The Media Research Center has stayed silent about Elon Musk using his Twitter/X to engage in election interference — despite screaming “election interference!” at any other social media platform who did many of the same things — instead clinging to its longtime Musk–fluffing agenda. One thing it did instead was continued to fret over Twitter/X facing sanctions in Brazil for not addressing disinformation spread by far-right activists aimed at destabilizing the democratically elected government there. Catherine Salgado played stenographer for Musk’s victim act in an Aug. 16 post:
The Brazilian Supreme Court, as part of its war against free speech, has reportedly punished another of Elon Musk’s companies for his refusal to censor more on X.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes has been in a power struggle with X that resulted in him effectively banning the platform in Brazil since the company refused to comply with overreaching censorship orders. De Moraes’s court has reportedly gone so far as to seize about $2 million from Musk’s Starlink company and over $1 million from X to punish him and his companies.
X Global Government Affairs stated that X refused to censor De Moraes’s political opponents, including an elected senator, despite the Justice’s demands, and so faces massive fines. One of those demands reportedly required that X have a “duly authorized legal representative,” Reclaim the Net reported. But X Global Government Affairs posted that it previously did have Brazillian legal representation until Judge de Moraes “threatened” her with “imprisonment” and later “froze all of her bank accounts” after she resigned. By seizing assets from Starlink De Moraes has now tied X’s suspension to Starlink’s ability to operate in Brazil.
Musk posted on September 4 in response to the Starlink assets freeze, “There is no legal basis for this whatsoever. Starlink is a different company with different shareholders. Moraes, the charlatan in judges robes, cannot even cite a law that Starlink has broken!”
An Aug. 19 post by Salgado cheered Musk’s take-his-ball-and-go-home approach:
Elon Musk’s X platform shut down its office in Brazil as the government attempted to coerce censorship.
Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes and Musk had spent months battling over online free speech, with Musk refusing the justice’s aggressive and extensive censorship demands. On Saturday, X’s Global Government Affairs announced its decision to close the Brazil office due to De Moraes’s shocking threats to X staff over alleged “disinformation” on the platform. X is still available to Brazilians, however.
“The decision to close the 𝕏 office in Brazil was difficult, but, if we had agreed to @alexandre’s (illegal) secret censorship and private information handover demands, there was no way we could explain our actions without being ashamed,” Musk commented on X.
[…]It continued that numerous appeals to the Supreme Court went unheard despite Brazilian staff having no responsibility or control over content moderation. Instead, Moraes chose to “threaten” X’s staff in Brazil “rather than respect the law or due process.” This, the Global Government Affairs X account lamented, led the platform to shut down the Brazilian operation “effective immediately.”
Salgado didn’t ask why there aren’t any native Brazilians involved in content moderation in Brazil.
Tom Olohan tried to drag George Soros into it in a Sept. 3 post:
Soros-funded Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison appeared to celebrate a Brazilian censorship campaign, which culminated in the ban of an entire social media platform.
Ellison wrote “obrigado Brasil!” — which means “thank you, Brazil” in Portuguese” in a Sept. 2 post on X. That same day, Brazil’s Supreme Court upheld a decision shutting down X’s operations in Brazil. This order includes thousands of dollars in draconian daily fines for anyone using a VPN to access the platform.
Ellison’s apparent celebration of this severe attack on free speech reflects his political agenda. As one of 126 prosecutors financially backed by leftist billionaire George Soros, Ellison has shown blatant disregard for American values such as freedom of speech.
Olohan offered no evidence that Brazil is trying to “ban” X — Musk willingly chose to shut down operations there. Nor did he cite anything Soros allegedly did to play a role in the controversy — it’s as if he know merely invoking Soros generates right-wing clicks.
The next day, Luis Cornelio touted Musk’s partisan attack on de Moraes:
The social media platform X has unveiled the “Alexandre Files,” similar to the “Twitter Files,” exposing the draconian court rules that crippled its operations in Brazil.
Released as a thread on Sunday and expanded over the following days, the evidence delved into the origins of the legal battle between X owner Elon Musk and Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
At the core of the legal dispute is Musk’s courageous refusal to censor Brazilian personalities and politicians, who de Moraes claims threaten Brazil’s democracy. Also, de Moraes requested Musk hire a Brazil-based legal team, orders that have gone unanswered.
Among the targeted accounts is that of Sen. Marcos do Val, a member of the center-right party Podemos (We Can, in English). De Moraes ordered X to censor do Val after he raised grave allegations against de Moraes and the Brazilian police, the thread asserted.
Cornelio didn’t mention that there was reason to believe that do Val had alleged participation in a plot to overthrow the Brazilian government, led by former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro. The MRC has previously cheered Bolsonaro for supporting “free speech” in Brazil, even though he enacted laws that would permit the arrest of his critics.
Salgado served up more pro-Musk and anti-Brazil stenography in a Sept. 16 post:
The Brazilian Supreme Court, as part of its war against free speech, has reportedly punished another of Elon Musk’s companies for his refusal to censor more on X.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes has been in a power struggle with X that resulted in him effectively banning the platform in Brazil since the company refused to comply with overreaching censorship orders. De Moraes’s court has reportedly gone so far as to seize about $2 million from Musk’s Starlink company and over $1 million from X to punish him and his companies.
X Global Government Affairs stated that X refused to censor De Moraes’s political opponents, including an elected senator, despite the Justice’s demands, and so faces massive fines. One of those demands reportedly required that X have a “duly authorized legal representative,” Reclaim the Net reported. But X Global Government Affairs posted that it previously did have Brazillian legal representation until Judge de Moraes “threatened” her with “imprisonment” and later “froze all of her bank accounts” after she resigned. By seizing assets from Starlink De Moraes has now tied X’s suspension to Starlink’s ability to operate in Brazil.
Musk posted on September 4 in response to the Starlink assets freeze, “There is no legal basis for this whatsoever. Starlink is a different company with different shareholders. Moraes, the charlatan in judges robes, cannot even cite a law that Starlink has broken!”
In fact, Musk has ownership stakes in both companies. Also, The seizing of the money was not to “punish” Musk — it was to pay a fine, coupled with the fact that X also failed to name a local legal representative as required by Brazilian law and ignored a deadline for compliance with court orders. Afterwards, the companies’ assets were unfrozen. Salgado hid the fact that this all happened three days before her post was published.
Salgado imposed her employer’s bogus “censorship” narrative on this story in a Sept. 20 post:
A group of Republican lawmakers are calling on the U.S. State Department to take a decisive stand against Brazil’s campaign to crush free speech online.
Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) and three other congressmen wrote a Sept. 18 letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, addressing Brazilian Supreme Court Chief Justice Alexandre de Moraes’s censorship campaign and vendetta against American company X. The lawmakers urged Blinken to deny or revoke existing visas for de Moraes and any of his colleagues complicit in the un-American effort to silence free speech online.
[…]Unfortunately, the State Department is unlikely to protest the persecution of X in Brazil, as the federal agency is also accused of funding entities that promote censorship through its Global Engagement Center.
A couple weeks later, though, Musk ultimately backed down by agreeing to block certain accounts, pay its outstanding fines and establish a legal representative in the country in order to make X live again (though there was a delay because X wired its fine to the wrong financial institution). The MRC was completely silent about that.