Elon Musk threatens to out top Brazil judge as alleged traitor – Fortune

Elon Musk has threatened to leak damaging evidence he believes will prove one of Brazils top judges has betrayed the country, escalating a showdown over the censorship of social media in the country.

The owner of X now finds himself squarely in the middle of a political struggle in Latin Americas largest economy, one that pits the forces of former President Jair Bolsonaro against the Lula da Silva government in Brasilia that the ex-president allegedly sought to bring down.

Bolsonaro is accused of hatching a plan in November 2022 to overturn hiselection defeatplans that included the arrest of supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes.

Weeks later, Bolsonaro supportersstormedthe countrys capital of Brasilia, flooding the congress, presidential palace, and supreme court in a Jan. 6style uprising that quickly failed.

Testimony from senior military commanders published last month implicated Bolsonaro, a Donald Trumpstyle populist, in acoup attempt.

One of theleading figuresin this ongoing conflict has been de Moraes. The president of the Superior Electoral Court has sought to clamp down on claims spread online by supporters of Bolsonaro that the October 2022 election was unjustly stolen from him.

In his latest move, de Moraes has opened an inquiry into X after Musk said he would no longer follow an order from the judge to block certain accounts thought to be linked to the pro-Bolosnaro push to overturn the election.

The spat comes after documents published by Twitter Files journalist Michael Shellenbergerallegedde Moraes sought to weaponize the platforms content moderation policies against supporters of Bolsonaro, still president at the time.

Following the publication of the documentsand de Moraess order to block certain accountsMusk called de Moraes Brazils Darth Vader on Sunday and said X will publish everything demanded by de Moraes and explicitly detail how those requests violate Brazilian law.

This judge has brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the constitution and people of Brazil, Musk posted on Sunday.He should resign or be impeached.

This isnt the first time Musk has had to grapple with requests from governments.

He was criticized last year for bowing to requests by the Turkish government to censor content on his platform ahead of Recep Tayyip Erdoans reelection victory.

This time, however, Musk has refused to comply with the demands by de Moraes and warned X would probably have to forfeit all revenue in Brazil and shut down its local operations.

Principles matter more than profit, he posted.

Musk has portrayed himself as a bulwark against the collapse of Western civilization brought on by people like de Moraes.

He argues Americansvery lives are at riskfrom diversity hiring and frets about declining birth rates and female depression fromhormonal birth control.

He also spreads fear of a deep socialist state led by Democrats cementing their control by gifting illegal immigrants a vote.

Most of all, he portrays himself as a crusader for free speech. When the figurehead of Germanys extreme right had to answer in court for deliberately using a forbidden Nazi slogan, he baited Musk into engaging with him online by claiming the government was suppressing his free speech.

The tycoon has received criticism, however, for an inconsistent approach.

He has threatened suspensions that are convenient to him politicallysuch as of X members who post about the decolonization ofPalestine, whose suspension could help end suspicion that Musk may himself beanti-Semiticor that lean heavily toward his values, such as of those X posters who use the term cis in a way Musk deemsoffensive.

Last month, a judgeruledMusks lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate was unabashedly and vociferously obvious about its intention to punish the CCDH for criticizing his management of Xfor using free speech against himas well as to dissuade others from doing so in the future.

Due to Musks uneven application of the term, Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, accused him inJanuaryof being the worlds biggest hypocrite on free speech.

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Elon Musk threatens to out top Brazil judge as alleged traitor - Fortune