Just a few months ago, the political movement behind Brazil's far-right former president, Jair Bolsonaro, stuttered. Bolsonaro had been ousted from office, declared unfit to run in the next elections and was targeted for further criminal investigations.
But now Bolsonaro and his followers have had a sudden surge of energy and momentum, with the help of Elon Musk and the Republican Party.
Over the past month, Musk and House Republicans have sharply criticized Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice who is leading investigations into Bolsonaro, over the judge's moves to block more than 100 social media accounts in Brazil. Many of them belong to prominent right-wing pundits, podcasters and federal lawmakers who, in some cases, have questioned Bolsonaro's election defeat.
Moraes said he was acting to protect Brazilian democracy from attacks by the former president and his allies, who are accused of planning a coup in 2022.
Musk has repeatedly called Moraes a “dictator” and has posted dozens of times about the judge on his social network, X, accusing him of silencing conservative voices.
The House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, released Moraes' sealed court orders last month in it has been posticipated on “Brazil's censorship campaign”. And on Tuesday, House Republicans held a hearing who define the situation in Brazil as “a crisis of democracy, freedom and the rule of law”.
While the efforts of Musk and Republican politicians have received little attention in the United States, they are making big political waves in Brazil.
Before Musk began posting about Brazil on April 6, much of the nation's news cycle revolved around the criminal investigations into Bolsonaro. This included revelations by the New York Times that Bolsonaro made an apparent request for political asylum at the Hungarian embassy just days after authorities confiscated his passport.
But in the last month, attention has shifted to a new question: Is Brazil's Supreme Court stifling free speech? Brazilian media covered the debate extensively, including on the cover of the country's most important weekly, Veja. One of the main Brazilian newspapers, Folha de São Paulo, called on Mr. Moraes to stop censoring.
In the midst of the renewed debate, Brazil's Congress actually made an impact killed a long-awaited bill on fighting online misinformation and the Supreme Court he said he would rule about a lawsuit that challenges Brazil's main Internet law.
That a series of online posts by Musk has had such a rapid impact on the domestic politics of a foreign nation demonstrates his growing influence as the owner and perhaps the loudest voice in one of the world's largest digital marketplaces.
Bolsonaro is now capitalizing on renewed attention from powerful supporters abroad. The former president held in countryside style demonstrations attack what he says is political persecution – and thank his foreign allies.
Musk “really fights for the freedom of all of us,” Bolsonaro told thousands of people on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro last month. “He is a man who had the courage to show – already with some evidence, and more will surely come – where our democracy is going and how much freedom we have lost”.
Bolsonaro then gave Musk a round of applause, earning one of the biggest roars of the day. Some Bolsonaro supporters wore Elon Musk masks, while others they carried signs praising the billionaire.
“With a few tweets, Elon Musk was able to change the political environment in Brazil,” said Ronaldo Lemos, a Brazilian lawyer who studies the country's Internet laws. The Brazilian right is in trouble, Lemos added. “He brought back the energy.”
On Brazil's left, however, Musk and the Republicans are distorting the facts to attack Brazilian institutions.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist, confronted Musk in a speech last monthcalling him “an American businessman who has never produced a meter of grass in this country, daring to speak ill of the Brazilian court, Brazilian ministers and the Brazilian people.”
In recent years, Brazil's Supreme Court has taken an aggressive stance against certain online content, including election disinformation and attacks on democratic institutions. Brazilian courts have ordered X to cancel at least 140 accounts from 2022, according to documents published by the House Judiciary Committee.
Moraes, who declined to comment for this article, called such measures necessary in the face of threats to Brazilian democracy posed by Bolsonaro and some of his supporters, who ransacked Brazil's halls of power last year. “Freedom of speech is not freedom of aggression,” Moraes said last month. “Freedom of speech is not the freedom to defend tyranny.”
But his moves have also generated intense debate over whether they pose a threat to Brazilian democracy.
Mr. Moraes ordered
In some cases, reports cast doubt on the election results or encouraged protesters to call for a military coup. But Mr. Moraes typically seals such orders, so people whose accounts are suspended usually receive little information about why.
Social networks often block content that violates their policies. After the riot at the US Capitol last January. 6, 2021, for example, Twitter removed 150,000 accounts linked to the conspiracy movement known as QAnon, which had inspired many rioters.
But Moraes has often ordered the removal of content that social media companies would otherwise have left under their rules.
In 2022, Moraes authorized Brazilian federal agents to raid the homes of eight prominent businessmen and ordered social networks to suspend some of their accounts. He was acting in response to leaked screenshots showing two businessmen saying in a private WhatsApp group that they would prefer a military coup to Lula's victory in that year's presidential race.
Mr. Moraes dropped the probe against most of the men last year but maintained the suspension of accounts belonging to two businessmen, including Luciano Hang, a department store tycoon. Hang, one of Bolsonaro's most prominent supporters, was unable to use his social media accounts in Brazil, which collectively had more than six million followers, for nearly two years.
Stories like that have caught the attention of some Republicans in Congress. At Tuesday's hearing, Rep. Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, said that “Brazilians have been subjected to serious human rights violations committed on a large scale by Brazilian officials.”
But Congresswoman Susan Wild, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said Brazil's courts have a mandate to prevent the fate of the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985. Any debate over the role of courts in Brazil “should be decided by the court Brazilian”. people,” she said. “The United States Congress is not the forum.”
Few U.S. lawmakers attended the hearing, but some of the biggest names on the Brazilian right did, including Bolsonaro's son, Eduardo. The proceedings were often interrupted by the applause or whistles of the right-wing Brazilians present.
One witness, Fabio de Sa e Silva, a Brazilian lawyer and professor at the University of Oklahoma, said he believed Brazilian law supported Mr. Moraes' right to freeze the accounts. He argued that any crisis in Brazilian democracy is not due to judges but rather to “crowds unwilling to respect the rules.”
But some analysts say Moraes appears to be violating the rights of Brazilians. Lemos, the Brazilian internet law expert, said he no longer sees such an extreme threat to Brazilian democracy as to justify Moraes' aggressive approach.
“We are no longer experiencing an emergency,” he said.
