How does a judge ban one of the world’s biggest social-media platforms, nakedly target political opponents and repress reporting on his involvement in the biggest corruption scandal in his country’s history, and still get to be portrayed as a champion of democracy? Only, it seems, if the journalist is working for the New Yorker.
In April, the leading American magazine hailed Alexandre de Moraes as ‘The Brazilian judge taking on the digital far right’. Moraes, whose most notorious achievements to date include banning X and driving political opponents into exile, was presented as the only thing standing between his country and autocracy. According to journalist John Lee Anderson, Moraes is a ‘pugnacious jurist’ who has repeatedly saved his country from ‘digital militias’. The article even described the judge as ‘conspicuously fit’ and praised his ‘sharp cheekbones’.
It’s a good thing this terrible article was published in America, rather than Brazil, which remains in a well of authoritarianism that Moraes is in no small part responsible for. For many Brazilians, Moraes’s unprecedented assault on free speech is a fresh and depressing memory.
Most Brazilians received their first taste of his authoritarian streak in 2022, the year current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated Jair Bolsonaro. Many Brazilians took to the streets to protest the result, centering on the capital, Brasilia. While the protests had an uncomfortable whiff of America’s ‘January 6’ riots the previous year, ordinary voters were right to feel a little aggrieved. ‘Lula’ had served just over 18 months of a 12-year prison term after he was convicted of corruption, before his charges were overturned by a Supreme Court that now included Moraes, a longstanding political ally.
The riots that occurred in Brasilia in January 2023 were serious, but hardly the threat to democracy and national security they were made out to be. For example, it occurred on a Sunday, meaning government buildings were largely empty. Critically, Bolsonaro wasn’t even in the country – he was in Florida, where he had been since losing the election.
Hellbound and Down 