Elon Musk Leads Far Right Propaganda Blitz On Brazil’s Democracy

Post date April 10, 2024 With all the bullshit money can buy, the Tesla billionaire is instigating a digital proto-coup, reminiscent of what happened on social networks in early 2013 – but this time those behind it are in plain sight.

January 8 2023 was not a new coup attempt as is most often depicted, but the desperate, failed last stand of the one fomented and consolidated between 2013 and 2018. A year later Brazilians have taken to the streets to demand that there be no amnesty for its perpetrators.

The Supreme Court effectively halted a coup attempt, designed to prevent elected president Lula da Silva from taking office, led

In the wake of Supreme Court investigation and prosecution of the key plotters, a new proto-coup is being fomented in the most re

In early April 2024 Elon Musk-allied anti-environmental activist and public relations professional Michael D. Shellenberger launched “Twitter Files Brazil”. Billed as a bombshell leak it was in fact a tepid fantasy, built using cherry picked information from the company’s own emails, misinterpretation of Brazilian law, and blatant

As a measure of the publication’s accuracy, what climate change denier Shellenberger depicted as Supreme Court Minister Alexandre de Moraes’ threat to arrest Twitter Brasil’s lawyer was shown

(Shellenberger later, and in Portuguese, admitted his “mistake” and apologized for it, but not before the lie had circulated to millions who would never see his admission.)

News had emerged that X/Twitter was part of Supreme Court investigations into January 8, and so called Fake News inquiry. At time of writing it has been reported that telecoms regulator Anatel has already told operators to prepare for formal removal of X/Twitter from Brazilian networks.

The resulting distractive wall of noise was intended to defend both Musk’s business interests, and the far right figures which now act as his Brazilian sentinels, such as arrest-threatened Jair Bolsonaro himself.

Shellenberger and other Musk outriders had attempted to build a narrative that Brazil is now an “

In a glaring double standard, Musk has taken down accounts deemed illegal in Europe and complied with almost all government demands in Modi’s

A spurious “

This use of the “

Senator Randolfe Rodrigues remarked: “The spoiled neo-fascist decided to double down and attack the President of the Republic. The goal is to have X suspended in Brazil

Researcher Nina Santos told Wired magazine: “They are trying to use Brazil as a laboratory on how to interfere in local politics.”

Follow the Lithium

As Musk himself said regarding the US and UK backed antidemocratic attack on lithium rich Bolivia, “We will coup whoever we want”.

In 2023 Chinese electric car manufacturer

It was then reported

There are other business incentives for Musk in a pliant entreguista, Bolsonaro-style government, besides lithium.

Two months prior to Musk’s attacks it was announced that R$8bn government contracts with his Starlink communication satellite system for use in schools, hastily drawn up before Bolsonaro left office, were now to be reviewed. Now they are set to be cancelled with haste. Starlink equipment was earlier found to be being used

Last but not least the Alcantara space base in Maranhão state, hugely attractive for Space X launches, was offered to Musk in 2022

The intent behind Musk’s brazen intervention in South American politics is most clearly demonstrated

Legislation

Musk’s attacks have strengthened calls for regulation of social networks, and revived legislative proposals for new laws against so called “fake news” of which “Twitter Files Brazil” is a prime example.

The biggest opponents of expanding legal controls on disinformation are of course the Brazilian far right, who, for example, have called to decriminalise apologia for Naziism, such as the right to call for the creation of a Brazilian Nazi party. This is what US free speech absolutists are defending in Brazil.

Within this noise also lurks a dishonest false equivalency, to take far-right operation Lava Jato prosecutors using anti-constitutional and illegal lawfare strategies as the basis for a coup and control of political outcomes, as they did between 2014-2018, and equating with the Supreme Court now constitutionally punishing those responsible for an attempted violent far right coup d’etat.

But such is the maelstrom of compounded brain damage that Musk’s X platform has become nowadays, that many are falling for such fallacies.

Given that the January 8 putschists planned to kidnap and possibly murder de Moraes as part of their January 8 coup attempt, you may forgive him for having skin in this game, but depiction of the minister as if “Lula’s man” is wildly inaccurate, given he was appointed

Tucker Carlson favourite Glenn Greenwald, who has provided no insight or useful analysis on Brazil for five years, has intervened on Musk’s side and fed far-right conspiracy theories. Greenwald’s attacks on de Moraes began approximately when the Supreme Court Minister became arch nemesis of then president Bolsonaro and Lava Jato judge Sérgio Moro, Lula’s jailer now impeachment threatened senator. It was only then, during Bolsonaro’s catastrophic presidency, that Moraes gained supporters on the left as an unlikely anti fascist ally, despite being a right wing figure who had voted to deny Lula Habeas Corpus thus removing him from the 2018 election race while front runner, opening the way for Bolsonaro. It is easy to envisage him regretting that vote now, of course.

Yet to personalise it at all, as many are doing, even in de Moraes’ defence, is to enter the fascists’ rhetorical trap.

It is not an individual, but Brazil’s democratic institutions that are under attack, as was the case on January 8 2023, and for which the perpetrators are being legally and rightfully prosecuted.

There is tragicomedy in seeing vocal supporters of the 1964-85 dictatorship, which tortured and disappeared countless opponents, exiled artists and murdered

In addition, support for Musk in Brazil is one of the purest and most pathetic expressions of Viralatismo, or stray dog complex, ever observed. This plays perfectly into his inherently racist white saviour self

However, many if not most Brazilians expressed a desire to see Musk punished.

Veteran

Amid the ensuing backlash, Musk, with all the geopolitical imagination of an eleven year old, posted an AI generated

Pushback

In the days prior to Musk attacks, an Oliver Stuenkel article in Foriegn Policy fed far right conspiracy theories that the CIA were somehow behind Lula’s election. On the contrary, it was behind his jailing and Bolsonaro’s election, something Stuenkel and his like have never acknowledged. Such inversion of reality is becoming commonplace.

Naive assumptions that the Biden administration would oppose Bolsonaro for anything other than his direct connection to Trump, exposes the probability that a less embarrassing far right president, such as São Paulo governor Tarcisio, would be entirely palatable to DEM and GOP alike. The Biden administration sent multiple delegations to visit Bolsonaro and normalise relations prior to the 2022 election, which they then publicly insisted would be free and fair.

Lawyer and analyst Walfrido Warde of the nonpartisan IREE think tank remarked: “No one becomes the owner of a spaceship factory and social networks without the

Musk’s moves are no gaffe, and need to be viewed in the context of a far right pushback in Latin America, whose front facing activity is conducted via private entities but ultimately serves US and North Atlantic allies re

They call it “letting others lead” and it isn’t new; after all US Business bankrolled Brazil’s 1964 coup via the nascent Council of the Americas, and during 2013-18 it the likes of Koch’s Atlas Network and US hedge funds channeling dollars to far right golpista activists and organisations.

But even as the social media storm in Brazil raged, Council of the Americas’ own Eric Farnsworth called for COA member X/Twitter to ban Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from the platform, with almost zero repercussion. Freedom of speech, again evidently no issue. Also absent is any comparison between Brazilian Supreme Court calling for X/Twitter compliance and accountability, and US efforts to force Chinese competitor TikTok’s sale to a US company in “defence of democracy”. Other countries are evidently expected to welcome the manic whims of US tech oligarchs with guns trained on their democracies.

Meanwhile the Biden administration can plant feel good stories about how they helped avert a coup in Brazil, having orchestrated the rise to power of the regime it was defending, and with the seeds of another already planted.