“They're shutting down the #1 source of truth in Brazil,” Elon Musk posted on his X feed Friday. He was reacting to a ruling by Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Federal Court banning the platform until, as Fox Business reports:
“[A]ll related court orders on X were complied with, including the payment of fines amounting to 18.5 million reais ($3.28 million) and the nomination of a legal representative in Brazil. In a move to avoid the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) to get around the blockage, Moraes said that individuals or companies who tried to keep access to the social network could be fined up to 50,000 reais a day, which is equal to nearly $9,000.”
The ruling should hardly come as a surprise to students of how governments operate as they become more collectivist, and Brazil is a prime example. Moraes' actions have prompted even The New York Times to observe:
“He has jailed people without trial for posting threats on social media … ordered raids on businessmen with little evidence of wrongdoing; suspended an elected governor from his job; and unilaterally blocked dozens of accounts and thousands of posts on social media, with virtually no transparency or room for appeal.”
“Three months ago, I warned that free speech in Brazil was in danger of extinction by their Socialist Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes,” U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar, a daughter of Cuban exiles, declared on X. “Now with absurd pretexts, he is threatening to shut down X tonight, and censor @elonmusk. What else will Brazilians lose under Lula?”
Possibly everything.
It was Brazil's Supreme Court that annulled then-former/now current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's convictions for bribery and corruption, not because he didn't do it, but on “legal technicalities,” and set him free from prison so that the socialist politician could run—and win— against Jair Bolsonaro in 2022. And it's Moraes who has been “ordering investigations, detentions, and content removal without traditional due process” while “many targets of Moraes's orders are linked to former President Jair Bolsonaro or are vocal critics of the current administration.”
A leftist wins, “conservatives” like Bolsonaro and his supporters are branded dangerous rightwing extremists and set up for persecution, and their political speech is censored. Sound familiar?
Regular readers of my AmmoLand columns know how this has been made possible.
“Gun ownership went up. Killings went down,” The Washington Post reported on the results of Bolsonaro loosening gun restrictions. Then, unsurprisingly, the anti-gun WaPo effectively asked “Who are you going to believe—cherry-picked, doubt-casting ‘experts or your lying eyes?” Again, unsurprisingly, readers had to get deep into the weeds to see the admission “Analysts say it's too early to draw conclusions.”
“Brazil Will Condemn Itself to Repeat Past if ‘Anti-Gun' Lula Returns to Power,” I reported in 2021, with that “past” being what I cited in a 2006 GUNS Magazine column:
“Brazil's police ‘execute thousands'” the BBC headline declares… “A lot of these killings are quasi-executions, with shots to the head and the heart,” a representative of the human rights group Global Justice told The Houston Chronicle, which reported “police in Rio and its suburbs … have taken the lives of more than 4,000 people in the past five years … In the worst massacre in Rio's history, police officers gunned down 29 men, women and children on the night of March 31.”
Predictably, teleSUR dutifully gushed “Brazil's Lula: ‘Jobs And Books, Not Guns.'” It's what “the media” does.
I followed up my report with several others that documented my predictions unfolding:
- Brazil's Leftists Set Sights on Renewed Citizen Disarmament (Nov. 2022)
- Totally Unsurprisingly, Brazil Begins Gun Bans Ahead of Lula Inauguration (Jan. 2023)
- Brazil Returns to Gun Control of Old Under Socialist Dictator Lula (Jul. 2023)
So, naturally, as Sen. Ted Cruz reminds us, Joe Biden refers to Lula as “my friend and partner in democracy.” He also reminds us the NFL will be playing a game there (Eagles vs. Packers), and if it “gives a damn about the Constitution & free speech, they should cancel the game immediately.” (It doesn't, as my columns on its anti-gun stances have repeatedly shown, and in a richly ironic development, Eagles cornerback Darius Slay doesn't want to go because “They already told us not to leave the hotel. They told us we can't do too much going on, because the crime rate is crazy.”
So much for Lula's “commonsense gun safety laws.” Perhaps WaPo can get more criminologists to deny any connection.
There's a clear lesson here for anyone inclined to see it: Freedom is interconnected. If a government is not afraid to take your guns, why would it hesitate to suppress your speech?
We see it happening all over the world, a prime example being the UK, where a police commissioner has threatened to extradite and jail U.S. citizens for online speech. Once they perceive no personal cost, tyrannical maniacs will literally do anything.
And they have plenty of encouragement. Newsweek speculates “whether similar bans could occur in other parts of the world, particularly in the United States and Europe.”
To see who's for that, do an X search for @elonmusk and see all the posts by Democrats, painting him as the bad guy in this with every allegation, related or otherwise, they can throw at the guy. Of course, they want to see any platform that allows alternate ideas to their control freak demands not necessarily banned, just “repurposed” to their advantage.
They're the same ones who want your guns.
UPDATE
Per Red State, “Former Clinton Apparatchik Robert Reich: Elon Musk Should Be Threatened With Arrest for ‘Disinformation.'”
Find the original article in its entirety on AmmoLand.
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Obviously the NFL has no problem with what Brazil is doing.
Gee sure sounds like – let me guess/-the democraps!!!