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Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil who is barred
from seeking public office until 2030, held a grievance-laden rally
Sunday in Rio de Janeiro. Against the alluring backdrop of Copacabana Beach, and
before thousands of supporters clad in the national colors of yellow and green,
he decried his opponents while celebrating one man in particular: Now they accuse the richest man in
the world, a man who was born in South Africa, who was naturalized as an
American, who owns a platform whose aim is to make the whole world free, which
is X, our old Twitter. A man who really seeks to preserve liberty for all of
us, a man who had the courage to show, with some evidence, more will surely
follow, where our democracy is headed, how much freedom we've already lost. I
now respectfully ask for a round of applause for Elon Musk. Almost overnight, Musk, the graceless tech overlord and
self-proclaimed free speech absolutist (who is anything
but),
has become a heroic figure among the reactionary right of Latin America's
largest nation. One rally-goer told
The Guardian that Musk "is supporting Brazil against this shameless
bloody dictatorship that we have in this country," and another insisted that "Elon
Musk has been an essential guy for us. God has used this man to expose the dictatorship
that has taken hold in Brazil to the whole word. He is a crucial tool." A bolsonarista
member of Congress told the crowd that "Elon Musk is definitely watching what
is happening here right now." There's no doubt about that, as Musk's X timeline shows—but
he's doing much more than simply watching. After years
of overtures from the Brazilian right, Musk earlier this month finally plunged
headlong into the country's raging politics in a way that may sound familiar to
Americans: Portraying himself as politically agnostic, and interested only in defending
free speech, he is in fact taking the side of authoritarian, antidemocratic
forces whose claims about government-sponsored censorship are a disingenuous
rhetorical cover for attacking the rule of law. This latest saga began on January 8, 2023, one week after
the inauguration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, when Bolsonaro
supporters stormed
several government buildings in Brasília, the capital. The Brazilian state,
particularly the courts, responded forcefully to this antidemocratic challenge
stoked by the former president. Facing the rampant ongoing dissemination of
misinformation and calls for further assaults on the country's democratic
institutions, Brazilian authorities—most prominently Supreme Court justice Alexandre
de Moraes—have aggressively sought to limit the reach of, or in some cases
deactivate entirely, certain social media accounts. The most virulent
conspiracy theorists, figures like Allan dos Santos and Monark, have been barred
from several platforms by court order. Moraes also happens to be overseeing multiple
investigations involving Bolsonaro that could land the former president in
jail. As a result, Moraes has become enemy number one for Bolsonaro, his
supporters, and now, Musk and his acolytes. There has been legitimate debate about the tactics Moraes
has employed, as The New York Times reported more
than once.
Indeed, I've argued
elsewhere that the Bolsonaro offensive of recent years has made it harder for good-faith
critiques of the Supreme Court to emerge and be aired out. But that is not what
the current Bolsonaro-Musk onslaught is about. What they are trying to do is convince
a global audience that Brazil is under a censorious regime silencing free speech
rights, and they're doing it to undermine the Lula administration. While Bolsonaro's motives are obvious, Musk's are perhaps
less so. Bolsonaro has always been a reactionary agitator uncommitted to
civility and constructive democratic engagement. He might even believe that if
he can sufficiently muddy the waters of Brazilian democracy, he can push the
courts to overturn his ban on seeking elected office. Musk's right-wing
turn, while in the making for a long time, has only become extremely pronounced in
the past few years. His tweets are riddled with pejorative references to "woke"
culture that resonate with a right-wing base trained to abhor political
correctness, and he has dabbled in antisemitic conspiracy theories and
re-platformed some of the most vile, hateful people in America. He insists this is his prerogative in Brazil too, where some 40
million people—or about 18 percent of the population in Brazil—access X at
least once a month. Earlier this month, in response to a court order demanding
that X block an undisclosed number of accounts or face heavy daily fines, Musk
made clear that he would not only ignore the ruling, which he called "aggressive censorship," but lift restrictions on
previously suspended Brazilian accounts. He also urged Brazilians to resist
Moraes, whom he referred to as a "dictator" holding Lula "on a leash," and
suggested both were part of some corrupt bargain of political self-protection.
The spat temporarily called into question whether Starlink, Musk's satellite
internet company, would continue to operate in Brazil, where it has facilitated
illegal mining and logging operations. During a speech at the site of the
future Museum of Democracy in Rio de Janeiro on April 19, Moraes subtly jabbed
Musk by noting that the country's justice system is used "to fighting foreign mercantilists who treat
Brazil as a colony, as well as extremist and antidemocratic politicians who
prefer to subjugate themselves to international interests." By that point, X in
Brazil had quietly reversed itself, signaling
it would abide by all judicial orders even as Musk escalated his online attacks
against Moraes. Musk most likely identifies with the trollish, macho
authoritarianism that is the stock-in-trade of bolsonarismo and doesn't
like the idea of the Brazilian government restricting his company in any way. There is nothing high-minded about his
position. "Mr. Musk is not a moral reference for defending freedom of
expression," Paulo Abrão, the executive director of the Washington Brazil
Office, told me, adding that "X executes numerous content removal orders around
the world and Musk himself does not criticize dictatorial governments when his
economic interests take precedence. His positions on Brazil are biased and are
being used as a smokescreen for his business interests in the country." The basic
problem for X is that the limits placed on its operations in Brazil are in
accordance with local law, not the jurisprudence Musk carries around in his
head. The Brazilian approach to free speech is not the same as America's; there is no First Amendment equivalent in Brazil. "The right to
freedom of expression in the United States is a right that is held above other
rights—it is broader," Estela Aranha, a special adviser to the Minister of
Justice and Public Security in Brazil and a member of the UN's High-Level
Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence, has observed. She
further notes that: In Brazil, as in Europe, freedom
of expression is an essential right that is equal to other essential rights. If
you try to use one right to infringe upon another right, you will face
limitations. All rights are weighed side by side, and there is proportionality
in the scope of how much you can interfere. For example, advocating for Nazism
is illegal in Brazil because it is considered to be such a harmful discourse
that it must be preemptively prohibited—that doesn't exist in the United
States. Musk is hardly alone stateside in attacking Moraes, as
members of the Republican Party have rushed to his—and thus Bolsonaro's—cause.
On April 17, the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee released a 541-page staff report containing dozens of decisions by Moraes ordering X to suspend or
remove some 150 profiles, a supposedly grave violation that is nevertheless
firmly rooted in Brazilian precedent. Musk is reportedly
set to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the situation
in Brazil on May 8. It is worth teasing out what each element of this
antidemocratic Muskian axis hopes to gain from this effort. For Bolsonaro and
his supporters, crying "censorship" deliberately and disingenuously evokes
images of their country's dictatorial past, casting them as the victims rather
than the saboteurs of Brazilian democracy that they actually are. Their ultimate
aim seems to be to leverage international opprobrium of Brazilian institutions
to weaken the Lula administration and restore Bolsonaro's standing. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the former president's son,
indicated as much during an April 8 appearance on Roda Viva, Brazil's
highly regarded television interview show. The younger Bolsonaro—who, like his
father, is accused
of a litany of crimes—noted
that, just as the Biden administration has sought to curb authoritarian
Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro through sanctions, Donald Trump might do the
same to Brazil should he win the presidency in November: "This situation with
Elon Musk placed the spotlight of the world on us Brazilians here, what is
happening is not normal.… We have to defend our democracy and with Elon Musk
being as close to Trump as he is, and if Trump is reelected president of the
United States, I think there is a real possibility of sanctions." Republicans likely see a fresh avenue to link their support
of Trump and right-wing populism to a broader international community. Trump
and his supporters were very much attuned to the energy behind Brexit and solicitous of
like-minded leaders in Hungary, Russia, and beyond. Furthermore, as Fabio de Sá
e Silva, a professor of international
studies at the University of Oklahoma, posited, "the American
right is interested in discrediting the Brazilian [Supreme Court] because, in
addition to having already left Bolsonaro ineligible, we can also
provide an example for how to punish a coup, something that Trump fears
suffering in the USA." At times like this, with the
stakes so high, it is worth being categorical: Brazil is a robust pluralistic
democracy. To assert otherwise plays directly into the hands of those wishing
to subvert the democratically elected government of the fourth-largest
democracy in the world. Despite what Bolsonaro, Musk, and their adherents might have the world believe, nobody in Brazil is being rounded up for sharing their
opinion. Nobody is being tortured or exiled for their ideas. But Brazil is only part of a larger unfolding horror story.
In the months to come, we're certain to hear more cries from Musk and
like-minded tech moguls about the supposed endangerment of free speech in the
U.S., Brazil, and other democracies around the world. "We are noticing a
dramatic increase in global censorship, unlike anything we've seen before," Chris
Pavlovski, the CEO of Rumble, the video platform popular with the far right,
recently complained
on X. "It's the worst I've seen it. First France, then Brazil and now it
feels like everyone is following France and Brazil's lead. State Department
need to intervene asap." Expect this censorship moral panic to grow as the U.S.
election nears, funded and organized by forces counting on a Trump win to
facilitate exactly what Pavlovski alluded to: intervention.