Brazil culture minister sacked over speech echoing Nazi propagandist Goebbels

Brazil’s culture secretary has been sacked after using language that echoed Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

Roberto Alvim drew anger from Jewish organisations, lawmakers, political parties and artists this week over his remarks in a video on Thursday to launch an arts initiative focused on nationalism and religion.

“The Brazilian art of the next decade will be heroic and will be national,” Mr Alvim said in the video.

“It will yield great capacity of emotional involvement and it will be equally imperative, as it will be deeply committed to the urgent aspirations of our people, or it will be nothing.”

Goebbels, the Nazi’s minister of propaganda, said in a speech in 1933: “The German art of the next decade will be heroic, it will be steely romantic, it will be factual and completely free of sentimentality, it will be national with great pathos and committed, or it will be nothing.”