Opinion: Elon Musk is a threat to Brazil's democracy
What we are witnessing today is much more than a feud between a tech mogul and a Supreme Court justice over the limits of free speech.Raphael Tsavkko Garcia
Brazilian journalist and researcher
Published On 19 Sep 2024
19 Sep 2024
For some time now, South African billionaire owner of X, Elon Musk, has been waging a war against a justice of Brazil’s Supreme Court, Alexandre de Moraes, supposedly to defend Brazilian people’s right to “free speech” on the popular social media platform.
So far, however, Musk’s ongoing feud with the judge has achieved nothing in the way of furthering the Brazilian people’s freedom of expression. Instead, it has highlighted the hypocrisy of Musk’s absolutist discourse on free speech and exposed the immediate threat that tech leaders like him who see themselves above the law and the will of nations pose to democracy.
The spat between the self-declared “free speech absolutist” and the Brazilian judge began in January 2023, after former President Jair Bolsonaro’s far right supporters, spurred on by false claims of electoral fraud spread on social media, stormed the National Congress and tried to violently overthrow the democratically elected Leftist president, Lula da Silva.
Moraes, who was in charge of several investigations targeting Bolsonaro as well as his close associates and supporters, swiftly issued orders for X to restrict or fully remove accounts that helped fuel this shocking attack on Brazilian democracy.
More:
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/9/19/elon-musk-is-a-threat-to-brazils-democracy
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Watching the video of Musk and Bukele was such a load for one viewing! They couldn't find themselves and each other more impressive if they tried. Exactly as one would expect! So hard to witness without throwing a laptop around the room afterward!
Two more threats to humanity celebrating their new friendship. Malignant narcissists, like Trump, with utter contempt for actual human beings.
It was good to see your reposting of an earlier thread, and good to get a chance to feel grateful for Democratic Congresswoman Susan Wild. Democrats in Congress have always been the only ones with a conscience concerning relations with the rest of the people in the Western Hemisphere. The hate-driven right-wing has always been the driver of US policy toward Latin America. Always. It shouldn't be that way. They support the power players, the ones who want to rape and exploit all the natural resources of those countries, control politics there, and use the people as an unprotected source of cheap, cheap labor, as close to slavery as possible. The right-wing supports violence to keep them all in line, to keep them trying to crawl out of unrighteous, destructive, depersonalizing poverty.
Susan Wild is a name I really, really want to remember.
We need eye bleach to fade the horrific images of those sleazy grins from Elon Musk and El Salvador's Bukele!
Thank you, Less Aspin! 