The Iberian Inquisition and Nazism

Parallels between racial legislation, language and persecution. The cases of Bento Teixeira and Victor Klemperer

Abstract

This article intends to reflect on some similarities regarding violence to literature, language and freedom of expression in two different moments: the 16th and 20th centuries. Both witnessed exclusionary policies and there is no coincidence of structures between them there, as they were different in practically all spheres. However, some principles, originating in the late 15th century, attacked a portion of the population again, 400 years later. I do not intend to carry out anachronistic analyses and transpose phenomena from one era to the next, but rather to consider the roots and the resumption of prejudices and actions defended with similar arguments in both periods. I discuss these ideas using, as examples, two teachers and writers, Bento Teixeira and Victor Klemperer, from the environment in which they lived, the literature they produced and the resistance they presented, so that we can, today, use it as a lesson and stop the cyclical return of such arbitrariness.