Brazil’s communist President Lula Da Silva has seemingly backed his country’s ban on the X platform and said Brazil does not have to “put up” with Elon Musk.
Speaking to CNN Brasil, Da Silva said that Brazil’s justice system had sent an “important signal” to Musk about the limits of his incredible wealth.
“The Brazilian justice system may have given an important signal that the world is not obliged to put up with Musk’s extreme right-wing anything goes just because he is rich,” the president said.
Lula’s comments come after Brazilian communist judge Alexandre de Moraes issued a unilateral decree banning the X platform in the South American country of some 200 million people over its refusal to comply with the government’s censorship demands.
Under the terms of the decree, Brazilians face fines of thousands of dollars a day if they are caught using a VPN to bypass the restrictions, although it remains to be seen whether this would be enforced.
The ban remains a significant blow to both X as a company and freedom of speech in Brazil, which is already being eroded under Lula's regime. Some 40 million Brazilians were said to be active users of the platform before last week's ban.
Musk, meanwhile, has responded angrily to the ban and launched a campaign against De Moraes aimed at exposing his crimes and corruption.
As well as attacking De Moraes in front of his audience of almost 200 million followers, Musk has set up an account known as the Alexandre Files, which is focused on exposing the "unlawful directives issued to X by Alexandre de Moraes."
Today, we begin shining a light on the abuses of Brazilian law committed by Alexandre de Moraes.
We have been forced to share these orders because there is no transparency from the court, and the people who are being censored have no recourse to appeal. Our own appeals have been…
— Alexandre Files (@AlexandreFiles) August 31, 2024
