“O que não te contaram sobre a escravidão”: o revisionismo histórico no youtube como resistência às cotas raciais

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze revisionist discourses by far-right authors on YouTube about black slavery and how these discourses fit into a broader movement of resistance to the policy of racial quotas. The “Law of Quotas” completed ten years in 2022 and must undergo a revision and, in this context, the discourses of resistance to racial quotas were strengthened, including through the propagation of revisionist historical discourses on black slavery. The two YouTube videos chosen were O Tráfico de Escravos e a Origem da Escravidão no Brasil, from Impérios AD channel, and O que você nunca ouviu em um debate sobre a escravidão no Brasil, from Brasil Paralelo channel. Based on discussions by Pierre Vidal-Naquet (1988), Louie Dean Valencia-Garcia (2020) and Damião de Lima and Juliana Alves de Andrade (2021), the presence of some elements of revisionist historical discourses was observed, such as the view of History with the presence of theories of historical degeneration and nostalgia for imagined pasts; the presence of conspiratorial elements such as the existence of a “hidden truth” by academia and professors, who would be biased; the falsification, distortion or dismissal of contrary evidence, sources and historiography. The videos use these elements of revisionist narratives and address, in a distorted way, the existence of slavery in Africa before the arrival of the Portuguese and the participation of Africans in the slave trade to build a revisionist narrative of exaltation to Portuguese colonization, its exemption from responsibility over the slavery and minimization of the effects of racism in the formation of Brazilian society.