This Monday, the First Chamber of Brazil’s Supreme Court unanimously ratified the precautionary decision suspending the services of social network X in the country, alleging ‘repeated outrages by Elon Musk against various court rulings’.
In a virtual hearing, the five magistrates who make up the chamber ruled in favour of suspending X, which was put in place at dawn the previous Saturday and will continue until the social network complies with ‘all court decisions’, as stated in its ruling.
The first vote was cast by the judge who had initiated the proceedings, Alexandre de Moraes, whom Musk on the same X called a dictator on numerous occasions for having ordered the suspension of dozens of profiles on the platform, as part of an action concerning ‘a massive dissemination of false news and attacks on democracy and its institutions’.
None of these orders were respected by Musk, who even withdrew his legal representatives from the South American country, according to him under threat of arrest and trial by De Moraes himself.
In his vote, supported by the other four magistrates of the chamber, De Moraes stated that Musk’s outrages are aimed at “creating an environment of total impunity, a kind of legal ‘no man’s land’, which facilitates the action of extremist groups and digital militias on social media, through the massive dissemination of Nazi, racist, fascist, hate and anti-democratic speech”.
Moreover, this magistrate, who behaves almost like a dictator, has already foreseen a fine of 50,000 reals, about USD 9,000, for all persons who attempt to access X via VPN, i.e. using a digital tool to pretend to be in another country.
Musk reacted to the measure provocatively, writing on his social network: ‘Long live Democracy! Long live Free Brazil!”.
In any case, he was not intimidated and relaunched, with the creation of the profile @AlexandreFiles, in which the tycoon intends to expose ‘the endless series of crimes committed by the judge of the Supreme Court of Brazil, Alexandre de Moraes’.
The first publication was: ‘Today we begin to shed light on the abuses of Brazilian law committed by Alexandre de Moraes (…) Secret justice is not justice. Today we say that this must change’.
As if that were not enough, the precautionary measure issued against X was joined by another front of judicial conflict against Starlink, also owned by Musk. The accounts of Starlink, which offers internet services via satellite and has some 215,000 active lines in Brazil, have been blocked by De Moraes in order to guarantee the payment of the fines imposed on X.
Nevertheless, this Sunday, the technology company announced that it would not comply with the decision against X until the blocking of its accounts was lifted.
The sanctions against the South African tycoon’s companies were adopted in the midst of the electoral campaign for next October’s municipal elections, which increased polarisation between former President Jair Bolsonaro and the government of Lula da Silva.
Bolsonaro condemned the ideological persecution against all conservatives, while Lula declared that any foreign company operating in Brazil must respect the country’s justice system.
The decision taken by the Brazilian judges, which is nothing more than a blatant case of censorship, is part of a new woke wave. This mechanism is copied, for example, from that used by Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, who restricted access to numerous platforms in his country.
In reaction to the considerable weakening it suffers among the public, progressivism takes increasingly extreme measures to cling to power, as we have also seen in the UK.
The left wants to be able to decide what is true and what is not, to impose ‘its truth’, i.e. the narrative that favours it, to label as ‘lies’ what harms it and as ‘hate speech’ any argument that opposes it. To this end, it seeks to destroy any kind of freedom of expression, especially when the atrocities of its governments threaten to be exposed.
