On 8 April 2024, American author, journalist, environmentalist and political pundit, Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger), posted the following at X (Twitter):
"Last night, around 8 p.m. local time in São Paulo, Brazil, Federal Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes announced a criminal investigation into Elon Musk, the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, for allegedly spreading disinformation, obstructing justice, and allowing people who De Moraes had banned from social media to freely express their views. De Moraes said he would fine X twenty thousand dollars per day for every banned person Musk allows to speak.
As such, De Moraes has taken Brazil one step closer to being a dictatorship. What’s more, the events of the last few weeks make clear that Elon Musk is the only thing standing in the way of global totalitarianism. Without free speech, there can be no democracy.
If X goes down, we must continue to fight. We can continue to communicate through email and other social media platforms, such as Facebook.
But email is no substitute for social media platforms' capacity to share information with millions of people. Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook, abandoned his principled free speech position in 2020 after three years of relentless pressure from activist NGOs, Democrats, and corporate advertisers. Today, Facebook actively represses the spread of news.
The mainstream corporate news media have never been more corrupt and totalitarian. With few exceptions, they spread government propaganda as a matter of policy. Nobody demands censorship more than the corporate media, which benefit from governments shutting down their competitors.
Governments are either not protecting free speech or actively participating in the war upon it.
Last month, the US Supreme Court held a hearing where justices made clear that they were fine with the US government pressuring social media companies to censor. Last week, the Scottish government implemented a law to crack down on so-called hate speech, including jokes by comedians. In Ireland, the government wants the power to send police into people’s homes to search computers and phones for hate speech. In Canada, the governing Liberal party wants the power to send people to prison for life for things they’ve said. And the European Union has empowered a tiny group of bureaucrats to decide what is true and false and engage in mass censorship.
All of this is happening at the very same moment that my colleagues and I have revealed that government intelligence organizations are working through NGOs to interfere in elections by spreading disinformation about populist activists and political candidates. In other words, governments are demanding censorship in order to protect their ability to spread disinformation.
Making matters worse, governments are directly financing corporate news media. The current Brazilian government is spending 30 times more than the previous government on media advertising in order to spread its disinformation.
I never in my life thought I would live to see the rise of totalitarianism in Western countries. A powerful minority of educated elites around the world are demanding the censorship, persecution, and incarceration of their political enemies. Naturally, they are doing so in the name of saving democracy. I am shocked and embarrassed that I used to call many of these totalitarians friends and allies. The only explanation is that they are in the grip of mass psychosis after years of media propaganda and government disinformation falsely claiming that populist political movements are undemocratic.
The fact that the future of free speech rests upon the shoulders of a single individual is not something any of us should want. I do not think that this is a responsibility Elon Musk wants. He would be a far richer person had he never bought Twitter. He would also be living a more peaceful life. After Musk bought Twitter, the Biden administration and the Democratic Party declared war on him. Various government agencies filed multiple frivolous lawsuits against Musk and his companies in ways very similar to the war the Brazilian government is waging against X.
What all of this reveals is that, until Musk bought Twitter, we didn’t really have freedom of expression. The US government felt that it controlled both the corporate news media and social media companies. We saw in the Twitter Files that the FBI orchestrated a disinformation and censorship campaign in order to protect Joe Biden.
Starting with the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, operatives working for the US Department of Defense and the British Ministry of Defense sought to hide their censorship and disinformation efforts as “cyber security.” After that, the US Department of Homeland Security and the Stanford Internet Observatory engaged in a mass censorship effort around the 2020 elections and Covid.
It is today clear that intelligence and security agencies have been working together around the world to gain control over social media platforms in order to discredit, prosecute, and incarcerate populist leaders. The evidence is now overwhelming that the FBI and Secret Service are covering up evidence related to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot in Washington DC. And there is still much we do not know about the eerily similar riot in Brazil’s capitol on January 8, 2023. There is much we need to do to fight back."
👏👏👏👏👏👏👍💗
Michael's tweet had been viewed 12 million times in 21 hours by the time it was featured here.Marcel van Hattem, a member of the Brazilian Congress, appearing with Michael Shellenberger in the above clip, added the following:
"As a member of the Brazilian Congress who has been exposing and combatting the abuses of our Supreme Court for years, I want to express my deepest gratitude to @elonmusk..👏👏👏👏👏👏👍💗
Elon, you are currently aiding Brazil more than many members of the Brazilian House and Senate. You are representing millions of Brazilians who oppose censorship and tyranny far better than their elected representatives, who still refuse to investigate and impeach Supreme Court justices.
I am confident that this will change now: @shellenberger's collaboration with @david_agape_ and @EliVieiraJr on the Brazilian Twitter Files, in a genuine investigative journalism effort, exposed the Brazilian dictator @alexandre de Moraes to the world.
By the way, I am one of the countless Brazilians featured in the files for being illegally monitored by the Supreme Court. I was also censored without due process and threatened with a hefty fine per day if I posted anything the Court disapproved of - but I never remained silent. In the case of Twitter, the former legal counsel Rafael Batista's refusal to provide Moraes with user information without valid grounds, even under the threat of illegal prosecution and persecution, was heroic.
Your determination, @elonmusk, to commend that stance and go further by lifting all restrictions on the accounts of Brazilians who were illegally censored shows a man of principles and provides us all with inspiration and renewed motivation to fight the tyrants.
There are currently thousands of Brazilians persecuted by Moraes: ordinary citizens censored, with their assets illegally frozen; journalists and judges exiled, with their passports seized by Mr. Moraes without justification; lawyers denied access to their clients' cases; hundreds still imprisoned without due process, let alone conviction.
One man, Clezão, passed away last November in prison after nearly a year of incarceration in deplorable health conditions by order of Alexandre de Moraes. The federal prosecutor had requested his release more than two months before his death, but Moraes ignored it. Clezão's wife, Jane, and their two daughters, Ana Luiza (22) and Klezia (19), will no longer have their father's company due to the tyrannical actions of Alexandre de Moraes.
We want none of this, no more! This is why I proposed a parliamentary committee to investigate the Court's abuses, including censorship.
The request garnered the support of the necessary 171 representatives and is now awaiting the Speaker of the House, Arthur Lira, to initiate its activities. The Brazil Twitter Files have given new momentum to this endeavor. We cannot rely on most legacy media or the establishment.
But we can rely on principled individuals like you, @elonmusk and @shellenberger. You may not be Brazilian, but you are fighting for freedom in our country in a way that inspires millions in my homeland to raise their voices and fight even harder to overcome this dire situation.
And we WILL overcome it. Thank you!"
DE MORAES
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