Brazil's X ban becomes a rallying cry for Bolsonaro
September 09, 2024
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Quick Take
Ian Bremmer, political scientist and president of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media, shares insights on global political events.
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Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week. Haven't spoken in a while about Brazil, and thought I might, given the demonstrations going on over the weekend and the big fight that is going on around democracy, around free speech, around the social media site that is known as Twitter/X. The issue here is that as in the United States, politics in Brazil exceptionally polarized and divided lots of issues questioning the future of the country's democracy, whether or not you can have a free and fair transition. January 8th in Brazil has the resonance for part of its population the way that January 6th does in the United States, participants seen as patriots by the other part of the population. You see where we're going here. One big difference between Brazil and the United States is in the United States, the Supreme Court, while it has at times a liberal and presently a conservative bent, is still an independent organization that is very separate from the executive.
In Brazil, it is much more politicized and corrupt. And specifically the effort to take down Twitter / X, in Brazil as well as freeze the accounts of Starlink for example, also owned by Elon Musk, has been overreach, politicized overreach by one specific Supreme Court member, Alexandre de Moraes, and has been approved by the Supreme Court as a whole. Now the issue here is a number of accounts that were disseminating disinformation, fake news, and claimed by the government needed to be taken down by Twitter / X. Twitter / X has refused to do so. And that angered those on the left in Brazil, especially because when other demands are made to remove individual accounts in other countries, like in Turkey or the UAE, which are made with similarly, I would say, tenuous justification, but if that's what the political leaders are saying in that country, that amounts to an order by a relevant authority.
Twitter / X has historically overwhelmingly complied and, indeed, taken down those accounts. We've seen that in a number of countries, not all the time but most of the time, and that hasn't been the case in Brazil. Is the reason why Elon Musk and Twitter refuse to remove these accounts because he's politically aligned or sympathetic with them? Certainly that would be the argument that is being made in Brazil. But there is an opportunity here from the conservatives, including from former President Bolsonaro to use this and the opposition to freedom of speech as a rallying call. And that was what we saw in these demonstrations over the weekend. They were significant. You might've seen the photos. About 50,000 total on Brazil's Independence Day, that's September 7th, in Sao Paulo attending the rally. They're small historically in context. I mean, Bolsonaro back in February got almost 200,000 protesters, so about four times as many to attend a rally also in Sao Paulo.
But it was significant because it does show that the defense of liberty and democracy is a rallying cry of the opposition in the next presidential election that's coming up in 2026, which is not so far away. And both Bolsonaro's speech as well as most of the conservative leaders that appeared with him, like the Sao Paulo governor for example, had heavy, heavy criticism of the Supreme Court ruling and specifically of Justice de Moraes, as we've seen from Elon. And they are accusing the Supreme Court of undermining freedom of speech. With the ongoing court investigations both about disseminating false information about the electoral system and about the January 8th attacks in Brasilia. And the fact that X has now been banned from Brazil after Elon has refused to comply. And by the way, I mean it's not the most important, it's a comparatively small social media site in Brazil.
There are others that are much more popular. But still this is getting a lot of attention because it is such a political grenade, and that is helping the conservative opposition in Brazil say that individual freedoms are being undermined. And the interesting point here is this is related to the United States. Both sides of the aisle in Brazil just like both sides of the aisle in the United States believe that the other side is a threat to democracy in ways that you don't see in Canada, or the UK, or France, or Germany, or Japan, or South Korea. I would say Brazil is the one major democracy that most feels like the United States in terms of this level of political dysfunction. But what's interesting is that it is the Bolsonaro-led opposition that is using the defense of democracy and liberty to mobilize its base before the 2026 elections. This has historically been much more of a calling card of the left. And in the United States democratic voters care more about the issue of defending democracy as a political issue than Republicans do, in Brazil conservative voters care more about defense of democracy than voters on the left. And this fight that was started by the Supreme Court is playing into that narrative. So interesting, worth talking about, getting a lot of attention. Thought I would throw my own two cents in, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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