Judges can order sites to remove content in Brazil, and the content of these decisions is not always made public. But the files leaked by journalist Michael Shellenberger in April (known as “Twitter Files Brazil”, following on from Matt Taibbi’s similar revelations in the US) purportedly demonstrate that judicial requests for user data would have been in breach of Brazil’s Internet Civil Rights Framework and the Constitution.

In a similar case in March 2022, Moraes ordered the shutdown of messaging app Telegram for ignoring requests from Brazilian authorities to block profiles. Telegram then complied within 48 hours. It remains to be seen how X’s case develops, though Moraes would need cooperation from US authorities to pursue Musk or his company beyond Brazilian borders. This would be ironic, given Moraes has called the businessman’s behaviour an attack on Brazilian sovereignty, with Left-wing deputies saying similar in Congress.

The weekend announcement by X that it was shuttering its offices follows a week of damning revelations by Glenn Greenwald, the US journalist resident in Brazil. They purportedly show “long-suspected manoeuvres to create legal justifications and pretexts” by Moraes’s top aides in order to further the Supreme Court justice’s pursuit of accounts aligned with Jair Bolsonaro.

Now, Moraes appears as a hero to the centre and Left, having been proactive in defending democracy during the 2022 election while he was the president of the Superior Electoral Tribunal. Some of his actions were not just correct but necessary, such as mandating the arrest of a federal police chief guilty of deliberately preventing voters in Left-supporting areas from going to polls; others were less so, such as the nebulous notion of “combating fake news”.

Moraes continued in this vein in the aftermath of Bolsonaro’s defeat, pursuing the former president, as well as his allies and supporters, in connection with the 8 January storming of Congress. This was a genuine but not entirely credible coup attempt, and Moraes went into overdrive in response, targeting not just those implicated by their actions but also those implicated by their words.

With municipal elections coming up in October, centrist voices are now defending Moraes’s censorship, citing a “sensitive moment” of possible “disinformation”. The Right, meanwhile, has what it wants: a unifying figure of hate. It will be calling for Moraes’s impeachment at Independence Day demonstrations on 7 September, a move already endorsed by the Bolsonaros as well as Musk himself, who shared a Rightist federal deputy’s post.

This is part of an ongoing process of tit-for-tat lawfare, or the use of judicial means to pursue political ends, which goes beyond matters of speech online. But in this instrumentalisation of justice, free speech and due process alike get squeezed out. And though Musk may portray himself as a defender of free speech here, the reality is that he has, for instance, suspended journalists’ accounts who investigate his business. Moreover, as government affairs site Poder360 has revealed, Musk has complied with 90% of government orders around the world since taking over Twitter. His stand of resistance in Brazil appears to be motivated mainly by his political sympathies with those on the receiving end.

Musk creates a rod for his own back in being so politically outspoken on X, as well as seeming to bias the algorithm towards political content he favours. It all makes him look more like a publisher or editor-in-chief than a forum host, and thus opens him up to demands that he be responsible for content on the platform.

Meanwhile, it would not be an exaggeration to claim that Moraes is extending well beyond his bounds. A judge cannot set himself up as sovereign. His claims of lèse-majesté do nothing to dissuade the idea that this is indeed how he sees himself.

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Alex Hochuli is a writer based in São Paulo. He hosts the Aufhebunga Bunga podcast and is co-author of The End of the End of History: Politics in the 21st Century.

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