Silence!

Justice Alexandre de Moraes could be described as the greatest living proof of the power that the principle of inertia holds in Brazil’s political life today. No object moves without energy, and he has more energy than all the other co-owners of the state apparatus combined. Similarly, a body on which no pressure is exerted remains inert, just as it is—and the more inert it is, the more force will be required to change its state. Five years ago, the justice violated the law to serve the personal interest of one of his Supreme Federal Court (STF) colleagues. He then realized not only that no one complained about it, but that he could do it again as many times as he wanted—and the more he did it, the more people feared him. From then on, he hasn’t stopped. The result is that his power today is greater than that of any public authority in the country.

The ban of X from Brazil is the worst attack on freedom of speech in the entire history of the Republic. In one fell swoop, more than 20 million Brazilians were prohibited from expressing themselves on the largest communication platform open for the population. In the image of jurist André Marsiglia, the justice fired a barrage of tear gas over the crowd, emptied the public square, and finally silenced the voices he had been wanting to silence for years. It has nothing to do with “confronting” Elon Musk, having courage to face the “foreign billionaire,” or defending compliance with “court orders.” It is solely about the application of mass censorship, as only done in Russia, China, Venezuela, and in other of the world’s worst dictatorships. This general gag order on the Brazilian people, however, was not given by Moraes alone. It is the result of a massive combination of complicity, cowardice, interests, and moral denial that endorse all his decisions.

Does the order come from Moraes? Then it is legitimized by the gangs that control the National Congress, by the self-called “civilized” class, and by the majority of Brazilian journalists, who are today the greatest enemies of freedom of speech in the country. What these people plus the far-left—who depends on a dictatorship regime to survive—and the thieves who need the STF to stay out of jail dread the most is the will of the majority. Since he started to ascend, Moraes has been described by all those mentioned above, along with the mass of jurists who have cases to win in court, as the man who saved and continues to save, 24/7, “Brazilian democracy.” However, it has never been concretely explained when, how, and why he has saved anything. Yet this fiction serves to cover up their actual agenda: preventing the people from speaking on social media, going to Paulista Avenue, and, above all, voting for whoever they want.

All this is invaluable for those who see Brazil just as a plantation where the “State” is the master, and the rest of the population is meant solely to work and pay taxes. Seeing justice Moraes merely as an unstoppable monster may request less mind effort, but comes at a price, once it benefits all the “Doctors Frankenstein” that back him. The president of the STF, Luís Roberto Barroso, is one of the top members of this team. In five whole years, he has not been able to point out a single illegality in anything his colleague has done. Whatever the absurdity produced by Moraes so far—Barroso supported it. He is on more voice condoning the lynching of X, as he has been in the effort to whitewash the delinquent acts committed by judges at Moraes’ service, revealed in the recordings that journalist Glenn Greenwald recently published in Folha de S. Paulo.

Silence…

Barroso, like all his STF colleagues, is a prominent advocate of the doctrine that democracy in Brazil began to exist when Moraes replaced the Constitution with STF’s internal regulations and a perpetual inquiry into “anti-democratic” acts. For having “saved” the nation from the “far-right,” his colleagues gave him the full right to change the law whenever it gets in the way of his police operations to “defend the institutions.” Moraes is also one of the greatest idols of all times ever seen in the Brazilian press. It is a mandatory commandment in every editorial manual to describe the concrete law violations committed by Moraes only as “possible exaggerations,” “excessive zeal,” and other verbal tricks—before also compulsorily stating that none of this diminishes the justice’s heroism in his struggle to enforce democracy in Brazil.

There is also, in favor of the justice, the blatant inertia of the leadership tables of the Chamber and the Senate. It is true that many opposition deputies and senators have acted with honor, courage, and moral sense in denouncing the illegal regime in force in Brazil. Nevertheless, the vast majority are committed to Moraes and the STF, to stay on the side they imagine to be the strongest and, mainly, to escape criminal proceedings for corruption. Truth is they will stab each other’s backs five minutes after the wind changes, but while it doesn’t, they will consent even on their own execution if Moraes gives the order. The president of the Chamber of Deputies, with his expiration date in the job already approaching, hides out in the bathroom, if necessary, to avoid the risk of displeasing the justice. The president of the Senate, on the other hand, thinks he can better defend his interests by making himself Moraes’ personal security chief.

Senator Rodrigo Pacheco, the only one with legal authority to put Moraes on trial in the Senate, systematically ignores all requests presented by his peers to review the justice’s actions. No one is asking him to be for or against anything—his colleagues are simply asking him to allow the case to be debated in the forum where it is meant to be debated. But the president of the Senate does nothing, even under the threat of being accused of prevarication—the crime of delaying measures he is obliged to take due to his position. He also disregards a petition already with 1.3 million signatures asking him to authorize the debate. On the contrary, his latest achievement was attending a dinner hosted by Moraes in his own honor—in other words, the justice legally in charge of conducting the trial is arm in arm with the person he is supposed to judge.

This succession of aberrations is directly caused by the disease that has taken Brazilian public life to the ICU and has still no cure: the “anti-Bolsonarism”. This fixation is based on the general idea that former president Jair Bolsonaro can no longer, under any circumstances, participate in national politics. Anyone who disagrees with this veto is automatically classified as a “Bolsonarist” and, consequently, finds themselves deprived of their civil rights, starting with freedom of speech and the freedom to vote for whoever they want. It is diagnosed as “Bolsonarism” to assert that Alexandre de Moraes and the STF make illegal decisions. For example: removing X from 20 million Brazilians, canceling fines and debts of the most corrupt companies in Brazil, keeping a hairdresser who stained a statue with lipstick in Brasília during the January 8 protests in jail for a year and a half without trial. In short, it is “Bolsonarism” to criticize Moraes, Barroso, the STF, Pacheco, the media, TV Globo, the government—those who do so cannot be protected by the law.

The laws and the Federal Constitution, obviously, no longer protect the 20 million Brazilian citizens who were not part of the judicial proceedings against Elon Musk, committed no crime, did not write a single line against democracy on X, and are now forbidden to express themselves there, under the penalty of a R$50,000 fine. They do not protect Musk—who could never have been prosecuted by the STF, as he is not under the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction as established on the law. Moreover, he is accused of disrespecting Brazilian laws when he orders his company to actually respect the country’s Constitution. He is punished with the freezing of the bank accounts of another of his companies, which has nothing to do with what has been published on X so far. They demand that Musk appoints a president for the network in Brazil, but he cannot do so because the minute he does, the appointee will be arrested. Barroso, the media etc. consider all this legal.

The ban of X was just the latest spasm of this North Korea-like outbreak that has contaminated the justice and all the fundamentalists who pray according to his own Quran. Moraes, to stick to the basics, has just prohibited Folha de S. Paulo from interviewing a former advisor to the former president, Filipe Martins—in other words, he has been prohibited from saying what he has not yet said. Which Brazilian law allows this? The same Martins spent six months in prison despite having materially proven that he did not do what he was accused of doing; he must now wear an ankle bracelet. Moraes has been leading a criminal process for more than five years that poisons all decisions of the Brazilian judiciary. It could not have been opened, nor handed to him without a draw from all justices, nor indict people without special jurisdiction, nor include whatever subject that crosses his mind, nor remain open indefinitely, nor be conducted in secrecy.

+ About Brazil

In this Brazil that undergoes a full-blown legal degeneration, “court order” is any decision that comes out of Moraes’ office. The STF has turned into a criminal court, according to the justice himself. It is he or his “team” in the STF who will judge appeals on decisions he made himself—as was the case with X—or someone else like Flavio Dino, Zanin, Carmen etc., who have never disagreed with any of his orders, or yet the plenary—which makes no difference. Without any legal right to do so, Moraes prosecutes in the country’s Supreme Court people he accuses of having attacked him and his family at Rome’s international airport. Since July 2023, however, he hasn’t been able to produce any evidence against his attackers. On the contrary, the surveillance images of the airport actually show that there was no aggression—and even less an “attack on democracy,” as they like to say.

Moraes, the STF, and all those on his side, claiming to defend the “civilizing process,” have discovered that they can govern Brazil through permanent disorder. They claim they are fighting to save the “rule of law” from “Bolsonarism,” just as Nicolás Maduro claims he won the election to save Venezuela from American imperialism. What they do is nullify the laws that would prevent them from doing what they are doing. There is nothing that hinders their “country project” as much as the legal order that should be in force. They are the ones, and no one else, who truly threaten the democratic rule of law.