Elon Musk Faces Off With Brazil

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes opened an investigation into Elon Musk on April 7 after the multibillionaire said he would reopen “certain popular accounts” that Brazil had ordered to block.

The day before, Musk had challenged the Supreme Court’s order and said he would lift all the restrictions because they were unconstitutional. He also called on de Moraes to “resign or be impeached.”

X faces daily fines of $20,000 per day for each account in question if it refuses to comply with the order, and the platform could soon be blocked in Brazil.

This judge has applied massive fines, threatened to arrest our employees and cut off access to X in Brazil. As a result, we will probably lose all revenue in Brazil and have to shut down our office there. But principles matter more than profit.
—Elon Musk

Totalitarianism: Justice de Moraes has long advocated for eliminating “anti-democratic” content, and he has jailed people without trial for social media posts.

This order to ban certain accounts is believed to be part of an effort to shut down supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and far-right rioters who attacked government buildings in January 2023.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Brazil is on the brink of dictatorship at the hands of a totalitarian Supreme Court justice named Alexandre de Moraes.
—Michael Shellenberger, cbr chair of Politics, Censorship and Free Speech at the University of Austin

War on free speech: The standoff between Brazil and Musk is an example of a global trend in which leftist governments try to control what their citizens can say. But there is a larger, spiritual force behind this attack on free speech.

To learn more, read “The Global War on Free Speech.”