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The opposition has been accusing the mingling of Lula’s party (PT) and the Supreme Court some time. Last month, PT congressmen Lindberg Farias and Rogério Correia confirmed the joint action between their party and the judiciary. The situation was as follows: congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the former president and main articulator of the Brazilian right-wing lobby in the U.S., wanted to take over a House committee for international affairs. He just needed that his party would nominate him. However, the press began publishing leaks according to which the Supreme Court, who judges everyone, did not look favorably on Eduardo Bolsonaro’s nomination for such a committee.

The PT congressmen then asked the Supreme Court to seize Eduardo Bolsonaro’s passport, claiming that he was in the U.S. plotting against Brazilian institutions. The congressmen’ critics quickly said that the “institution” he wanted to protect was called Alexandre de Moraes. This is the most prominent Justice of Supreme Court, whom the Bolsonarists in Florida want to sanction with the Magnitisky Act – a kind of financial death penalty applied from the USA. Then, Alexandre de Moraes himself asked the Attorney General’s Office to analyze the PT congressmen’ request (a fact celebrated by Lindbergh Farias on X with a suggestive image.)

Faced with insecurity, Eduardo Bolsonaro decided to give up his mandate and stay in the USA to lobby. Hours later, the Attorney General’s Office denied the PT congressmen’ request. Then, the two PT congressmen recorded a video celebrating Eduardo Bolsonaro’s decision and the consequence that he would not preside over the Chamber committee. Rogério Correia said: “It is obvious that, if he returned to Brazil, Alexandre de Moraes, at our request, would confiscate his passport and he would not be able to return to the United States.” All the efforts of the press to portray the “institutions” as purely technical entities were vehemently contradicted.

The clash between Bolsonarism and Alexandre de Moraes takes place within a broader framework, which is that of “defending democracy”. With varying degrees of reasonableness, the opposition has been saying for a long time that Brazil lives under a dictatorship of the Supreme Court. The establishment, on the other hand, has been saying that the Supreme Court protects democracy from the threat of a coup. The crucial event for both narratives is the riot of January 8, 2023. It is a repeat of the invasion of the Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021. As in the U.S., there was an effort to memorialize the date. There was even talk of creating a Museum of Democracy. According to the hegemonic narrative, the protesters were trying to carry out a coup d’état. That is why the sentences are quite severe. And the emblematic case is that of hairdresser Débora, who received a 14-year sentence and spent one year in prison away from her children. What did she actually do? He wrote “You lost, idiot” with lipstick on the concrete statue that represents the Justice goddess.

The phrase, which even became an entry on Wikipedia, is an allusion to Supreme Court Justice Luís Roberto Barroso. A Zionist Jew appointed by Dilma Rousseff, he is arguably the most woke Justice on the Supreme Court. In 2022, shortly after the presidential election, he was staying in New York for a juridical event organized by a businessman and liberal politician who was also Brazilian (João Doria) and who betrayed both of his political godfathers (first Geraldo Alckmin and then Jair Bolsonaro). As the New York gathering sparked outrage on the right, Brazilian immigrants went to protest against the Justice. To one of the protesters holding a camera, Barroso said: “You lost, idiot. Don’t bother me.” In Brazil, this is a phrase used by thieves after the robbery – and the Right accused the Electoral Court, in practice submissive to the Supreme Court, of having stolen the election.

As in the rich West, Brazil is bothered by the impunity of violent criminals. Here it is probably worse, because the violence is greater and older. Even so, Lula thought it was a good idea to describe robbers as young people who just want to have a beer. Thus, it is clear that sentencing hairdresser Débora to 14 years in prison has the potential to generate great popular commotion. However, alienated, the establishment believed that it could force down the population’s throats – in the midst of a painful food inflation – the story that defending “democracy” is an extremely urgent task that must be carried out with all rigor.

On the other side, the versions varied greatly, but it can be said that the main accusation is that we live under a dictatorship of the judiciary because there is no freedom speech (understood in the radical sense of the First Amendment, which does not exist in Brazil) and because the Supreme Court does whatever it wants (such as, for example, judging protesters in batches, without individualizing sentences). The latter justification is convincing; the first, however, would make all countries in the world, except the USA, a dictatorship, including Brazil under the Bolsonaro government. Just as on the left there are those who are alienated and talk about democracy in the midst of food inflation, on the right there are those who are alienated and talk about free speech in the midst of food inflation.

The Right’s demand has been amnesty for those accused of the coup d’étar – which includes Bolsonaro himself. In fact, the Right has managed to mobilize public opinion against the Supreme Court, especially in light of the case of hairdresser Débora. On March 21, Alexandre de Moraes voted to sentence Débora to 14 years in prison, plus a fine of R$50,000 (which is equivalent to 33 minimum wages) and collective compensation of R$30 million to be paid with the other convicted individuals. After the repercussions and Minister Fux’s opposing speeches, on March 28th the Attorney General’s Office requested that Débora be placed under house arrest, and Alexandre de Moraes accepted. On March 30, as if confirming the fears of the more moderate wing of the establishment, the demonstration against the amnesty called by the eft was a fiasco.

Taken together, the Brazilian political scenario is discouraging because all relevant sides are repeating some kind of rhetoric invented by the CIA. Let’s look at the protesters: they took to the streets because they believed in the fairy tale that the people, by holding “democratic” demonstrations, have the capacity to overthrow “undemocratic” regimes. Readers interested in geopolitics will think of color revolutions, but in Brazil this is a repeat of 1964: the “people in the streets” asked the Army to save Brazil from the alleged communist threat – and the military staged a coup together with Congress to establish a “democratic” regime. In reality, the March with God for Family and Property was hatched by USAID and had broad support from Brazil’s liberal newspaper-owning elites. The march was irrelevant to the coup itself; it served only to fit the CIA’s script, which includes popular demonstrations as “democratic” legitimization. When Bolsonaro supporters asked for military intervention to save “democracy” without the support of Brazil’s liberal elites and the CIA, they ended up in jail. Well, now the CIA and liberal newspapers want to save “democracy” by empowering the Supreme Court to persecute any opponent who engages in “hate speech,” “informational disorder,” “misinformation,” etc.

However, U.S. intelligence does not have a single doctrine, as it supports both woke liberalism and “conservative” liberalism (think of William Buckley, a former CIA agent), and even anarcho-capitalism (but that’s a topic for the next text). Thus, the liberal-conservative discourse adopted by Eduardo Bolsonaro, in defense of the First Amendment, has as its logical result the legality of the most abject propaganda on national soil. Not to mention racial hatred and gender ideology, let us just remember that in the U.S. the First Amendment authorizes lobbying in defense of pedophilia and there is even an organized pedophile movement (NAMBLA). In England, the pedophile association was given special leniency during the government of liberal-conservative (and abortion advocate) Margaret Thatcher. How can we demand the First Amendment and be against the sale of drugs, if drug dealers have the right to promote an entire drug subculture through music?

Censorship is a civilizing force. Therefore, liberal-conservative propaganda, which portrays it as a great evil, is barbaric and harmful.