Comment by virgulino
1 year ago
Brazilian here. If anyone wants a great introduction to the context and the bigger picture, there's this great article from the NYT in 2022, written by an excellent reporter who lives in Brazil. I highly recommend this article to anyone who hasn't lived in Brazil for the last 10 years:
"To Defend Democracy, Is Brazil’s Top Court Going Too Far?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/world/americas/bolsonaro-...
It covers the judge at the center of the current issue: "Mr. Moraes has jailed five people without a trial for posts on social media that he said attacked Brazil’s institutions. He has also ordered social networks to remove thousands of posts and videos with little room for appeal. And this year, 10 of the court’s 11 justices sentenced a congressman to nearly nine years in prison for making what they said were threats against them in a livestream."
Rumble has been blocked in Brazil for over a year, and WhatsApp and Telegram have been briefly blocked multiple times.
From the same article:
> Brazil’s Supreme Court has drastically expanded its power to counter the antidemocratic stances of Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters.
The title is a leading question. I can come up with different titles for the same article or topic, that could be leading somewhere else:
1. Brazil Top Court's Actions to Defend Democracy
2. A View On Moraes' Decisions In Face Of The Crisis Created By Bolsonaro
3. Brazil's Supreme Court Reaction After The Presidency Went Too Far
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A legitimate question I have is:
What other institutions (or democratic tools) should have acted to halt the extremist anti-democratic movement lead by Bolsonaro?
(Not a trick question, an honest one given the crisis)
> What other institutions (or democratic tools) should have acted to halt the extremist anti-democratic movement lead by Bolsonaro?
I am not familiar with Bolsonaro's movement, but censoring people under the guise of protecting democracy doesn't seem very democratic to me? At the very least, you have to admit here that there is a slippery slope where a good intentioned government or justice system could progressively get further away from these good intentions, and start using its power merely for the preservation of it?
It seems to me that censoring ideas that seem dangerous is far more dangerous than trying to correct them, and that a very high level of free speech is one of the most powerful antidotes against this slippery slope.
It seems that way to me too, but we have examples of high-censorship, high-freedom societies like Germany, and high-censorship, low-freedom societies like Singapore, and both report high levels of happiness.
The devil really is in the details.
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> there is a slippery slope where a good intentioned government or justice system could progressively get further away from these good intentions, and start using its power merely for the preservation of it?
That wasn't what happened.
It's not like we had a left leaning judge favouring a left leaning party, it's Moraes, a conservative technician fight an extreme right antidemocratic movement.
The question that needs to be answer is how far democracy is willing to go outside of democratic bounds to preserve itself. Because to expect a democratic government never to act undemocratically is to expect it to be replaced by a fascists regimen given time.
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Censoring isn't the same as investigating the use of bots and fake news to spread rumors and lies for polítics gain and literal profit. The right tries to confuse people by mixing their crimes with free speech.
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Well your question leads straight to the “Paradox of Intolerance”.
It’s indeed tricky, but the sorting criteria is: once in power, would these people club me to death, or let go of power if they lost a free election?
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There’s also a slippery slope where good intentions of protecting “free speech” at all costs enable an anti-democratic authoritarian takeover or worse.
Not to say I know which this is, or a better way to balance things, but free speech absolutism over all other considerations is not always the right answer to protect free speech and democracy.
There's always a new excuse to take away peoples right or aggressively censor things. "This time is different" "It's just an exceptional situation" etc they say every time until the next time.
They’re taking your human rights away from you for your own good, my friend. They guide rails. Just don’t act out or say or think anything they don’t like and they won’t beat you because they love you.
You can't claim to be defending people's rights while also jailing people without trial.
Indeed, but no one is doing that.
In Brazil there's what we call "preventive custody". If you're caught committing a crime, and if there is a risk that you could jeopardize the investigations (by eliminating evidence, threatening or influencing witnesses, etc.), then you are held in custody until the investigation is concluded.
I don't believe you would find something very different going on in any other democratic country.
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What if the people being jailed are urgently trying to take away people's rights?
Also, what's supposed to happen to criminals before they are on trial? Normally they get jailed.
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If you have to censor your opposition it's an admission they've made points you can't refute.
The solution is to bring some smarter people into your movement with better counterarguments. Often those counterarguments are going to have to include some minor concessions and soul searching. Maybe your side has gotten complacent and drifted in its beliefs away from the sensible. Maybe you're become equal but opposite to those you call awful.
I.e. produce new ideas that resonate better than theirs and they'll disappear like a fart in the wind.
Being tolerant of absolutely everything in the name of tolerance is a trap, and it's bound to fall into an extreme state. That creates an asymmetric battle where one side can attack from every angle while the other is bound to a rigid set of well known rules.
In practice you can't maintain a viable situation with absolutes: absolute democracy doesn't work, absolute freedom of speech doesn't work. You need boundaries, and it also means intervening through alternative ways when your usual tools can't deal with a situation.
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No one is saying the court shouldnt defend democracy. We're saying that censorship is not the way to do that.
What we're facing here is a distinction between US and BR law (actually, US is the exception world wide, for Brazil law is closer to what you would find in Europe on this matter).
In Brazil, it's not a crime to say what you think. But it is a crime to falsely claim that someone has committed a crime. This is especially serious if you are influential on social media and your statement, even if false, is likely to generate dangerous reactions from your followers.
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Seems to have worked pretty well in Europe. Many countries here ban praise of past mistakes.
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Justice persecutors, that sit on the fence between the Judiciary and the Executive (but are nominally in the Judiciary) should be the ones starting those actions. The federal police should be the ones feeding information for them to act on.
On the case where Alexandre de Moraes is the victim, it should have been judged by a normal regional court, first by a judge and then by a panel of 3. In case it ever reaches his court, he should have sent it to somebody else (decided by a draw).
In no situation a court should be commanding a police investigation.
Is this more in line with Brazil's legal tradition, or are you arguing this from within a different jurisdiction?
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In theory, Bolsonaro's actions should have gotten him impeached a long time ago. However, congress was more than happy to keep a "weak" president in power, because it allowed them to grab more power from the executive branch. It's no surprise that the percentage of the budget allocated to "earmarks" ballooned during the Bolsonaro administration.
> What other institutions (or democratic tools) should have acted to halt the extremist anti-democratic movement lead by Bolsonaro?
I find the notion of fighting extremism with more extremism dubious. The legitimacy of the government derives from the consent of the people. If the people voted for Bolsonaro and are not opposing his actions, the judiciary will not be able to stop the slide, their extreme actions only give him fuel.
“defend democracy” has become a rhetorical device unrelated to actually doing so. Expanding your power and censoring people is tyrannical no matter what spin you put on it. And tyrants always have a spin, no one ever says I’m looking to end democracy.
> What other institutions (or democratic tools) should have acted to halt the extremist anti-democratic movement lead by Bolsonaro?
To start, the fallacy here, is to assume there was indeed an "extremist anti-democratic movement led by Bolsonaro".
> What other institutions (or democratic tools) should have acted to halt the extremist anti-democratic movement lead by Bolsonaro?
None.
There is no "anti-democratic" movement here. To be against democracy, you need to actually be living within a democracy. Unfortunately, Brazil is not a democracy. Brazil is a judiciary dictatorship.
These unelected judge-kings run this nation. They have been running it for years. They're basically gods here. Untouchable. Their powers have been expanding continuously. In the months leading up to the elections, it got to the point they started disregarding the brazilian constitution and engaging in blatant political censorship. And their power keeps expanding.
What's more anti-democratic than a bunch of unelected judges doing whatever they want? This is the real coup.
If Bolsonaro intended to do anything, it was in reaction to this sorry state of affairs, and I don't blame him for trying at all. I blame him for failing.
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What extremist anti-democratic movement lead by Bolsonaro? The guy was president during pandemics with strong popular and military support. The facts are that he had the bread and the knife and yet no coup was attempted while he was in power.
Bolsonaro is a straw man used by the extreme left which currently is in power to justify an institutional authoritarian escalation. And this escalation was happening long before Bolsonaro.
This is a catch 22, because Bolsonaro team was using social media and fake news to move dumb masses towards their objective, pretty similar to Trump in the US. The judge in question, with his despotic tendencies, was in an open war against Bolsonaro (started by Bolsonaro) and stretched the powers of the judiciary to bring Bolsonaro down. Now, we have 2 wrongs here. But how one should react to all of this?
> fake news to move dumb masses towards their objective, pretty similar to Trump in the US
How can you prove that you’re not a member of the “dumb masses” being fooled by the fake news?
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Looking in from outside, the judiciary in Brazil seems to have a lot of "hard power".
They do. Literal hard power. These guys have the pens which make federal police do their thing. I call them the judge-kings.
You know what's worse? Deep down, every brazilian knows it. Everyone here has always known this truth. Even before all this began. There's an old saying here: "doctors think they're gods, judges know it". Judges making arbitrary and monocratic decisions is a completely normalized thing here. We're witnessing in real time just how far their godlike powers stretch. We now know for a fact that judges have enough power to violate the brazilian constitution and get away with it.
Talking to actual brazilian lawyers is a surreal experience. Sometimes they'd sound confused while explaining a supreme court decision to me. They would say: "the supreme court was supposed to apply the constitution but they decided to legislate instead". Yeah, an actual lawyer told me that once. I was his student and I never forgot that lesson. The judges legislate in this country. If the judge-king doesn't like the law, he just doesn't apply it. If the law says the guy is innocent but the judge-king feels like punishing him, he gets punished.
"Judicial activism", they call it. Oh it's nothing, just a harmless euphemism for a silent coup that installed a dictatorship of the unelected judiciary. And even on HN my fellow brazilians will come and flag my posts to oblivion while insisting that I'm actually living in a democracy.
Some judiciaries are just better at remaining undetected...
More or less than the US?
Far more.
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They pretty much decide about anything they want to decide, it's that simple. It's not like "oh, we only judge constitutional matters", as it happens in serious countries. I really mean ANYTHING.
There is run of the mill lawsuits involving defamation that the court decided to judge out of the bat. The accuser is a mainstream journalist (mainstream media as a whole have been – essentially – acting as public relations of the court – similar to how they acted as public relations for Biden during the 2020 elections btw), the accused part being another brazilian journalist living abroad, called Allan dos Santos (Moraes personally hates the guy and failed to extradite him from the US countless times - USA authorities essentially answering "it's only words, this is covered by our first amendment").
And instead of this lawsuit following the normal procedure as any other defamation lawsuit in Brazil. Moraes decided to elevate this case to automatically judge it in the highest instance of the country. His excuse? “Oh, Dos Santos is investigated in other procedures here, so I think they are related". And this has been essentially their trick to investigate/trial anything they want.
They say it's related. Hell, the Brazilian Supreme Court decide to investigate Ellon Musk himself.
Sources:
https://www.metropoles.com/brasil/moraes-abre-inquerito-cont...
https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2024/03/eua-negam-extrad...
https://www.poder360.com.br/poder-justica/justica/moraes-abr...
The judiciary system in Brazil is a little different than the US one. It does not make Brazil a dictatorship as many of Bolsonaro's supporters claim, nor does an article in NYTimes.
How can that be so? The article says this:
> In Brazil, the 11 justices and the attorneys who work for them issued 505,000 rulings over the past five years.
Can that really be right? That's an average of 276 rulings per day, or one ruling every five minutes around the clock 24/7/365 for five years straight.
If that claim is true then it's clear that the Brazilian Supreme Court is not like supreme courts anywhere else in the world. It must be normally issuing rulings written by people who aren't the justices themselves. And, it must be a truly massive organization to create so many rulings on so many topics. Seeing as it appears to answer to nobody, nor follow any normal judicial procedure (being both accuser and judge in one body), it would seem fair to describe that as a parallel government acting as a dictatorship. How else could you describe it? What checks on their power do they recognize?
> Can that really be right? That's an average of 276 rulings per day
Yes. From the official website of the Supreme Court (STF - Supremo Tribunal Federal), real-time statistics:
65,173 rulings so far this year.
https://transparencia.stf.jus.br/extensions/decisoes/decisoe...
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> It must be normally issuing rulings written by people who aren't the justices themselves.
It's right there in the text:
> the 11 justices and the attorneys who work for them issued 505,000 rulings
> it appears to answer to nobody, nor follow any normal judicial procedure (being both accuser and judge in one body)
That's not the case. The STF never accuses, they only judge. Accusations come from other institutions. The Supreme Court then orders investigations and act as judges.
> What checks on their power do they recognize?
Mostly the Parliament and the Senate, who can at any time pass new laws, including amendments to the Constitution.
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> It must be normally issuing rulings written by people who aren't the justices themselves
Correct. Each "Justice" is more like a full fledged law office. It's designed like that.
> Seeing as it appears to answer to nobody, nor follow any normal judicial procedure (being both accuser and judge in one body), it would seem fair to describe that as a parallel government acting as a dictatorship. How else could you describe it?
I could describe it fairly. It's the top authority in a 3-branch government consisting of a council of many members with varied and often opposing views. Quite obviously different than a "parallel government" and dictatorship by definition
But I'd be wasting my time arguing with you for your sake. You're not seriously asking in good faith. I'm replying for the benefit of other people who may see your misguided politicaly motivated concern trolling
That's right, but that's because every judicial decision can go to Supreme Court. A random person got arrested because it stole a chicken? You can appeal up to Supreme Court.
Btw, there's "assistant judges" to help each of the 11 Justices here. The Justice is able to pick 3 of his choice.
Well it's not quite sentencing people to death for blasphemy, but you've got to walk before you run I guess.
Perhaps "failed state" just takes a while to bake.
UK courts are sentencing people over social media posts too. M
If they said it over a megaphone during an incipient riot, and it would have led to an arrest warrant and charges laid, it would probably have happened as well. A good thing too.
Social media isn’t a consequence free zone.
At a quick glance the answer is yes. The power to silence speech the government speech the government deems fake is the power to silence speech the government doesn't agree with. The answer to fake news are outlets that allow free speech against the fake news like we have in the united states. Unless billionaires buy them all up and prevent the actual facts from coming out of course.
You get sent to X jail for criticism of Musk on X. It happens on X itself.
In general, I agree with pulling out of a country that doesn’t exercise freedom of speech (as in criticism, not threats). But the hypocrisy is somewhat funny.
There’s probably better (for society) ways such as providing higher anonymity for criticism (not threats). But that seems like a nightmare overall.
I am power user with a large following on X and I have never once had any trouble, despite numerous times criticizing Musk.
Imagine a Chinese dissident brags about how they haven't been thrown into jail for criticizing the President... yet.
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For now there's important differences between "X jail" (ban/shadowban) and "actual jail", for example expensive phone calls and not being able to visit Canada.
None of this is unique to Brazil and happens in countries all over the world where X continues to operate.
Regarding takedown demands, Twitter used to publish transparency reports on who was making them, but they stopped after Musk took over.
https://transparency.x.com/en/reports/removal-requests
In the final report 97% of all takedowns were made by Japan, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, and India (from most to least). They also broke down the number of takedowns against verified journalists and news outlets, which was led by India (114 takedowns), Turkey (78), Russia (55), and Pakistan (48), and Brazil was down the list with 8. It would be nice to have a more recent version of this report to see which way the tides have shifted.
Didn’t they just move that stuff here?
https://x.com/globalaffairs/status/1824819053061669244?s=46&...
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The Brazilian courts specifically asks that the takedowns must be done in secret. I believe we can assume they are not being accounted for in these statistics.
In the context here, a takedown request would be preferred. It would indicate the judge being willing to accept a takedown in lieu of putting the poster in prison.
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This might be misleading. If old Twitter was preemptively taking down posts that certain American or European organizations wanted taken down, this wouldn't show in the transparency reports at all. If you used the platform before and now, it's very obvious that that was the case.
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Not surprising since the US is the only country in the world with freedom of speech.
Yes, but Brazil has the most natural wealth available to steal.
The specific Brazilian issues aside, it would be great if we coiuld shut down these platforms in the US!
Proprietary mis-information platforms aren't helping anyone except their over compensated ownership...
A related article which I submitted to HN before the elections.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36543423
> Rumble has been blocked in Brazil for over a year, and WhatsApp and Telegram have been briefly blocked multiple times.
It's a near certainty those who are still operating are obeying censorship / takedown requests by the Brazilian government.
Elon Musk said the EU Commission tried to attack X: "It'd be too bad if you were to get big fines uh!? So take down any content we ask you to take down and in exchange we'll make sure you don't get those fines".
These are mafia tactics and it makes me ashamed to be an EU citizen.
This has nothing to do with democracy: it's its opposite. Dictatorship.
"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech..."
People, worldwide, are beginning to understand the importance of the first amendment. I do genuinely fear that very soon people in several countries (including mine) may learn the hard way what the lack of the second amendment leads to.
You're ashamed to be an EU citizen because the EU is asking X to take down posts instigating racial violence? Well, good riddance is all I can tell you...
Instigating is subjective. If you say ‘what is going on here?’ in the wrong tone of voice, authorities can say it’s instigation.
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I don't think there's a lot of democracy in having some gazillionaire buy a social media platform and then interfere in the politics of other sovereign nations/continents.
As a EU citizen I hope we get rid of Twitter at some point and build a sovereign communications infrastructure and domestic firms abiding by our local laws, because that is what a democracy is about.
But that’s happening everywhere on every social platform isn’t it? The very act of going along with censorship requests interferes with the politics of a nation by silencing opposition.
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“Interfere in the politics of other sovereign nations/continents”?
Europeans are choosing to use X. Nobody is forcing them.
And it seem odd to blame someone in another country for voicing their opinion.
It certainly isn’t Musks statement that causing social unrest. It just threw a twig on an already burning fire cause by government policy.
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2nd amendment protects the 1st. You either have both or neither.
It's hilarious that you think an armed rebellion in the US would stand even the smallest chance of success against the US military.
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