Yesterday, some criticized my claim that Brazil is now, effectively, a dictatorship. After all, they pointed out, it has free and fair elections and a balance of powers. It has an independent judiciary and Senate, whose president can impeach Supreme Court justices. And the government is not persecuting, incarcerating, and torturing political dissidents.
But Brazil is not a democracy. It is a nation ruled by two men, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who controls Brazil’s Senate President by abusing his powers, and President Lula, who endorsed Moraes’ actions this morning. According to Brazilian legal experts, Moraes’ censorship demands of X, his summons to X on Wednesday, and his freezing Starlink’s bank accounts yesterday are all brazenly illegal and unconstitutional acts.
The Lula government stepped up the persecution of political dissidents, including the incarceration without trial of an aide to former president Jair Bolsonaro, and crackdowns on freedom always start small.
And a few minutes ago, Moraes ordered the suspension of X in Brazil and said that anyone who tries to evade the ban through a VPN will be fined $8,900 per day.
