for the Jewish community. 

See what others are saying: (New York Times) (BBC) (Washington Post)

• Pope Francis appointed a woman to a management role in the Vatican’s most powerful department for the first time on Wednesday.
• Dr. Francesca Di Giovanni, a Vatican official of 27 years, will now serve as the undersecretary for multilateral affairs in the Secretariat of State. 
• Among other duties, Di Giovanni will oversee the coordination of the Vatican’s relationships with multilateral organizations, including the United Nations. 
• While several other women hold high-ranking positions in the city-state, Di Giovanni’s leadership role in the Vatican’s most powerful branch is unparalleled. 

Appointment of Di Giovanni

Pope Francis made an unprecedented move on Wednesday by appointing a woman for the first time to a managerial position in the Secretariat of State, the most powerful department of the Vatican.

Dr. Francesca Di Giovanni, an Italian lawyer and Vatican official of 27 years, was named the undersecretary for multilateral affairs in the Secretariat of State. Among other responsibilities, Di Giovanni will oversee a division that coordinates the Vatican’s relations with multilateral organizations, including the United Nations.  

“The Holy Father has made an unprecedented decision, certainly, which, beyond myself personally, represents an indication of an attention towards women,” Di Giovanni told the Vatican’s in-house media. 

“But the responsibility is connected to the job, rather than to the fact of being a woman,” she added.

Milestone for Women in Catholic Church

Several women hold leadership positions in other Vatican offices, but the Secretariat of State is the most powerful branch, making Di Giovanni’s career shift extra significant. 

Pope Francis’ appointment of Di Giovanni is the latest development in his ongoing open support of women having more say in the Roman Catholic Church. Currently, women cannot be ordained as priests and the Church’s leadership is almost entirely male-dominated.

On New Year’s Day, the pope expressed praise for womankind. 

“Women are givers and mediators of peace and should be fully included in decision-making processes,” Pope Francis said. “Because when women can share their gifts, the world finds itself more united, more peaceful. Hence, every step forward for women is a step forward for humanity as a whole.”

Di Giovanni referenced these words in her interview with the Vatican News calling them the pope’s “tribute” to the role of women.

“A woman may have certain aptitudes for finding commonalities, healing relationships with unity at heart,” Di Giovanni said. “I hope that my being a woman might reflect itself positively in this task, even if they are gifts that I certainly find in my male colleagues as well.”  

See what others are saying: (Vatican News) (NPR) (BBC)

• Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese entrepreneur, is giving away 1 billion yen—about $9.1 million—to 1,000 of his Twitter followers, with each to receive just over $9,000.
• Users had to follow his account and retweet his giveaway announcement post before late Jan. 7 to qualify.
• Maezawa is treating the giveaway as a social experiment and plans to evaluate how money will affect people’s lives and happiness levels.
• Once randomly selected, he will contact the winners directly via a Twitter direct message.

The Giveaway

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa is giving away 1 billion yen—about $9.1 million—to a randomly-selected group of his Twitter followers to see if the money boosts their happiness.  

The entrepreneur/art collector announced the news of his “serious social experiment” in a tweet on Jan. 1. In the post, he explained that he will be divvying up the money amongst 1,000 people evenly, each person will receive about $9100. 

In order to qualify for the giveaway, Twitter users had to follow Maezawa’s account and retweet his post. They also must be a Japanese resident, and over the age of 13, per Twitter’s Service Terms and Conditions, according to translated rules tweeted by Maezawa. 

Eligible contenders had until just before midnight on Jan. 7 to apply for the money, and over 4.1 million people heeded the call by retweeting the giveaway post. The winners will be drawn randomly and notified by Maezawa via a direct message on Twitter.

Social Experiment

In his initial post, Maezawa linked to a YouTube video in which he describes the experiment. On Friday, he tweeted that he added English subtitles to his YouTube video, writing his hopes viewers can understand the real reason he is doing this giveaway.

In the video, Maezawa explained that he wants to see how this chunk of money will affect people’s lives and if it will give them a chance to be happier. He intends to follow up with the winners via surveys to evaluate if and how their circumstances have changed.

He also encouraged social scientists and economists to contact him if interested in what he is doing. 

Maezawa has likened his experiment to the idea of basic income, the theory of a periodical fixed amount of money distributed to all citizens with no strings attached. Some Twitter users have argued that his giveaway is not the same because he is only distributing money to a relatively small group of people. 

Nonetheless, Maezawa is using his giveaway to propel the conversation about the possibilities of basic income in Japan. 

Additionally, in his YouTube video, he mentioned his giveaway of 100 million yen last year and expressed regrets for not clarifying its purpose at the time or remaining in contact with the people he gave the money to. 

Though Maezawa’s 2019 giveaway had inconclusive results, it did break a record. At the time, his giveaway tweet was the most retweeted ever.

Maezawa made a name for himself by founding Zozotown, Japan’s largest fashion retail website. He also made headlines in 2018 for being the first paying customer on SpaceX’s proposed moon trip.

See what others are saying: (CNN) (NBC) (ABC)