Just a few months ago, the political movement behind Brazil's far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro was sputtering. Mr Bolsonaro had been voted out of officeruled not suitable for turning at the next election and was in the crosshairs by floor criminal to research.
But now Mr. Bolsonaro and his followers have had a sudden surge of energy and momentum — with the help of Elon Musk and the Republican Party.
Over the past month, Musk and Republicans in the House of Representatives have expressed fierce criticism Alexandre de Moraesa Brazilian Supreme Court judge leading the investigation into Mr Bolsonaro, on the judge's actions block more than 100 social media accounts in Brazil. Many of them include prominent right-wing pundits, podcasters and federal lawmakers who in some cases have questioned Bolsonaro's election loss.
Mr Moraes has said he is acting to protect Brazilian democracy from attacks by the former president and his allies, who accused of planning a coup in 2022.
Mr. Musk has repeatedly called Mr. Moraes a “dictator” and posted dozens of times about the judge on his social network, X, accusing him of silencing conservative voices.
The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Representative Jim JordanRepublican of Ohio, published sealed court orders from Mr. Moraes last month a report about “Brazil's censorship campaign.” And on Tuesday, Republicans in the House of Representatives held firm a hearing who depicted the situation in Brazil as “a crisis of democracy, freedom and the rule of law.”
Although the efforts of Musk and Republican politicians have received little attention in the United States, they are making major political waves in Brazil.
Before Musk started posting about Brazil on April 6, much of the country's news cycle revolved around criminal investigations into Mr. Bolsonaro. That included revelations of The New York Times that Mr Bolsonaro made an apparent request for political asylum at the Hungarian embassy just days after authorities seized his passport.
But in the past month, attention has shifted to a new question: is Brazil's Supreme Court? hinder freedom of expression? Brazilian media paid a lot of attention to the debate, among other things on the cover of the country's largest weekly magazine, Veja. One of Brazil's largest newspapers, Folha de São Paulo, called on Mr Moraes to stop censoring.
Amid the renewed debate, Brazil's Congress is effective has killed a long-awaited bill on combating disinformation on the Internet, and the Supreme Court said it would rule about a lawsuit challenging Brazil's main internet law.
That a series of online posts by Mr Musk had such a rapid impact on the internal politics of a foreign country shows his growing influence as owner of And perhaps the loudest voice in one of the world's largest digital town squares.
Mr Bolsonaro is now benefiting from renewed attention from powerful supporters abroad. The former president has been detained campaign style meetings attacking what he says is political persecution – and thanking his foreign allies.
Mr Musk “really stands up for freedom for all of us,” Mr Bolsonaro told thousands of people on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro last month. “He is a man who has had the courage to show – already with some evidence, and surely more to come – where our democracy is going and how much freedom we have lost.”
Mr Bolsonaro then called for a round of applause for Mr Musk, drawing one of the biggest roars of the day. Some Bolsonaro supporters wore Elon Musk masks, while others carried signs praising the billionaire.
“With a few tweets, Elon Musk was able to change the political climate in Brazil,” said Ronaldo Lemos, a Brazilian lawyer who studies the country's internet laws. The Brazilian right was struggling, Mr. Lemos added. “He brought the energy back.”
On Brazil's left, however, Mr Musk and Republicans are distorting the facts to attack Brazil's institutions.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a left-wing man, ran against Musk in a speech last monthcalled him “an American businessman who has never produced a meter of grass in this country and who dares to speak ill of the Brazilian court, the Brazilian ministers and the Brazilian people.”
In recent years, Brazil's Supreme Court has taken an aggressive stance against certain online content, including election misinformation and attacks on democratic institutions. Brazilian courts have ordered X to remove at least 140 bills since 2022, according to documents published by the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee.
Mr Moraes, who declined to comment for this article, has called such measures necessary in light of the threats to Brazilian democracy posed by Mr Bolsonaro and some of his supporters. plundered Brazil's centers of power last year. “Freedom of expression is not freedom from aggression,” Moraes said last month. “Freedom of speech is not the freedom to defend tyranny.”
But his moves have also sparked intense debate whether they pose their own threat for Brazilian democracy.
Mr. Moraes has ordered
In some cases, the reports cast doubt on election results or emboldened protesters calling for a military coup. But Mr. Moraes typically seals such orders, so people who have their accounts suspended usually get little information about the reason.
Social networks regularly block content that violates their policies. For example, after the riot in the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, on Twitter 150,000 accounts deleted connected to the conspiracy movement known as QAnon, which had inspired many rioters.
But Mr. Moraes has often ordered the removal of content that social media companies would otherwise leave behind under their rules.
In 2022, Mr. Moraes authorized Brazilian federal agents to raid the homes of eight major businessmen and ordered social networks to suspend some of their accounts. He acted in response to leaked screenshots showing two businessmen saying in a private WhatsApp group that they would choose a military coup over Lula's victory in that year's presidential race.
Mr Moraes suspended the investigation against most of the men last year but maintained the suspension of the accounts of two of the businessmen, including Luciano Hang, a department store magnate. Mr Hang, one of Mr Bolsonaro's most prominent backers, has been unable to use his social media accounts in Brazil, which together had more than six million followers, for almost two years.
Such stories have caught the attention of some Republicans in Congress. During the hearing on Tuesday, Representative Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, said that “Brazilians have been victims of serious human rights violations committed by Brazilian officials on a massive scale.”
But Representative Susan Wild, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, said Brazil's courts were mandated to prevent the kind of military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985. Any debate about the role of the courts in Brazil 'must be decided by the Brazilian government. people,” she said. “The US Congress is not the forum.”
Few US lawmakers attended the hearing, but some of the biggest names on Brazil's right did, including Bolsonaro's son Eduardo. The proceedings were regularly interrupted by cheers or jeers from the right-wing Brazilians present.
One witness, Fabio de Sa e Silva, a Brazilian lawyer and professor at the University of Oklahoma, said he believed Brazilian law supported Mr. Moraes' right to block accounts. He argued that any crisis in Brazilian democracy was not due to judges, but rather to “mobs unwilling to follow the rules.”
But some analysts say Mr Moraes appears to be violating the rights of Brazilians. Mr. Lemos, the Brazilian internet law expert, said he no longer saw such an extreme threat to Brazil's democracy that would justify Mr. Moraes' aggressive approach.
“We are no longer living in an emergency situation,” he said.