Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has been Brazil’s dictator for five consecutive years through his own efforts, with the protection of the armed forces and the complicity of those who prefer to serve him rather than keeping their personal integrity, has finally met his match – a sharp-minded berserker. He’s not used to that. Since he turned Brazil’s judicial system into a police station that doesn’t follow the law but only him, doesn’t answer to any legal authority in the country, and persecutes political and electoral opponents with jail, fines, and censorship, Moraes has only been dealing with people who fear of him. But he ended up poking Elon Musk, one of the biggest, most creative, and most talented entrepreneurs in the world today – and Musk is not the least bit scared of Alexandre de Moraes, or the entire Supreme Court, or any type of TV Globo journalist. The result: he has called Moraes a dictator before the entire world, indeed proving he is a dictator. The justice has been explicitly called that about 500 times here in Brazil. But this time it’s Elon Musk who says so. The world is listening. It makes all the difference.
The fact is, Moraes is a nobody to Musk and if he never hears from the justice again, with his inquiries and his neuroses of a self-appointed Lord Protector of Brazil – as well as from Lula by the way – for the rest of his life, he won’t be missing anything. He has a personal fortune close to $300 billion, built by himself from the first penny, without any inheritance from anyone and no gifts from the Public Treasury. What he says is heard worldwide – not just because he has 180 million followers on his Twitter-X account, but because any head of state, minister, and multinational executive clears their schedule for him. Musk is not the homeless man Moraes kept imprisoned for eleven whole months, nor the lawyers he orders to shut up. Annoyed with the soviet that controlled American social networks, a while ago, he didn’t just complain – he bought Twitter in 2022 for $45 billion and opened the platform to freedom of speech. No one minded: he offered more than $500 per share, and shareholders rushed to sell. Since then, X, as the company is now called, functions as the world’s most open space for communicating and expressing opinions.
In short, Elon Musk is a man with ideas, no concern about being diplomatic, and $300 billion in his pocket – a dangerous combination for those in charge of Brazil today. Musk looks at himself, looks at Moraes, and immediately knows who’s who. It’s natural for him, given this realization, to do what he believes is right – rather than what the Brazilian Supreme Court’s democracy, the left, and most journalists think the rest of humanity should do. Everyone gets shocked, then, when they see a man acting like a man – simply because he has the means to do so – and they just lose their bearings. Moraes, in fact, is not even acquainted with people like this nowadays. He got used to seeing the presidents of the Senate and the Chamber, three-star generals, and the lawyers of the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB), plus all the fat cats of public and private sphere, kneel in his presence – and so he deems everyone else the same. That makes it easy. The justice has, by the way, a little-noticed distinction: he only puts in jail, and sentences to up to 17 years in prison, poor people, with no influence at all, no friends in first class seats, no badges. Just look at the list of those condemned as enemies of democracy. There are barbers, Indigenous people, delivery riders; there’s even a former deputy, who had his mandate revoked, but no magnate – not a single one. Then suddenly, one Elon Musk appears. The plot thickens.
The result of this checkmate was a neurotic, comical, and utterly foolish response. Moraes, in yet another chapter of a farce, made Musk a person of interest, “under investigation” for suspicion of “criminal obstruction of justice.”
The justice and the Supreme Court have grown accustomed to two standard reactions to any criticism of the judicial dictatorship they have imposed in Brazil to favor a president convicted of passive corruption and money laundering: either ignore what they hear or arrest who says it. However, they cannot do the same with Musk – the entire world became aware of what he said. It’s also impossible to arrest him, or put him on an ankle monitor, or seize his passport, or request his extradition. The result of this checkmate was a neurotic, comical, and utterly foolish response. Moraes, in yet another chapter of a farce, made Musk a person of interest, “under investigation” for suspicion of “criminal obstruction of justice” and “incitement to crime” in the inquiry he has been conducting for five years to investigate “digital militias,” “disinformation,” fake news, and God knows what else. What’s the point of all this if everyone knows nothing will come out of it? The government ministers and the media that function as its propaganda service, in turn, took it as a given fact that Musk committed at least one crime against the nation: he challenged the “sovereignty of Brazil,” “interfered in internal affairs,” etc. What he said was condemned, unanimously, as a “threat” to the Supreme Court.
The big problem lies in the facts, which debunk this new illusion just as they have with others concocted to perpetuate the notion that Brazil is in a “life-or-death struggle to save democracy,” as justice Luís Roberto Barroso dramatically claimed in his extravagant statement on the matter. As evidence of the crimes allegedly committed by Musk, the Supreme Court, the press, and the Workers’ Party (PT) point to his words in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter) in Brazil. But when one scrutinizes these words, what exactly did he say? In essence, he articulated what Brazilians have known for years: that Moraes censors X’s users in Brazil. Musk merely requested the application of Article 5 of the Brazilian Constitution, which ensures freedom of expression in the country. He didn’t ask for any favors for his company. He didn’t demand any changes to Brazilian law. He simply vowed to stop the censoring of messages and blocking of profiles as ordered by the justice and stated that if the Supreme Court forces X to exit Brazil through fines and other repressive acts, so be it – he’ll leave without a fuss. He’s willing to lose money as long as his principles remain intact. Later, amid the ensuing chaos, Musk called Alexandre Moraes a dictator, demanded his resignation, and promised to expose the pressures the platform has been facing to ban users – as if the decision were X’s, not Moraes’s.
(If it is confirmed that Twitter-X will leave Brazil, the country will join the club of the worst nations in the world when it comes to freedom, which includes China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran – plus Myanmar and Turkmenistan. The rule is as follows: where there is no Twitter-X, it’s a dictatorship. Where there is Twitter-X, it’s democracy.)
What is wrong, or false, in any of the statements made by Musk? Is it a lie that citizens were indeed forbidden to express themselves on Twitter-X in Brazil? It’s worse than that. Not only were the postings censored, but also the profile of their authors altogether – in other words, Moraes prohibited people from saying even what they hadn’t yet, which remains unspoken to this day. How could saying these things in public and asking for the application of the Constitution, be a “threat”? The pro-Supreme Court brigades, and the ministers themselves, maintain that Musk is refusing to comply with “judicial orders.” What orders? None of the decisions that censored X are, in fact, legal orders, within the due process provided by Brazilian law. The victims did not even have the full assistance of their lawyers. In fact, it’s all blatantly illegal. The entire perpetual inquiry of Moraes and the Supreme Court is illegal and, as a basic principle of justice, all measures taken as a result of an illegal action by the authorities automatically become illegal.
At the same time, it is possible to imagine how American jurists will be surprised – and burst into laughter – when they receive Musk’s “indictment.” They won’t be able to understand how someone can be investigated by a perpetual inquiry or be accused – in a manifesto written in capital letters and exclamation points, as in a primary school essay – by the very justice who will judge the offense. It’s a challenge, finally, to decipher what justice Barroso, president of the Supreme Court, stated on the matter. He taught that when someone disagrees with a court’s decision, the correct path is to appeal the sentence, and not to refuse to comply with what was decided. Appeal to whom? In today’s Brazilian justice system, Elon Musk and the rest of humanity can only appeal to Moraes regarding decisions made by Moraes himself. Where in the world can this be considered normal? Is this the democracy that is being “threatened” by the “foreign billionaire”? Good thing he’s a billionaire, foreign, and can live in a country that follows the law.
Thank you for showing the world what is happening in Brazil!
Congratulations . In a Nutshell, the article shared what has been inside the mind of the millions of brazilians. we “the people” don´t have the ability and skillset to speak our mind in a brilliant and straightfoward way as you just did with this great article, but we can be motivated and inspired for sure by articles like this to fight (Cultural War) against these corrupt regime. One more time, Thank you very much! Way to Go! God Bless you Guzzo!