The open confrontation that has been going on for months between one of the richest men in the world and the most powerful judge in Brazil has been intensifying in recent days until it exploded publicly last Saturday. On one side of the ring, businessman Elon Musk, who boasts of being an absolutist of freedom of expression; on the other, Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes, considered by many to be the savior of Brazilian democracy in the face of the coup attacks of Bolsonarism. The ring, a country hooked on social networks that is one of the juiciest markets for big technology companies. On Saturday, Musk announced the immediate closure of the Brazilian operations of X (formerly Twitter), but not the service, which is functioning normally. In a dramatic tone, the company proclaimed in a tweet: “The people of Brazil have to make a choice: democracy or Alexandre Moraes.”
It was the tycoon’s fulminating response to an order from the magistrate, who the day before threatened the company with arresting its legal representative in Brazil if it failed to comply with the order to block seven accounts. Musk shared a copy of the court decision, which was under seal, with his 195 million followers on X and described it as “censorship orders and demands to hand over private information.” The judge launched this challenge after several breaches in which, through secret rulings, he was shortening the deadlines for the company to deactivate the profiles and increasing the fines until threatening to impose a daily penalty of 260,000 dollars.
The accounts in question belong, according to the Brazilian press, to Marcos del Val, a controversial right-wing congressman in office, to two influencers, to an engineer, an evangelical pastor, the wife of a parliamentarian convicted of undermining democracy and the teenage daughter of a Bolsonarist blogger.
Several of the profiles that the judge had ordered to close are still operational on Tuesday. But there has been immediate collateral damage. That same Saturday morning, X’s 40 employees in Brazil were hurriedly called to a meeting and in a flash they were fired. Attorney Caio Vieira Machado, a specialist in disinformation and researcher at Harvard and Oxford, explained to Folha on Tuesday that, on the one hand, the closure of the offices represents savings for X while the absence of representatives of the firm in the country will make communication with the company and compliance with any court decision difficult.
For Machado, the main thing in these political moves by Musk is the political use he makes of the company. That is, he very publicly displays a position aligned with Bolsonarism on the eve of the municipal elections in October. The expert recalls that, according to a recent Harvard report, since the tycoon bought X, the company complies more with court orders on content, regardless of whether they come from democratic countries or not.
This is the latest round in the duel between Musk and Moraes over the limits of freedom of expression, disinformation and the accounts of far-right Brazilian Twitter users. The tycoon has long since made no secret of his affinity with Trump, whom the tech magnate allowed to turn into a feast of disinformation the interview he did with him on X, Jair Bolsonaro and President Javier Milei.
Last April, Musk and Moraes engaged in another public spat. The magistrate then opened an investigation against the owner of X for spreading defamatory fake news and for attempting to obstruct justice in a case known as the digital militias case. Over the past few years, Moraes has blocked hundreds of user accounts, most of them far-right, on charges of misinformation. He is also the magistrate leading the investigation into the coup attempt carried out by thousands of Bolsonarists in 2023.
The owner of X considers the Brazilian magistrate a danger to freedom of expression. And he often echoes the arguments that Bolsonarism uses to attack him. “There is no doubt that Moraes has to go. Having a judge who repeatedly and in a big way violates the law is in no way [impartir] “Justice,” Musk complained on Saturday, posting a photo of the robed man next to that of Lord Voldemort, the villain of Harry Potter.
For many Brazilian democrats, Judge Moraes is a hero who saved Brazilian democracy from the Bolsonaro coup with his bold judicial decisions. However, over time, more and more criticism has emerged pointing to some excesses in his actions. He recently released Filipe Martins, a close collaborator of Bolsonaro who was kept in preventive detention for six months despite evidence contradicting the judge’s accusations.
Musk’s latest attack on Miraes comes at a delicate moment for the most famous judge on Brazil’s highest court. Last week, Folha de S. Paulo published a series of reports, based on thousands of telephone messages, that point to possible procedural irregularities between his work as an investigating judge of the Supreme Court and as president of the Superior Electoral Court, two positions that he held during the crucial 2022 elections that Bolsonaro lost and gave victory to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The magistrate claims that all his actions comply with the law.
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