Brazil Bans Free Speech In The Name Of Democracy. Are We Next?

One of the main lines of attack against Jair Bolsonaro, who served as president of Brazil until 2022, was one that we’re all very familiar with at this point. Liberals claimed that Bolsonaro was an “enemy of democracy.” Media outlets — both in the United States and Brazil — claimed that Bolsonaro was an autocrat who wanted to suspend the rule of law and use the force of government to punish his political enemies. This message resonated with Brazilians because some very prominent figures promoted it — including a former prosecutor-turned Supreme Court judge named Alexandre de Moraes. Among the Brazilian Left, de Moraes was something of a hero for taking on Bolsonaro. Most notably, the judge presided over a tribunal that banned Bolsonaro from running for office for 8 years.

Why? Bolsonaro allegedly spread “lies about voting machines,” which supposedly inspired a mob to ransack Congress, the presidential palace and other government buildings. It was basically Brazil’s January 6. So in the name of protecting democracy, the judge prevented people from voting for Bolsonaro for the better part of a decade.

He did to Bolsonaro exactly what the Left wanted to do to Donald Trump.

So what are the “defenders of democracy” up to in Brazil, just two years later? How are these crusaders for democratic norms faring in 2024?

As you may have heard, de Moraes just issued maybe the single most undemocratic and authoritarian court decision in the modern history of Brazil. He has unilaterally ordered a total ban on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X. No one in Brazil — a country where more than 20 million people used X — is legally allowed to use the platform. Anyone caught using a VPN to bypass this restriction can be fined roughly $9,000 per day, which is about 6 times the average Brazilian’s monthly salary. Additionally, de Moraes has fined X more than $3 million.

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He’s also frozen the assets of Elon Musk’s company Starlink, which provides internet access to hundreds of thousands of Brazilians living in remote areas. The point was to compel Starlink, an independent internet provider, to ban X as well. And on top of that, the Brazilian court system is now pressuring SpaceX, even though they have nothing whatsoever to do with the company. So SpaceX now has to pull employees out of Brazil.

The judge has gone to war with X for a very simple reason: The company refused to block certain accounts that, in the eyes of the Brazilian government, “harmed democratic institutions in Brazil.” And then, X refused to appoint an in-person local legal representative in Brazil, because the judge had threatened to arrest the representative to extract concessions from X. So in order to “protect democratic institutions” supposedly, tens of millions of Brazilians can no longer access the single most popular news app in the country. They have to turn to the corporate press to learn what they’re allowed to hear. Only approved narratives are allowed in Brazil right now.

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For Elon Musk, the showdown in Brazil is obviously a major test. He’s long maintained that he’ll obey the laws of whatever countries his companies are operating in. But he maintains that Brazil’s judges are violating Brazil’s constitution, which isn’t exactly a hard case to make at this point. This week The Economist took a closer look at the judge who issued this order against X and Starlink. Here’s what they found:

Mr Moraes also has form: he is a man who likes and understands power. He has extensive contacts in the federal police, military and intelligence services. … Other decisions have made the court look authoritarian. In 2019 Mr Moraes was put in charge of investigating misinformation about the Supreme Court and threats against the court’s members and their relatives. These had spiked after the election of Mr Bolsonaro. The ‘fake-news’ inquiry was contentious from the start. Normally investigations are opened by the public prosecutor or the police. By giving itself the power to initiate investigations the Supreme Court became victim, prosecutor and judge all at once. No time limit was set, there is no legal definition for disinformation in Brazil and Mr Moraes has not made public which accounts he has ordered shut and why.

This is a violation of one of the most basic principles of every functioning legal system, which is that courts are only supposed to resolve legal disputes that are brought to them. That is their one and only job. Some party — whether it’s a citizen or the government or some other entity — needs to bring a case to the courts. And then the courts rule on it.

Once the courts have the authority to generate cases on their own, and make up arbitrary rules to enforce, then they’re not really courts anymore. Instead of judges, you have de facto dictators. And that’s what’s happening right now to Elon Musk and his companies in Brazil.

You’d hope that an incident like this would trigger immediate condemnations from the State Department. After all, the Biden administration claims to care very deeply about democracy. It’s essentially all they ever talk about. But there has been no condemnation from the mainstream Left in this country. In fact, if you listen to the corporate press, you’ll find a handful of reports essentially blaming Elon Musk for objecting to what the courts in Brazil are doing.

Here for example is the BBC, which for some reason is pretending Taylor Lorenz — who openly hates Elon Musk — is an impartial expert on this topic. Watch:

“He could have prevented the ban, but he chose not to.” Notice how the Brazilian government — which just shut down an entire social media app for millions of people — has no agency in Taylor Lorenz’s analysis. A private company refused to do the bidding of the Brazilian government. And therefore, it’s the private company’s fault that they got shut down. That’s how Taylor Lorenz, who works for The Washington Post, is selling this decision by the Brazilian Supreme Court. It’s how the BBC is presenting the news.

It’s not hard to see what’s going on here. Brazil is the template for mass censorship in the United States. If they can pull it off in Brazil, they’re going to try to pull it off here. That’s why the corporate press is presenting Elon Musk as the villain in this scenario. The media has a vested interest in shutting down X because it’s one of their biggest competitors. Random posts on X get more viewers than CNN’s entire primetime lineup. So in order to lay the groundwork for shutting down X in this country, they’re saying Elon Musk had it coming in Brazil. 

And it’s not just the media that’s trying to send this message. Senior figures in the Democrat Party are doing it too. For example, Keith Ellison is the attorney general of the State of Minnesota. He’s the chief legal officer of a major state. He’s also closely aligned with Kamala Harris’ campaign. He just spoke at the DNC a few weeks ago. Here’s what Keith Ellison says about what’s happening to Elon Musk’s companies in Brazil.

obrigado Brasil!

— Keith Ellison (@keithellison) September 2, 2024

“obrigado Brasil,” which translates to “Thank you, Brazil.” 

Again, Keith Ellison is not some backbench politician from a no-name congressional district. He’s the chief law officer of Minnesota. And he’s endorsing the total shutdown of a major social media platform because it wouldn’t censor the political opponents of the government.

Politicians like Keith Ellison crave censorship because they’re corrupt. They only care about power. And they’re willing to lie in order to get it. Remember what Keith Ellison did during the George Floyd riots. Ellison’s office hid bodycam footage showing that George Floyd said, “I can’t breathe,” several times, while he was struggling with cops in the backseat of a police cruiser — long before he was on the ground with a knee near his neck. That was obviously relevant information because it suggested that Floyd was having a fatal overdose, and that he couldn’t breathe because he had taken a lethal quantity of fentanyl. So Keith Ellison’s office suppressed the footage.

Democrats like Keith Ellison want total control of social media platforms like X so that they can suppress information like that even more often, and even more easily. They want to be able to shut down any information or opinions that contradict their preferred narrative. That’s why they’re thrilled with what’s happening in Brazil. 

It’s also why they have no problem with what the Biden administration is doing to Tusli Gabbard. Gabbard has emerged as one of the most effective critics of the modern Democrat Party. She has what no prominent Democrat has, which is integrity. She was on the fast-track to be a senior official in the Democrat Party, even serving as vice chair of the DNC. But she threw all of that away because she wanted to follow her principles — particularly concerning foreign affairs — instead of seeking power. So, Tulsi Gabbard can’t be controlled by party elites. What’s their solution? They put her on a terror watch list. Watch:

Kamala says she believes in freedom, but I was put on a secret terror watch list after I publicly criticized her. No one will be safe from political retaliation under a Harris administration. I put my life on the line for this country. Now the government calls me a terror threat. pic.twitter.com/3xjgjmrLhD

— Tulsi Gabbard ???? (@TulsiGabbard) September 4, 2024

This should be leading every nightly newscast in the United States. There is no reason for a political figure like Tusli Gabbard to be placed on any kind of terror watch list, or to receive 30 minutes of extra screening every time she tries to fly. The only conceivable explanation is that this is a federal program intended to harass and intimidate her. She’s not following the party line, so this is what she gets.

But she’s able to speak freely about what’s happening to her on X, at least for now. That’s the platform where Tulsi Gabbard posted that video I just showed you. It’s where she — and many other political dissidents in many other countries — can speak their minds, for the most part. At the very least, it’s a freer platform than any of the alternatives. That’s why the government, in both this country and Brazil, wants to shut X down. It’s also why France is trying to shut Telegram down and jail its founder. We are in the middle of a historic war on the freedom of speech, in countries where it would’ve been unthinkable just a few years ago.

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If they’re allowed to succeed in places like Brazil and France, it won’t be long until they try the same thing here. Our Constitution won’t protect us. Brazil and France have constitutions that supposedly protect the freedom of speech, and it’s not working out so well for them. The only solution is to do exactly what Elon Musk and Tusli Gabbard are doing, which is to respond to censorship and intimidation with more speech — call out what they’re doing. And in November, do everything you can to prevent these tyrants from seizing any more power than they already have.