Online reactions to the collapse of a building in Largo do Paissandu range from solidarity to violent rhetoric from hate groups
The fire and subsequent collapse of the Wilton Paes de Almeida building in Largo do Paissandu on May 1st are the tragic result of a lack of public policies treating housing as a right. The event had wide social and media repercussions and mobilized social networks from the outset.
It immediately prompted support groups for the victims to organize rapid food distribution systems and donation drives for those affected. But hate groups appropriated the event just as quickly as these expressions of support were organized.
In the United States and Europe, these groups advocate white supremacy, are profoundly racist and antisemitic, and oppose anything outside their “national standard”: immigrants, Latin Americans, Muslims, gay people and ethnic minorities. Here in São Paulo, such groups target the most vulnerable: homeless people and refugees. Their targets expand to include everything outside an idealized standard of the city’s “genuine” population: people from the Northeast, gay people and the “idle.”
This becomes very clear in events such as the raid on Cracolândia last May, and now the fire in the building occupied by around 150 families with the support of Movimento Luta por Moradia Digna [Movement for Dignified Housing].
What stands out in the comments posted on social media and on reports covering the fire and collapse is not merely their number, but their virulence and violence.
Common statements express a wish to see other minorities suffer the same misfortune, display sadism and turn victims into culprits, concealing the state’s shared responsibility and choosing to criminalize social movements.
Below are comments selected from the most popular posts published on May 1st and 2 on G1, Twitter and YouTube.
Squatters are worse than weeds; wherever they go, they leave their mark.
Making children is all poor people know how to do; they never learn, which is why they live in misery.
They Could Take the Opportunity to Make a Movie, The Towering Inferno, OK?
Lack of housing? LOL. Work and buy your own place. Can’t manage it? Move somewhere you can afford to buy.
These people come from the Northeast demanding housing from the São Paulo government. Go back there and ask Ciro Gomes and Renan Calheiros for housing.
A building invaded by freeloading parasites caught fire in the city…
Easy there, comrade, the people who occupied the place are to blame; don’t turn things upside down. Who wouldn’t want to live for free and be supported by people who work themselves to death?
I hope this teaches them to drive out the other [families] occupying buildings like this… Too bad they had time to get out…
Don’t like it? Then open your own doors and let the homeless live in your house.
It would have been better if it had been full of Venezuelans, Haitians and Bolivians
They did a lousy job… forgot to lock the exits
They’re already used to running LOL
Absolute horror. We need to remain alert before we lose the capacity and the social and political conditions to hold any discussion at all.
[Transcript of the Ouvir Imagens column on Rádio USP, broadcast on May 7]
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