Journalist Michael Shellenberger racked up tens of millions of views for this report over the weekend.
If you need the short version, this clip from Shellenberger spells it all out:
On April 3rd, Shellenberger dropped a new "Twitter Files" exposé that uncovered how the Brazilian government, under the direction of its new far-left president, pressured Elon Musk's social media platform to censor its own citizens in direct violation of the Brazilian constitution and international human rights laws. The Supreme Court of Brazil is directly involved in the matter, led by top Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
Here is how it started:
On February 14, 2020, Twitter's legal counsel in Brazil, Rafael Batista, emailed his colleagues to describe a hearing in Congress on "Disinformation and 'fake news'"
Batista revealed that members of Brazil's Congress had asked Twitter for the "content of messages exchanged by some users via DMs" as well as "login records - among other info."
Batista said, "We are… pushing back against the requests," which were illegal, "because they do not meet [Brazilian Internet law] Marco Civil legal requirements for disclosure of user's records."
Batista noted that some conservative Twitter users had gone to the Supreme Court "after they learned from the media that the Congress was trying to get their IPs and DM content. In light of this, the Supreme Court granted an injunction suspending the requirement given its failure to fulfill legal requirements."
I wish I only had to tell you to imagine a government that is seeking to silence and spy on citizens who disagree with the regime, but the Biden White House used the FBI and other federal agencies to coordinate with Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and Google to do exactly that to Americans.
However, for the moment, we still have the ability to expose our government for its sins. In Brazil, that ability may be gone.
On January 27, 2021, Batista emailed his colleagues about a police investigation against him for refusing to give personal Twitter user data to the São Paulo State Public Prosecutor Office.
The Prosecutor claimed that Twitter's "attitude is isolated, because all the other big technology companies such as Google, Facebook, Uber, WhatsApp, and Instagram provide registration data and phone numbers without a court order."
Twitter/X was the only platform refusing to give user data to authorities because it believes such requests violate Brazil's own privacy and speech laws.
Following the American Left's model, the far-left Brazilian government was deplatforming, demonetizing, banning and/or shadowbanning accounts that were supportive of the previous conservative administration. The same went for accounts that questioned the legitimacy of the far-left administration's election victory. You can read the entire report for specifics on how the government is attempting this (I'll link to the report again here).
Elon Musk shared that the administration's "aggressive censorship" effort "appears to violate the law & will of the people of Brazil" and said the company would rather lose its revenue in the nation than comply.
In response, Brazil launched an investigation into Elon Musk and leveled a fine of $20,000 per day for every person it wanted banned that remained on the platform.
Shellenberger laid out what this meant for free speech, not only in Brazil, but around the world.
A career investigative journalist calling Elon Musk the only thing standing between free speech and totalitarian control is frightening, especially when that investigative journalist was a "very left-wing" man who now thinks the politicians he once supported must be stopped at all costs.
The only way to deal with tyrants is to confront them.
Meanwhile, legacy media, which now exists to parrot the messages of the regime, wrote about the story like this:
Musk has doubled down, saying his site will expose everything the court and administration has requested of them for the entire world to see.
Here are a few reactions as reported by The Wall Street Journal:
Musk's decision to defy the Brazilian court order was met with both delight and anger by politicians, lawyers and other public figures in Brazil over the weekend. "Musk had more courage than Brazil's own senators in standing up for democracy," wrote conservative Brazilian congressman Carlos Jordy on X, while congressman Nikolas Ferreira praised Musk as "unstoppable."
Meanwhile, Gleisi Hoffmann, head of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's leftist Workers' Party, accused Musk of "inflaming the far-right" in Brazil. "The unwanted and abusive comments by the billionaire American Elon Musk … are an attack on Brazilian sovereignty," she wrote on X on Sunday.
Brazil Supreme Court Justice De Moraes, who ordered the investigation into Musk, is also in charge of the investigation into former President Jair Bolsonaro "over allegations he was planning a military takeover of the country before losing the 2022 presidential elections."
(Does that sound familiar to how the current White House and its AG/judge friends are treating a certain former president in the United States?)
Brazil, like many countries, has a history of regimes jailing their political opponents. The current president, Lula, was jailed in 2017 for corruption that was seen as a move to prevent him from running against Bolsonaro (he was previously president from 2003 to 2010). Whether or not that is true, when Bolsonaro was voted out in 2022, Lula wanted to return the favor:
Back to the Journal:
In his other role as temporary head of the country's electoral court, de Moraes also led a trial last year that resulted in Bolsonaro's ban from political office until 2030, further sparking the ire of many conservatives.
Musk met with Bolsonaro in 2022 in what Bolsonaro called "the beginning of a love affair." No doubt the current administration sees him as a Bolsonaro ally and wants to treat him and his company like they are treating other Bolsonaro supporters, regardless of how much Musk is actually supportive of the politician.
The situation in Brazil is further complicated by allegations of how the U.S. government was involved in re-electing Lula's government. Tucker Carlson had an interview with the son of Bolsonaro to present this perspective:
It should be noted that X has complied with government censorship requests where free speech is not codified in national law. Last year in May, X censored certain content on the eve of the nation's election.
The differentiation in Brazil, it seems, is the fact that Brazil purports to be a democratic nation with a constitution that protects citizens' inherent rights, and until the nation passes different laws to the contrary, Musk is unwilling to violate "the will of the people" as a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist."
The United States is exceptional in its Bill of Rights and the Anglo-Saxon foundation of English Common Law that still shields its citizens from government tyranny in their lives. The U.S. government has been able to get away with a lot of infringement in the last 4 years, but the right of speech, religion, assembly, and gun ownership are still routinely upheld by courts and the states.
America may still be immune to the totalitarian mind virus, but less-stable free nations like Brazil might serve as vectors to help tyrants hone the methods of their trade.
As free nation after free nation falls to this tyranny (look at Europe and Canada these days), how long will a divided America be able to stand?
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
