Bolsonaro supporters in ‘free speech’ rally following Brazil’s X ban

Supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro have flooded Sao Paulo’s main boulevard for an Independence Day rally, buoyed by the government’s blocking of tech billionaire Elon Musk’s X platform.

They say the ban on the social media site is proof of their political persecution.

A few thousand demonstrators, clad in the yellow-and-green colours of Brazil’s flag, poured onto Av Paulista, with references to the ban on X and images of Mr Musk abounding.

One banner praising the tech entrepreneur read: “Thank you for defending our freedom.”

Saturday’s march is a test of Mr Bolsonaro’s capacity to mobilise turnout ahead of municipal elections next month, even though Brazil’s electoral court has barred him from running for office until 2030.

It is also something of a referendum on X, whose suspension has raised eyebrows even among some of Mr Bolsonaro’s opponents, while stoking the flames of Brazil’s deep-seated political polarisation.

“A country without liberty can’t celebrate anything this day,” Mr Bolsonaro wrote on his Instagram account on Wednesday, urging Brazilians to stay away from official independence day parades and instead join him in Sao Paulo.

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered X’s nationwide ban on August 30 after months of feuding with Mr Musk over the limits of free speech.

The powerful judge has spearheaded efforts to ban far-right users from spreading misinformation on social media, and he ramped up his clampdown after die-hard Bolsonaro supporters ransacked Congress and the presidential palace on January 8 2023, in an attempt to overturn Mr Bolsonaro’s defeat in the presidential election.

The ban is red meat to Mr Bolsonaro’s allies, who have accused the judiciary and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government of colluding to silence their movement.

“Elon Musk has been a warrior for freedom of speech,” staunch Bolsonaro ally and legislator Bia Kicis said in an interview. “The right is being oppressed, massacred, because the left doesn’t want the right to exist.”

Mr Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist”, has also urged Brazilians to turn out in droves for the rally, resharing someone else’s post claiming that X’s ban had awakened people “to the fact that freedom isn’t free and needs to be fought for”.

He has also created an X account to publish sealed court orders directing X to shut down accounts deemed unlawful.

But Judge De Moraes’ decision to ban X was far from arbitrary, having been upheld by fellow Supreme Court justices.

And while expression, online and elsewhere, is more easily censored under Brazil’s laws than it is in the US, Mr Musk has emerged as both a cause celebre and a mouthpiece for unrestricted free speech.

Since 2019, X has shut down 226 accounts of far-right activities accused of undermining Brazil’s democracy, including those of legislators affiliated with Mr Bolsonaro’s party, according to court records.

But when it refused to take action on some accounts, Judge de Moraes warned last month that its legal representative could be arrested, prompting X to disband its local office.

The US-based company refused to name a new representative – as required in order to receive court notices – and Judge de Moraes ordered its nationwide suspension until it did so.

A Supreme Court panel unanimously upheld Judge de Moraes’ decision to block X days later, undermining Mr Musk’s efforts to cast him as an authoritarian bent on censoring political speech.

The more controversial component of his ruling was the levy of a whopping 9,000-dollar daily fine (£6,838) for regular Brazilians using virtual private networks (VPNs) to access X.

“Some of these measures that have been adopted by the Supreme Court appear to be quite onerous and abusive,” said Andrei Roman, CEO of Brazil-based pollster Atlas Intel.

The march in Sao Paulo is organized in parallel to official events to celebrate Brazil’s anniversary of independence from Portugal. Commemorations have been fraught with tension in recent years, as Mr Bolsonaro used them while in office to rally supporters and show political strength.