Meanwhile in Brazil, Elon Musk has called him an “evil dictator.” Police officers in São Paulo once nicknamed him “Kojak,” after the shaven-headed New York TV detective who would bend the rules to catch the bad guys. His supporters insist he is a “crusader,” the last line of defence for democracy in Brazil. The shaven-headed and conservative Alexandre de Moraes has become an unlikely hero of the left after taking on the X owner over disinformation on social media.
Alexandre de Moraes, the enigmatic supreme court judge who has moved to ban X, Musk’s social media giant, in Brazil, has long defied pigeonholing. A pro-law enforcement former member of one of Brazil’s conservative political parties, he used to be despised by left-wingers. Now he has become an object of hate for many on the right in light of his battle against Musk, a man many idolise.
The feud between the two came to a head on Friday when an order that the social network be shutdown in Brazil was imposed. Internet service providers across the nation of 215 million people, which has one of the highest social media access rates in the world and is one of X’s biggest markets, blocked the platform. The main news sites stopped posting at the same time.
“The tyrant de Voldemort is crushing the people’s right to free speech,” Musk posted, likening de Moraes to the evil overlord in the Harry Potter series.
Brazil, which returned to democracy in 1989 after decades of military rule, has become the unlikely new member of a club of authoritarian states where X is banned. The others are Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea and Turkmenistan.
The crackdown on the site arguably goes further than in many of those countries, as it also includes a warning that people or companies that use a virtual private network (VPN) to access X would be subject to fines of 50,000 reais (£6,800) each day they violate the rule.
The ruling ordered the freezing of assets held by Musk’s satellite internet provider Starlink, on the basis that the two companies are part of the same economic group and X’s bank accounts in the country do not have enough money to cover spiralling legal fines.
On Saturday millions of Brazilians appeared to be complying with the order, although some were openly defying it. Marcel van Hattem, 38, a conservative congressman and fierce critic of what he calls “cultural Marxism” in Brazil, posted an hour after the ban was imposed and pledged: “I will keep tweeting regardless of state persecution or threats because I believe in freedom of expression, democracy and real justice.”
The dispute began to escalate earlier this year with demands from de Moraes that X block users seen as publishing clearly fake or inflammatory posts. Many of those subject to the blocking orders were politicians affiliated with the former president Jair Bolsonaro’s right-wing party and activists accused of undermining Brazilian democracy.
X initially complied and in April sent a document to the supreme court saying that since 2019 it had suspended or blocked 226 users. That failed to calm matters, with de Moraes the same month naming Musk as a target of a separate, ongoing investigation into the dissemination of fake news in Brazil.
Since then the legal battle has become increasingly heated, with signs that Musk, who has described himself as a “free-speech absolutist”, was taking personal charge of the issue.
Last Wednesday de Moraes warned Musk that X could be blocked in Brazil if the company failed to notify the supreme court who its legal representative in Brazil was. The company declined to do so. It has not had any staff in the country since earlier this month, when all were removed on the basis that they risked arrest.
For the past four years de Moraes, the shaven-headed judge with the intense stare, has been overseeing what has been dubbed in Brazil the “fake news inquiry”. That brought him in direct conflict with Bolsonaro, the ultra-conservative populist former president who took office in 2019 and has been labelled the “Tropical Trump”.
De Moraes, 55, is also overseeing an investigation into claims that Bolsonaro plotted a coup to remain in power after losing the 2022 elections to his nemesis, the leftist current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The judge’s new-found status as a hero of the left in Brazil — for whom Bolsonaro’s movement remains its biggest threat to re-election, both in a municipal contest next October and in the next presidential election in 2026 — is, for some, a strange turn of events, given de Moraes was once seen as an ally of conservatism. He was appointed to Brazil’s supreme court in 2017 by the right-wing president Michel Temer. The former law professor had previously worked as São Paulo state prosecutor, where he had the reputation as a hardliner. Left-wing activists accused him of repressing protests and even of covering up police violence. Brazilian police officers, who nicknamed him Kojak, praised him for the support he gave them.
A former member of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party, which used to be the main conservative opponents to Lula’s Workers’ Party, some close to the judge have described him as less a lawyer by nature and more a political animal, fiercely ambition and perhaps with an eye on the presidency.
Others believe his campaign against fake news, and those he believes disseminate it, is personal. His inquiry into social media abuses includes calls to murder judges and rape threats directed at their wives and daughters. De Moraes has received death threats and is constantly accompanied by a security entourage.
The judge himself rarely gives interviews, and in his most recent statements has avoided mentioning either Musk or X by name. But on Friday he gave a speech in which he alluded to the dispute. “We have a right to defend fundamental rights,” he said. “Those who violate democracy, who violate fundamental human rights, whether in person or through social media, must be held accountable.”
First published in the Times by Stephen Gibbs
Latin America Correspondent