Paulo Figueiredo Filho details Brazil's erosion of free speech since 2019, citing Supreme Court Minister Alexandre de Moraes' "fake news" investigations that led to journalist arrests and his own asset freezes. He argues Democratic Party narratives blaming social media for Trump's victory triggered platform censorship, while alleging US interference ensured Lula's pro-Hamas, pro-China victory. Figueiredo warns this "juristocracy" mirrors trends in Israel and Canada but uniquely threatens Brazil, suggesting only a potential Trump presidency might counteract this global shift toward judicial dictatorship. [Automatically generated summary]
But on the other hand, it is the dream of every Democrat in the sense that it is totally electronic, without a trace of paper, so it is impossible to recount.
Everything is centralized in a federal court that supervises the elections.
This was a real proposal from the Biden administration to Congress at the beginning of its term to have a centralized federal election.
In Brazil, the person responsible for this, Guarda Costas, is an individual who became famous due to his recent disputes with Elon Musk, in recent weeks.
Yes, we'll get there.
Yes.
Yes.
It's a problem because the number on a machine is a number.
You insert a number, candidate, and hope that your vote is counted correctly.
And if it wasn't, there is no possibility of auditing.
It's just a byte.
It's a number that is sent to a computer, which is centralized in a court, managed by an individual who has an aversion to Bolsonaro.
And you add this with several questions that people made in the Brazilian courts of justice.
And if you think the courts were not very considerate with the challenges Trump faced in 2020, yes.
On May 26, 2020, there was an event at the ZOA.
Sorry, it was in 2020 in the United States.
Brazil was much worse.
Sorry, it was in 2020 in the United States.
Brazil was much worse.
Because this guy had the authority to decide everything by himself.
Right?
As you mentioned, he is the guy who is fighting with Elon Musk.
But before that, Lula is in command.
It seems fair to me to say, is he a communist?
Is he a Marxist?
Is he an assumed one?
Or do people just call him a communist?
Yes, he is declared.
They call me a communist.
They think they offend me.
I am a proud communist.
I have a communist leader.
How not now?
A year and a little since then, how has this changed the country?
Well, it changed very badly in several ways.
So, obviously, the first thing that happens is that the budget is out of control, as well as the government's excessive spending.
Lula only increased the national deficit by R$ 1 trillion, which is equivalent to about R$ 200 billion in a year.
The public deficit is totally out of control.
The exchange rate with the Brazilian Real has increased significantly.
Therefore, the Brazilian Real is losing value.
Criminality has increased considerably.
However, it is in individual freedoms that we can most feel this negative consequence.
Because, to be fair, everything that is happening in Brazil did not start with Lula.
It started with Bolsonaro, it was made by the Supreme Court, by this guy, Alexandre de Moraes, who is a minister of the Supreme Court.
He was definitely the main guy in all of this.
And he is the guy who governs Brazil now.
Not that Lula has no power, but Moria's is much more powerful there.
And he also kind of looks like a bad guy.
We'll put images for people to see.
It's like he's taken out of a... Look, it's like he's come out of Star Wars.
If I had to choose a cast for a movie or entertainment, I'd think of this guy right away.
He looks like a James Bond villain.
Yes, he dresses like one, the full package.
Yes.
And Elon calls him Voldemort from Harry Potter.
Yes.
But he's the guy.
He's the guy who's ruling the country.
But while he had Bolsonaro as president, he had someone in his way, so he couldn't go crazy because he was always afraid, in a way, of Bolsonaro doing something against them.
and Bolsonaro was the president.
The president can do a lot, he can do something.
But since Lula took over the position, Lula and Moraes are completely aligned.
So, at this moment, the persecution, which originally involved only institutions that belong to the judiciary,
now is done in a collusion with the executive power.
Therefore, it is considerably more influential and powerful.
The scope of the persecution is much greater, to the point that Bolsonaro will not be able to run again.
Is he in the country now?
I know he fled right away.
Has he returned and is living freely?
So that's what happened.
living freely? So that's what happened. Bolsonaro, the day before his term ended, came to the
United States and spent three months here.
I think he was in Miami.
He was in Orlando, downtown Florida, but he was here in Miami several times.
Yes!
However, he made the decision to return to Brazil, because he thought it would be a good idea.
I think it was a mistake.
One of the reasons why he decided it was a good idea to go back to Brazil is because the Democrats bothered him.
They threatened to extradite him, even though he wasn't charged with a crime at that time.
The media also treated him terribly.
Basically, Florida is protecting this extreme right-wing maniac and the rest of it.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So he felt, under Biden's administration and the members of the Democratic Party in the Senate, in fact, Senator Bob Menendez was Bolsonaro's main opponent.
The individual is being accused of international corruption for assisting a foreign government that does not belong to the United States.
And that ended up becoming a big problem for them.
In Manila, then, there were four consecutive years in which freedom was being withdrawn, one year after the other.
So give me an example of something.
Let's talk about Elon's stuff, obviously.
So, in 2019, it was Bolsonaro's first year in office.
In 2019, you also started to have 2018, 2019.
In 2019, you also started to have, 2018, 2019, remember that very well because you covered it.
That's when social media started to be more aggressive in the fight against misinformation and everything.
you You started to see YouTube and Meta, like Facebook, changing their terms of service to be more aggressive.
All of this.
You started to see a lot of people being deplatformed.
This was a little after the Pragueru trial.
Yes, many think it started with COVID, but it happened before that too.
In fact, you can go back to an article in the New York Times about the Cambridge Analytica case.
It was at that moment that they began to blame social media for Trump's election on social media, which is quite interesting because they do that.
Analyze all the speeches made by the Democrats before 2018 for analysis.
Everyone would praise social media.
Obama won the election with the media.
That's how it's done.
That's how it's done.
Yes, it's a new wave.
New public squares, praises about it.
So you had Trump and they decided to find out why this guy won?
And they concluded that social media was to blame.
So, you had... Well, actually, first it was an article by The Guardian, but no one cared.
And a year later, the New York Times republished this story without any new information.
However, they began to discuss the idea that social media can be a threat to current democracy.
Okay, that's interesting.
I think that's interesting.
Weeks later, you see figures in the Democratic Party saying that social media, almost as if they had, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it's not that much.
See that cover of the New York Times there?
Remember that?
Dave Rubin and Milton Friedman lead Alt-Right via YouTube algorithms.
Yes, quite impressive.
So, that's why I said, you know very well.
So, it's almost as if you had a meeting and decided, that's what we're going to say now.
In 2019, social networks updated their terms of service after the election of Bolsonaro.
The Supreme Court of Brazil investigated false news.
And this may seem quite strange if you're not paying attention, because usually a court does not start an investigation.
The Department of Justice, or anyone, the police, starts an investigation.
The court only judges based on prosecution and defense.
The Brazilian court decided to investigate, as well as in Zeuá, although they do not have the same power to do so.
But just like in the EUA, in the internal regiments of the court, there is an article that says, look, if a crime was committed in the dependencies of the court, we can open an investigation.
They decided to say, people say bad things about the court on the internet.
They are defaming the court.
Ah, smart!
The internet is everywhere, including within the court.
This gives us reasons to open an investigation.
It's like, wow!
Yes, that's right!
Wow!
This was inaugurated in 2019, you know?
This is the well-known fake news investigation program.
If you think that the investigation of Bob Mueller and others took a long time, this one has been going on since 2019, without anyone being accused.
And this is the investigation to which Elon Musk was now added.
But they started doing searches and arrests in the house of journalists.
So they began to censor certain types of content, some specific articles.
The first thing they censored was a magazine that published an article accusing a Supreme Court judge of corruption.
It's an endless investigation that never turned into a real case with accusations being made.
Absolutely nothing relevant happened.
Right.
The situation is the same for other people.
Let's relate this to what is happening with Elon in several countries.
Even when it comes to frozen bank accounts, each person immediately thinks of Canadian bankers, Canadian truckers, with their frozen accounts.
They don't freeze bank accounts, just trucks.
We won't see it yet.
Bank, dear, right.
Who has as a parallel job being a trucker?
I could talk about how this has intensified in relation to Elon and how it is spreading around the world.
What is very interesting is that, well, you spent, I don't know, a lot of time at Axie and saw how committed they are to freedom of expression, which is What is very strange is that, of course, we know from the Twitter files that they were not committed before Elon by Twitter, right?
Did you see the math?
It's an algorithm.
They don't even know how ... They don't understand what's going on.
But in a strange way, in Brazil, the individuals on Twitter, I'm talking about the same individuals who were close to the FBI, censoring the history of Hunter Biden's laptop.
It's as if these same guys They were shocked by what was happening in Brazil.
And because of the Twitter files that Michael Schellenberger published, because of that, we know that Twitter was sending e-mails from Twitter's office in Brazil to the Ewha, saying, these guys are crazy.
What they're doing here is something we've never seen before.
And the guys from that, I think that says a lot.
The guys from Twitter, from the Ewha, were like, wow, what's going on?
Xi Jinping calling you.
You didn't stop.
Going too far.
A little too far, even for me.
Exactly.
They were, because the judicial orders they were receiving were that way.
And Schellenberger shared these files obtained from the Twitter files of Brazil in his recent publication.
So all these communications, And somehow, I believe that this increased awareness about the situation and entered Elon Musk's radar.
And one day he decided to tweet to Alexandre saying, Why are you censoring the Brazilian people so much?
I believe he had a chance to investigate this.
And he started the investigation process.
Basically, he said he hadn't done that yet, that he would suspend all restrictions in Brazil because they were illegal.
It was strange to never have access to the judicial orders against me until last week, when I was in Congress at the Justice Commission.
I was talking to them, explaining the situation in Brazil.
And that's when they asked, have you seen the orders against you?
I was like, I didn't see.
They were like, do you want to see?
I was like, yes.
They gave me a folder with all the orders against me.
I was like, wow!
And they said, well, we request the files for the files.
We got them and we're going to make them public.
That was like an atomic bomb in Brazil, revealing everything that Morais was doing.
Just to give you an idea, the order against me has a whole page.
And a specific part of this order says that The social media platform cannot make information public.
So I don't know what's going on.
The only reason I know is because I received a source telling me, and of course I suspected, but I never saw the request.
So there was no way to appeal because you are never notified.
So if you are not notified, you cannot appeal.
Even if you could, it's the Supreme Court.
Who are you going to appeal to?
That was, that has been continuous.
When Elon Musk said he would suspend the restrictions, Demarais put me in the same situation, as a person of interest under investigation, in the same investigation as me.
Now, we are friends and we share this experience together.
Right?
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So, this is just in the last few weeks and Twitter in Brazil is now open or is it closed?
In this investigation, they are victims, because they say that this believer is against them.
It is an attack against their institution.
They are responsible for the investigation.
They are the promoters.
They are the judges.
Can you imagine?
There is nothing similar anywhere in the world.
So, although I believe that there is a global trend against freedom of expression, which is very important to you and to me, There's a trend on the left.
I believe that freedom of expression was a consensus until maybe five years ago.
And that consensus has disappeared.
People are really re-examining the conclusion we came to about 200 years ago.
Brazil, in this case, is really special.
Because it's like this, the way I put it is in a very singular way.
Everyone, the world has the same virus.
We just have countries with different immune systems.
And I like to joke that you're the comedian.
But I like to joke that Harvard University is like a laboratory of ideas.
Yes, Columbia may have taken over, but both.
The American universe is a laboratory of ideas.
So they have these crazy ideas.
Yes, we regret it.
Yes, you have credit.
You had good ideas.
Many good things, yes.
Yes.
But I mean, Brazil has two viruses.
Two of these.
There is the censorship virus and the jurisprudence virus, which is quite unique, as it is also a very present trend here.
It's very big in Israel.
I mean, just so people know, juristocracy is the transfer of power of democracy, which is the people's crates, right?
The people's government for the jurists, right?
Government, I mean, bureaucrats.
And non-elected bureaucrats, who govern and have enormous power.
In Israel, for example, they approved the judicial reform.
And the Supreme Court said, no, I don't think it's right, right?
So, what is this?
And this has never happened.
I mean, the founding fathers, if you If you read Federalist Paper 78, you'll see Hamilton saying that we'll never have a judiciary dictatorship.
They don't have the power of the stock market or the power of the sword.
If you read Montesquieu, he'll say, well, the judiciary is almost nothing.
But now you see that the judiciary power in Canada is also bad.
The Supreme Court in Canada.
So you see in different countries that the judicial system is by far, even in the United States, the most powerful branch of the government.
I shouldn't have to say this to Americans, because abortion was legalized in Zipwada by the Supreme Court in the 1970s.
But what I think the global elite, and again it's not a conspiracy theory, realizes is that, although they can bypass the democratic process, they don't need to go through the tedious process of, like, I'm George Soros.
It's as if I could circumvent all this if I supported, for example, elections of local promoters and judges.
And I can...
Well, I don't need to finance directly, but I can be a host and we can go to the same events and be part of the same community of the Supreme Court of Justice.
Right.
This becomes a two-edged sword because we talk about bringing DAs that destroy cities and leftists see destruction as evidence that the system is failing.
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They are getting two wins there and use it as evidence that they need more power for destruction.
We are seeing the first signs that the establishment is getting tired of Marais.
And the costs of... He became incredibly powerful and made a series of mistakes.
The system discards people.
You're just a dispensable part of the system, so it doesn't need you.
Exactly.
You're no longer necessary.
You simply assume the blame and leave.
And that's my hope now.
You simply assume the blame and leave.
And that's my hope now.
Not that we're going to fix Brazil, but I believe that the first thing we need,
and people don't realize it, is the thing you need to fight the most in a country to
protect, freedom of expression.
Because once you lose freedom of expression, you can't fight for any other right.
Right now, yes, I have a problem with our electoral system.
I barely talked about it.
Bad.
My goal is to restore freedom of expression.
Bolsonaro?
I don't care.
I like him, but not my focus.
I want freedom of expression.
Then I'll talk about Bolsonaro.
So my concern with the United States now is that this trend is also very present here.
And to the point where America has greatly influenced the Brazilian situation, the Biden administration, this is again, no, many, I said it was the third time I'm going to say it, it's not a conspiracy theory.
But there is an article in the Financial Times where they brag about it.
The Biden administration sent the CIA director The Secretary of Defense and Jake Sullivan on three different occasions in Brazil to pressure public authorities, military leaders and bureaucrats not to challenge democratic orders.
Therefore, it is essential to ensure that Lula was elected taking this into account.
Why did the Biden administration send its top officials to interfere in the Brazilian elections and ensure that freedom of expression was no longer in force?
2.
Lula, a Zewa enemy, was elected.
He was elected.
And that's what happened.
Lula is now the most pro-Hamas guy on the planet.
Yes, absolutely.
He made crazy statements related to Moshe.
Madness!
And he openly supports this.
He is comparing what is happening in Israel and what the Israelis are doing with the Holocaust.
Israel defending itself from the Holocaust.
It's a little sad to think about all the suffering caused.
It is also the most in favor of Venezuela, more in favor of Cuba, definitely in favor of Iran, to the point of having Iranian ships attacking Brazilian ports right now.
And he's also the most pro-China guy on the planet.
He's using the BRICS to mine the dollar as a global currency.
So why wouldn't the United States make an effort to put a guy like this in power?
And this intrigues me in a way, almost inexplicable.
Yes?
unidentified
Does this intrigue you or do you want to follow the conspiracy?
It's as if these guys hated America and wanted the country to be destroyed.
And they definitely behave this way.
Ebola is definitely not helping America in any way.
At this moment, our hope is that it seems that the Zinei Congress, especially the House, with a minimum majority of Republicans, is starting to look and pay attention to Brazil.
And a large part of that is due to Elon Musk.
So, yes, that individual really... I can't exaggerate the impact that Elon Musk is causing on freedom of expression globally, but especially in Brazil.
So, what do you think?
What would change now?
What?
Lulu is not leaving.
He's not leaving, right?
He's not my biggest concern.
Let him go.
Courts don't dissolve.
So, what needs to happen?
I think Demarais should take responsibility.
Yes, responsibility is crucial in a democracy.
I think it's Nassim Taleb.
The book The Skin of the Game, he explained this very well.
When you don't have responsibility, you have a moral risk of just doing more.
You are allowing the criminal to do more and more.
Therefore, if you let someone go unpunished with the 900 dollars they steal in a store, you are allowing an even worse behavior.
that steal in a store is allowing an even worse behavior.
Yes, the same thing if you allow someone to run an election in the largest democracy on the planet
and nothing happens, and you have any proof you want with the signatures.
It's as if you had everything.
But the courts don't take legal action because that would traumatize a democracy.
By allowing this, you facilitate criminal behavior.
I'm worried about the elections in the EUA.
Right now.
So the first thing is that Morais needs to face some form of negative consequences for what he did.
If he does, Brazil will not solve all the problems, but will send a clear message to others, as if there were an intransponable line, and that line is freedom.
And that's one side of the question.
One thing that I think will help a lot, and let's say what God has planned, is that I think Donald Trump's election is crucial.
Just as the Biden administration interfered in a negative way in Brazil to bring the left to power, I believe that Trump can work in a more positive and beneficial way for the country.
And I'm not asking him to intervene in Brazil, but just the possibility of not counting on Biden's support would be extremely beneficial to us.
In addition, look, this election is of extreme importance to the world, because I believe, in a way, that we are deciding whether democracy is still present in the contemporary world.
I mean, as a foreigner, I have a hard time believing that the Americans will elect a president that 70% of the country considers mentally incapable.
I find this very difficult to believe.
So if Biden wins, I'm not saying, oh, I'm not finding an excuse.
And the fact that they are the candidate shows how confident they are in electing anyone.
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That's why I'm not confident that Trump will win, because the research shows that more Hollywood celebrities are moving away, which doesn't seem like the right recipe.
It looks like a wrong recipe, the day after the election, everyone will ask themselves, what happened?
I don't think they can go unpunished with what they did in 2020.
Many rules change.
I think Republicans are, I hope, they are more, they know how to play better in the sense that it is as if not everyone will vote personally on the same day.
Just deal with it.
I don't see any evidence of change.
We've changed things at state level and we've tightened some things.
unidentified
Safe elections.
Florida will give an honest assessment.
I trust in the integrity of the electoral process tonight.
No, it's completely crazy here now. Yes, it's completely crazy, yes.
They have the bureaucracy.
I mean, they have the bureaucracy, the electoral officials and more.
I believe that this is what gives them confidence, to the point that Obama can have dinner with Biden and say, look, we need to fix your electoral campaign.
In a normal world, people would say that you're kind of dead.