Lula and the Sephardic ancestry debate stirring up politics

Lula and Sephardic genealogy: the data point used as a political weapon

A single tweet about Lula da Silva's Sephardic origins was enough to reopen an old debate: whether a leader's family background explains their decisions. The starting point is a claim circulating on social media — that the Brazilian president descends from Sephardic Jews prosecuted by the Inquisition, with supposed confirmations from Lula himself — and it has become ammunition for some and a laughing stock for others. The conversation quickly drifted to Aznar, Zapatero, Pablo Iglesias or Maduro, all singled out with varying degrees of conviction by the same yardstick. And that is where consensus broke down.

From the specific case to the general theory

What began as a genealogical curiosity ended as a conspiracy theory. Some argue it is not about blood but about belonging: that anyone reaching a certain level of power receives an invitation to join a kind of elite freemasonry, and that this membership explains the rise. The argument, its defenders say, has more internal logic than it appears, because such a small population could not on its own occupy so many positions of command. Against this, the elementary demographic calculation: Jews in Spain never made up more than 1% or 2% of the total population, and they married among themselves, so their trace in the bulk of the native population would be residual.

Genetics as an alibi is a classic. There is also the variant that distinguishes between ethnic Jews and opportunistic converts, or the one that accuses the Ashkenazim of being the fake Jews. Everyone picks their lineage as it suits them.

The Inquisition, the Catholic Monarchs and the return via passport

The historical background mixes with today's administrative reality. People recall that the Catholic Monarchs expelled those who did not convert, and that in the late Middle Ages Jews were locked in their neighbourhoods at night, just like the Moriscos, just in case. From there to the present: the law allowing Spanish nationality to be obtained through Sephardic ancestry. The story is told of a Bolivian family, surnamed Aguinaga, who landed in Madrid with a new passport and an American rabbi handling the paperwork. What a great rabbi, according to the description doing the rounds.

Antisemitism as a worn-out label

The discussion drifts towards the political use of the term. It is argued that calling someone antisemitic for criticising certain policies is a wear-down tactic, and it is pointed out that Arabs themselves are Semites. The response from the other side is that seeing Jews everywhere has a name in the DSM-V. Nobody gives ground. Mutual suspicion replaces the facts.

What remains when the noise dies down

The Lula file rests on a chain of confirmations that nobody verifies in the conversation. The theory of a Jewish elite distributing posts among the goyim works as a total explanation and, precisely for that reason, cannot be refuted. With this material, the predictable outcome is that the issue will resurface whenever an inconvenient leader needs a family tree at hand. The question is whether anyone will ask for the papers of the next one before accusing them.