9 Sept 2024

Bolsonaro Leads Massive Free Speech Protest In Brazil After Supreme Court Bans X

"The people of Brazil are sending a message!"

By Tyler Durden: Thousands of Brazilians flooded city streets on Saturday to protest against the government's censorship crusade against Elon Musk's 'free-speech' X platform.

The demonstration, held Saturday on Independence Day, was led by former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro - who said in response to Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes: "I hope that the Federal Senate puts the brakes on Alexandre de Moraes, this dictator who does more harm to Brazil than Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva himself."

Several notable X accounts, including journalist Michael Shellenberger, are reporting from Sao Paulo's main boulevard, where tens of thousands have gathered today in opposition to far-left Brazilian President Luiz InΓ‘cio Lula da Silva and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes that recently blocked X nationwide.

Here's more from Shellenberger on the situation:

Brazilian President Lula and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes say they must block X to protect Brazil's independence. X is a platform for dangerous, false, and hateful words, they say, and many of those words violate Brazil's laws and Constitution.

But their censorship goes far beyond what Brazil's constitution allows. The government demanded that X and other social media networks censor and ban individual people, including journalists and politicians. Such bans are immoral, illegal, and unconstitutional. They constitute election interference and undermine democracy by preventing candidates from getting the word out.

I agree that lying is wrong, hate speech is ugly, and there are limits to freedom of speech. We must not allow people to use words that directly result in physical violence.

But everybody lies, everybody engages in hate speech, and the limits to free speech must never include elections. Imagine what would happen if it were illegal to lie: everyone should go to prison starting with the journalists and politicians. As for hate speech, did Lula express hatred when he praised Adolf Hitler? Does he not express hatred every time he speaks of Elon Musk and Jair Bolsonaro?

People blame speech for the chaos of January 6 in the United States and January 8 in Brazil. But the events of those days resulted from inadequate security, not anything anyone said online. And if the government can censor disfavored election information, how would anyone ever know if the government stole an election?

Democracy and secure elections depend on freedom of speech. The idea that we must censor speech to protect democracy ranks with other Orwellian ideas like "War is peace" and "Slavery is freedom." For thousands of years, democracy and freedom walk hand in hand, as do censorship and dictatorship.

Everybody knows in their heart that censorship is wrong. We all know that we are imperfect and do not know everything. We know that we rely on others to discover the truth. Why, then, do so many people want censorship?

In a separate X post, Shellenberger said, "The crowd was absolutely enormous. Without a doubt one of the largest free speech protests in history." Rebel News journalists were also on the ground, capturing the massive crowds via drone footage. The leftist censorship campaign against political opponents is all too familiar Americans - with Democrats having spent years on a crusade to cancel political opponents under the guise of 'misinformation' and 'disinformation.' His son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, said Moraes plans to "end freedom of speech in the country" and called for the impeachment of the president. He added that Elon Musk "understands that the battle is for freedom of speech and transcends economic issues." Eduardo Bolsonaro recently spoke with conservative journalist Breanna Morello about the far-left government using the guise of 'hate speech' to kill the Bolsonaro movement. Last week, shortly after X was banned in Brazil, in the US, the former Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Keith Ellison, wrote on X, "Thank you Brazil." The far-left basically wants to ban any speech they disagree with.

The bottom line is that far-left politicians across the Americas and the West have waged an all-out war against free speech and Musk's social media platform because their political opponents and non-government-approved narratives are gaining too much traction. The censorship crusade shows the far-left is desperate and will resort to banning free speech to silence political opponents. The left continues to push Meanwhile, earlier Saturday, a senior MP from Germany's Green Party, Anton Hofreiter, the chairman of the Bundestag’s European policy committee, told reporters from Funke Media Group that online radicalization is a major issue, emphasizing the need to stop the spread of "anti-constitutional content" on the internet. He stressed the importance of addressing the root causes of radicalization both online and within society. Hofreiter argued that social media platforms failing to comply with German laws and remove "extremist content" should be blocked, specifically pointing to X.

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