1. INTRODUCTION
Although consolidated as an international normative paradigm, the universality of human rights manifests itself in a deeply asymmetrical manner in contemporary geopolitical reality. In the Brazilian context, public outcry and legal protection are observed not to follow a purely humanitarian criterion, being mediated by geographic and racial filters that hierarchize the value of human life. This scenario reveals a glaring disparity in the application of norms, where the protection of dignity appears to vary according to aesthetic and ideological proximity to the Western axis, justifying the need to investigate the roots of this selectivity.
The central problem of this research lies in the "production of indifference," a phenomenon in which civil society manifests selective solidarity, mobilizing empathy for conflicts along the European axis while maintaining apathy toward violations in the Global South. Through a literature review on cultural hegemony (Gramsci) and framing (Butler), the study is justified by the urgency of understanding how war narratives, shaped by the Global North, construct technical pretexts to render the suffering of racialized populations invisible. It is a matter of unmasking discourses that effect the exclusion of entire peoples from the system of life protection within the Brazilian social imaginary.
The objectives of this work consist of: (i) analyzing the disparity of perception in Brazil (external link) regarding distinct armed conflicts; (ii) highlighting the flaws in the applicability of International Law in the face of great-power exceptionalism; and (iii) demonstrating, through empirical data and decolonial theory, that institutional selectivity is a product of historical power structures. By confronting Law with social reality, the aim is to provide grounds for a decolonial critique that claims the genuine universality of human rights, stripped of aesthetic or geographic privileges, in line with what Mignolo (2003) proposes in denouncing the coloniality of Western knowledge.
2. THE HEGEMONY OF NARRATIVES AND TECHNICAL DISCOURSE
The analysis of the production of indifference requires an understanding of how international power is exercised beyond physical borders. According to Antonio Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony, dominance is sustained by the ability to disseminate a worldview accepted as natural by subordinate classes. In International Law, this hegemony manifests itself in the great powers' prerogative to define the frameworks of legality, dictating which conflicts are "democratic struggles" and which are "insoluble regional problems," thereby limiting the efficacy of universal norms on peripheral soil. This hierarchization traces back to the origins of International Law itself, historically constructed as an instrument of colonial domination, as demonstrated by Anghie (2005) in showing that the concepts of sovereignty and civilization were forged to justify the subordination of non-European territories.
The resort to technical discourse emerges as a depoliticization strategy. The case of uranium in non-aligned nations exemplifies how questions of sovereignty are transmuted into "technical risks," removing room for adversarial debate under a veneer of scientific neutrality. This technique, however, serves as a pretext for sanctions that violate fundamental rights without eliciting the repudiation directed at aggressions on European soil. The advantage of this strategy for the great powers is the maintenance of order without the direct use of force, but its limitation is the erosion of the global legal system's legitimacy.
The effectiveness of this strategy lies in the dehumanization of the "other." When a population is presented through the prism of technical dangerousness, it loses the status of a recognizable victim. As Judith Butler discusses, certain lives are deemed "ungrievable," their deaths seen as statistical collateral damage. In Brazil, this mechanism anchors indifference: a product of structures that use technique to camouflage racial prejudices. In comparison with decolonial literature, it becomes evident that legal technique, when devoid of humanitarian ethics, becomes a tool for deliberate geopolitical segregation.
Figure 1 illustrates how framing defines the visibility of pain. On the cover of the newspaper Estado de Minas (2022) regarding the Ukrainian conflict, the visual construction focuses on humanization, facilitating identification and the recognition of a life worthy of grief. In contrast, the representation of the conflict in Iran by the magazine IstoÉ (2026) reduces the tragedy to an "accounting of extermination," prioritizing rubble and numerical data without clear faces, which discourages immediate empathy in the Brazilian reader.
This visual disparity confirms that public outcry in Brazil is mediated by an aesthetic and racial filter. While European suffering is narrated as an ethical tragedy, pain in the Global South is presented as a statistical fatality. Comparing this reality with Bourdieu's (2012) concept of symbolic capital, it is noted that the national media reproduces Western "distinction," conferring full humanity only upon bodies that resemble the standard of civility imposed by the Global North.
Therefore, the image acts as the primary stage in the production of indifference, dehumanizing the target prior to legal judgment. The relevance of this visual analysis to Law lies in understanding that norms are not applied to "pure" facts, but rather to facts already filtered by sensory and ideological perceptions. Overcoming this barrier requires identifying how the aesthetics of pain is instrumentalized to shield allied powers and silence victims from non-Western territories.
2.1Soft Powerand Legitimation
The effectiveness of narrative hegemony in Brazil is linked to Soft Power (NYE, 2004), the ability to influence interests through cultural attraction. The mass consumption of cultural products from the Global North establishes a filter of automatic validity, inducing Brazilians to adopt hegemonic values as if they were universal. This cultural admiration generates a "spontaneous alignment," whereby public opinion accepts Western military interventions as inherently ethical, revealing the power of symbolic domination discussed by Bourdieu.
This cultural alienation causes citizens of peripheral nations to view themselves and their peers through the eyes of the oppressor (FANON, 2008). In Brazil, terms that dehumanize the racialized adversary are reproduced prior to any technical analysis. The advantage of this cultural influence for the great powers is the reduction of resistance to their foreign policies, but the limitation lies in the loss of Brazilian informational sovereignty, which ends up mimicking external crises while ignoring its own peripheral contradictions.
By absorbing the values of the Global North as absolute, Brazilian Law often neglects the need for critical approaches. As Santos (2010) argues, the passive acceptance of these discourses prevents society from recognizing human rights violations when committed by "civilized allies." Breaking with indifference requires questioning this cultural attraction that shields great powers from criticism, revealing that national solidarity is frequently a resource captured by narratives that serve to maintain the global status quo.
2.2 The Rhetoric of the “False Pretext”
The dehumanization of populations in the Global South reaches its peak when political debate is shifted toward technical neutrality through the "false pretext." The case of Iran serves as a paradigmatic example of how security discourse is used to manufacture fear and justify legal exceptionalism. By treating Iranian technological development as an "existential risk," the great powers strip that nation of its political agency, transforming it into a target of constant surveillance in the Brazilian popular imaginary, driven by alarmist headlines.
The rhetoric of pretext operates by creating a state of emergency where technical possibility replaces factual evidence. For Mbembe (2018), this necropolitics allows populations to be kept under a "suspension of Law." In the national imaginary, the Iranian people cease to be composed of civilians with rights and come to be seen as a threat, which silences criticism of devastating economic sanctions. In comparison with Said (2007), it is evident that "Orientalism" continues to underpin the perception of danger inherent to the Global South.
Therefore, legal analysis reveals that technicality camouflages racial biases under scientific objectivity. International Law, by failing to question the criteria that define who masters sensitive technologies, validates hierarchies of sovereignty. As Butler (2015) argues, the pre-configuration of perception through fear prevents these lives from being "grievable," rendering their destruction acceptable. Exposing this machinery is essential to understanding why indifference is a deliberate political construct that uses science to validate legal exclusions. In this sense, the institutional silencing of these populations converses with Spivak’s (2010) provocation regarding the impossibility of the subaltern being heard within the terms of hegemonic discourse, given that their voice is systematically filtered through the epistemological categories of the Global North.
3. BRAZILIAN PERCEPTION: A DATA ANALYSIS
Understanding the "production of indifference" requires observing how mechanisms operate within the subjectivity of national public opinion. If narrative hegemony establishes filters of global humanity, it is in daily reception that the selectivity of empathy is consolidated. Brazil presents a scenario in which solidarity is mediated by a narcissistic identification with the Western ideal, reflecting a social formation that historically mimics the values of the core at the expense of its own reality.
The analysis seeks to identify empirical evidence of this phenomenon through data from polling institutes that monitor Brazilian moral inclination. It is a matter of deciphering silence as the outcome of a political and racial structure. By confronting figures with the visual reality discussed, it maps how Law and communication converge to validate a hierarchy of lives, turning indifference into a socially acceptable and politically functional behavior.
This section analyzes how adherence to Global North values translates into indicators, exposing the inner workings of a society that numbs its empathy when the victim's face does not resemble the European standard. The relevance of this analysis lies in demonstrating that International Law in Brazil is not read as a universal norm, but as a privilege conditioned by aesthetic criteria. This discussion underpins the need to decolonize not only norms, but the very data that guide national foreign policy.
3.1 Comparative Data Analysis
Selective indifference is quantitatively measured through data cross-referencing. According to Datafolha (2022), 62% of Brazilians showed high interest in the war in Europe, a rate that is not matched in crises in Africa or the Middle East. This discrepancy suggests that interest is triggered by geographic location and ethnic profile, confirming a Eurocentric filter. Comparing this with decolonial literature, we see that Brazilian public interest follows the logic of the "core," ignoring the global periphery of which it is part.
Deepening the analysis, data from the Pew Research Center (2023) indicate a structural difficulty in recognizing human rights violations when they originate from Western allies. This phenomenon, the "colonization of the imaginary" (GRUZINSKI, 2001), reveals that Brazilian moral outrage aligns with the interests of central capitals. Thus, the hierarchy of suffering is statistically validated: certain lives are "newsworthy," while others are relegated to oblivion. The advantage of these data is the empirical confirmation of the hypothesis, whereas the limitation lies in the volatility of public opinion.
Finally, surveys by AtlasIntel (2024) on the Global South demonstrate the rapid trivialization of these issues. As Chomsky (2003) argues, media agenda control determines collective condemnation. In Brazil, news saturation regarding the "danger" posed by non-aligned nations anesthetizes empathy, transforming tragedies into statistical data that are difficult to grasp. It is concluded that solidarity is a scarce resource distributed asymmetrically, favoring the standard of civility imposed by the Global North and silencing racialized suffering.
3.2 The Pact of Whiteness and Selective Indifference
The statistical discrepancy is rooted in the "narcissistic pact of whiteness" (BENTO, 2022). This pact constitutes an alliance for the preservation of privileges through the denial of racism. In geopolitics, it is projected by making Brazilians see in the European their ideal humanity. Western pain is experienced as an aggression against one's own collective self, whereas suffering in the Global South is met with emotional detachment. This analysis connects empirical data to racial theory, demonstrating that indifference is not merely a lack of information, but a structural psychological barrier.
To maintain global power, the suffering of the racialized "other" must be stripped of subjectivity. As Quijano (2005) notes, racial classification is the axis of legal control. In Brazil, humanizing the Ukrainian victim while turning the Iranian victim into a mere statistic reinforces the narcissistic pact, ensuring that identification occurs solely within whiteness. The advantage of this theoretical approach is that it explains the "why" behind the silence; the limitation is the difficulty of measuring the exact impact of this pact on immediate legislative decisions, although its influence on common sense is evident.
According to Almeida (2019), racism shapes institutional rationality, rendering the very notion of Justice selective. If public opinion does not feel challenged by the pain of the Global South, the Brazilian State encounters less resistance in maintaining passive neutrality toward hegemonic aggressors. Breaking with this logic demands a decolonial critique that recognizes full humanity in non-white bodies. Without this confrontation, the Law will continue to camouflage prejudices, and indifference will remain the sophisticated product of a hegemony that refuses to see peripheral faces.
4. INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSE AND LEGAL BARRIERS
Institutional responses reveal that Brazilian indifference reverberates through the effectiveness of norms. Law, grounded in universality, is traversed by asymmetries that condition its application. It is observed how international courts and legislative movements can act to shield hegemonies, demonstrating that the silence of public opinion facilitates exceptionalism. Analyzing these barriers is fundamental to understanding how legal technicality is instrumentalized to preserve global hierarchies under a veneer of formal legality.
The application of the norm does not take place in a social vacuum. When institutions encounter a society numbed by technical neutrality, enforcement follows the path of least political resistance. Comparing this with the literature of critical internationalism, it becomes clear that legal technicality often ratifies global selectivity. The relevance of this section lies in connecting the theory of indifference to concrete legal facts, indicating that social apathy is a functional component for the maintenance of zones of geopolitical impunity in marginalized territories.
Therefore, this section investigates the repercussions of this indifference within the International Criminal Court and the Brazilian legislative arena. It seeks to demonstrate that the institutional response reflects the racial and geographical filters discussed. By uncovering the barriers that hinder equal protection, the research highlights the need for a system that does not bend to the convenience of great powers. The objective is to demonstrate that, without social pressure, legal technicality tends to operate exclusion, turning human dignity into a selective privilege conditioned by the aesthetics of power.
4.1 The International Criminal Court and Exceptionalism
The performance of the ICC represents a clash between universal justice and geopolitical power. Although the Rome Statute aims to punish crimes indiscriminately, practice reveals "exceptionalism." According to Hathaway and Shapiro (2017), accountability is applied rigorously to adversaries of the Global North, while strategic allies enjoy de facto immunity. The advantage of this court is the existence of a global forum; the limitation is its capture by power politics, transforming technicality into an instrument that ratifies the selectivity of global outrage. This logic corroborates Simpson's (2004) thesis on the existence of an informal hierarchy between "great powers" and "outlaw States" in International Law, wherein the former enjoy de facto immunity before the Hague system.
The swiftness of investigations within the European axis contrasts with the sluggishness in the Global South. As Koskenniemi (2001) discusses, International Law operates between moralism and pragmatism. In Brazil, this asymmetry is met with silence when the Court's jurisdiction is challenged by major powers. This reveals that racialized suffering does not possess the same legal-political value. Compared with the literature, it is notable that society legitimizes the Court only when it aligns with the Western civilizing discourse, reinforcing the production of institutional indifference.
Exceptionalism is also manifested in the non-accession of major powers to the Hague system. This creates zones of "non-law" (SANDS, 2016), where force replaces the legal norm. For researchers in Brazil, understanding this gap reveals that international justice only sees outside the Global North's sphere of influence. This deepens the chasm of indifference toward peripheral victims, whose aggressors wield the power to halt the gears of justice, turning the legal norm into an instrument of asymmetric and unequal application.
4.2 The Domestic Scenario and Bill 1,424/26
At the domestic level, Bill 1,424/2026 threatens to institutionalize narrative shielding under the guise of combating hate speech. The proposal lacks legal specificity, allowing geopolitical critique to be conflated with racial crimes. Legally, this vagueness generates legal uncertainty and may criminalize academic analysis of violations committed by core powers. The alleged benefit is the protection of vulnerable groups; the actual limitation is the instrumentalization of the Law to curb the advance of decolonial thought critical of the global order.
This legislative move flirts with "collateral censorship" (FISS, 2005), in which legal risk chills debate. By imposing criminal penalties on those who question technical justifications for Northern-led conflicts, the bill strips visibility from voices that humanize the Global South. Labeling critique as hate precludes plural understanding and would punish narrative dissent. Linking this with public opinion data, the bill acts to "freeze" indifference, preventing Brazilian society from questioning the filters of humanity imposed upon it.
The proposal violates proportionality (CANOTILHO, 2003), as restrictions on fundamental rights must observe the prohibition of excess. Converting solidarity with the Global South into a legal infraction turns the Law into an instrument of selective outrage. In comparison with the Federal Constitution, it is evident that the bill could obliterate academic freedom under a veneer of legality. Overcoming this requires defending a legal order that guarantees plurality, preventing the law from turning silence in the face of racialized suffering into a mandatory norm of state conduct.
5. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
This research fulfilled its initial objective of investigating the mechanisms of the production of indifference in Brazil, demonstrating that the selectivity of outrage toward geopolitical conflicts is a direct product of narrative hegemony and the Global North's Soft Power. By confronting Gramsci and Butler's theories with Datafolha and Pew Research data, it became evident that the national imaginary mimics Eurocentric filters of humanity, reserving emotional solidarity exclusively for populations that fit the aesthetics of Western civility. This finding validates the hypothesis that the silencing of tragedies in the Global South stems from a narcissistic pact that dehumanizes racialized bodies.
In the legal sphere, this study achieved its goal of identifying how this indifference becomes institutionalized through ICC exceptionalism and domestic legislative risks such as Bill 1,424/2026. Technical analysis revealed that neutrality often masks the instrumentalization of the Law to shield hegemonic powers from human rights scrutiny. It is concluded that overcoming this asymmetry requires a decolonial stance that breaks with collateral censorship and affective selectivity, recognizing full humanity in non-Western territories so that the Law ceases to be a tool of exclusion and becomes an instrument of a truly global justice.
In summary, the universality of human rights in Brazil remains conditioned by a geography of power that dictates who is grievable, contrasting the results obtained with the objective of demonstrating the flaws in the applicability of International Law. Confronting this reality presupposes systematically questioning the narratives that transform human tragedies into technical data or security risks. Only through the deconstruction of racial and aesthetic filters will it be possible for Brazilian legal protection to reach everyone equally, ensuring that national solidarity ceases to be a narcissistic reflection of the core and becomes an ethical commitment to life in its entirety.