Comment by matheusmoreira
1 year ago
You seem to think this is some kind of valid excuse for the judge-king's behavior. In fact it only makes it worse. You do realize that, in the course of prohibiting censorship, the constitution makes it a point to explicitly mention political censorship, right?
I couldn't care less what the goal of the documentary was. I witnessed these judges censor it and as far as I'm concerned censorship equals dictatorship. It's that simple. If they did it with political motivations, that only makes it worse.
And I don't care for the judge-king's censorship of "misinformation" either. I'll judge for myself, thank you very much. I don't need his "help" to determine right from wrong. He's been doing this ministry of truth thing for around half a decade already and it's seriously tiresome. This is the same guy who censored accusations of communism against Lula, a self-admitted socialist. Censored the people who associated him with his dictator friends, and then we had to watch him roll out the red carpet for the Venezuelan one.
> I couldn't care less what the goal of the documentary was. (...) And I don't care for the judge-king's censorship of "misinformation" either. I'll judge for myself, thank you very much.
But the Brazilian constitution does care for both these things.
That's why it requires special care during the elections in order to prevent abuse. What's at stake is a principle you find in every liberal thinker since modern times, and that grounds most (if not all) democratic constitutions worldwide: If there's no fire in a crowded theater, one can't shout "Congressman X started a fire! Run!", incite people to leave in a hurry and later claim that "I was just manifesting my political opinion, people were free to ignore and judge the situation for themselves", as if you were not expecting their panic and the risks associated with crowds in panic. You're responsible for whatever ensues, and if this kind of behavior can be preempted, it must be. Or so thinks pretty much every democratic country in the world, not just Brazil.
If we judge by the rule you mention, this would be censorship. That would mean there's probably no country in the world that could be considered democratic (even the so called "absolute" US freedom of speech is something of a myth, for there are lots of decisions from the US Supreme Court that would be deemed "dictatorial" according to the criterion you present here).
Bottom line is: Brazil lives under the rule of a democratic constitution built after much fight against real dictatorship and real censorship, not the rule suggested by you here (which, again, absolutely no country in the world lives by). You're free to disagree with the basic liberal and democratic principles grounding the Brazilian constitution, but whenever you and the constitution disagree, bear in mind that it is the constitution's point of view that's going to prevail.
Where in the constitution does it say that you can engage in censorship of any kind, let alone political? Here's what it says, translated verbatim:
> Any and all censorship of political, ideological and artistic nature is prohibited.
That's what it literally says. It doesn't say you can maybe kinda sorta censor people if your cause is righteous enough. It doesn't say you can do it if it's fake news. So where is this disagreement you speak of? I can't seem to find it. I'm no lawyer but I've asked my lawyer friends and they couldn't find it either.
And nobody is shouting fire in a crowded theater. It's just some obviously biased documentary. Hilariously, that means it's of an artistic, ideological and political nature, all three of the categories explicitly singled out by the constitution. Whatever distorted logic they used to censor it must have been hierarchically inferior to the constitution, and therefore invalid.
I'm using the same logic that allowed US citizens to publish and export cryptography software by printing source code in a book. This is technology was literally export controlled for national security reasons. Cryptography has the power to defeat these judges, it has the power to defeat armies. There are few things in existence that are more subversive than democratized access to cryptography. And they used free speech to publish the source code. Their fight is a big reason why you're browsing this site with HTTPS enabled today. So don't compare distorted brazilian notions of free speech to american ones. They sure as hell have a lot more free speech than we do.
> Where in the constitution does it say that you can engage in censorship of any kind, let alone political?
Brazilian law does not consider preempting someone from shouting "fire" in a crowded theater a case of censorship. AFAIK, no democratic country would, for all recognize that freedom implies responsibility. Same goes for those trying to shout, without any evidence, "B's adversaries ordered his killing!" (or something similar) 6 days before the election day, even though they are trying to make it look like a "documentary".
> I'm using the same logic that allowed US citizens to publish and export cryptography software by printing source code in a book. This is technology was literally export controlled for national security reasons. (...) And they used free speech to publish the source code (...). So don't compare distorted brazilian notions of free speech to american ones. They sure as hell have a lot more free speech than we do.
Beautiful story. You should tell Snowden. Maybe he'll realize that he didn't need to go into exile in Russia.
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There is a documentary about the stabbing made from a left-wing news blog that was also censured and a lot of people got mad.
I didn't know about it. If that's true, then count me among the ones who are offended by such censorship. I don't defend censorship of the left even when it's convenient for me.