Michael Shellenberger
Just a day and a half ago, things seemed to be calming down in Brazil. Folha de São Paulo published an editorial against censorship. The president of the Brazilian Bar Association made a strong statement in support of freedom of expression. And the president of Brazil’s Supreme Court said that the conflict between Brazil and X, formerly known as Twitter, was over. “Sometimes people make rants,” he said, “but they don’t implement their statements.”
All that has changed once again. Yesterday, Brazil’s president, Lula, called for the criminalization of lies. Given that everyone lies, Lula proposes giving the government the power to arrest whoever it wants. Thousands of Workers’ Party activists went to X yesterday to demand that I be arrested for things I said during my testimony before the Brazilian Senate. And today, the head of X in Brazil announced that he has resigned, fearing for his safety.
I’m not afraid for myself. As I said at X a few days ago, I fear neither the devil nor Alexandre de Moraes. I’m taking all the necessary precautions to ensure that I can leave Brazil safely and without being arrested. You can help by sharing this video and spreading the word about what’s happening here.
And yet Brazil terrifies me. I love this country and its people and I fear that they are on the verge of totalitarianism. A significant part of the Left wants to imprison its political enemies. Respected Brazilian journalists say seriously that the government must practice mass censorship to protect democracy. Brazil is everything George Orwell feared and worse. The Brazilian government seems to see “1984” not as a warning about a dystopia to be avoided, but as a guide to a better future.
I would be less worried if Brazil were a small, irrelevant country, but it’s not. Brazil is the largest and most important nation in Latin America. Just this week, a delegation from the Workers’ Party, President Lula’s party, was in China talking about how China, one of the most totalitarian in the world, is a model for Brazil. Brazil is an inspiration for the European totalitarians who have instrumentalized government intelligence agencies to spread disinformation about their political enemies and are implementing a censorship system to control the entire Internet.
The scariest part of all this is the marriage of psychopathic government leaders like Lula and de Moraes with totalitarian activists and voters. Governments have managed to brainwash a significant percentage of the population into supporting mass censorship. Young adults raised on social media are more intolerant today than the students of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in China, who denounced their teachers and were consequently sent by the government to labor camps to be tortured.
At the same time, people with a similar mentality to those who ran the Stasi and the Gestapo are in charge of intelligence agencies in Europe and the United States.
Yesterday, the US House of Representatives extended the law that gives the US government the right to spy on Americans suspected of collaborating with foreign governments. The result will be Macarthyism with anabolic steroids. The FBI will be able to spy on any American citizen who dares to criticize the war in Ukraine. The US government will label people who oppose the endless wars in Eurasia as “political extremists”, ruining their careers, or even worse.
During the rise of communism and fascism in Europe, many Jews and other persecuted people were able to flee to the United States. Where will we flee to if the United States continues down the path of totalitarianism? Not to Europe. Not to Brazil. Is any country safe in a world where our every move, transaction and thought is monitored?
I keep hoping that the totalitarian spiral will finally hit rock bottom, but it never does. I’m an optimistic person by nature, but sometimes that means I tend to have positive thoughts. This positive thinking is dangerous and even irresponsible at times like this. The same goes for passivity.
We must take action. That starts with standing up to the bullies, all those who are cowards inside. Elon Musk stood up to Moraes’ bully last week and seems to be standing his ground. Tonight he will hold a Spaces event with the controversial former president of Brazil, who the Supreme Court has barred from running again for another eight years.
My colleagues and I are building a new movement for freedom of expression. All the organizations we relied on to defend human rights, including Anisitia International, Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, have been taken over by totalitarians who demand censorship. We’re meeting in London in June. We are starting our own NGOs all over the world.
We can’t do this alone. Please share this post, consider subscribing to my publication, called Public, and make a donation. People are risking their lives to defend the freedom of expression of all human beings. You don’t have to risk your life, but we desperately need your help. Things aren’t calming down and they won’t until we stand up to the tyrants and remove every single one of them from power.
*** Translated by DEFCONPress FYI Team ***