“Deeply authoritarian and crazy about censorship”

The American journalist and co-founder of TheIntercept, Glenn Greenwald said that the minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), Alexandre de Moraes, is “profoundly authoritarian and crazy about censorship”.

The journalist made the statement when commenting on a publication in which Fernando Cerimedo – Argentine president Javier Milei’s campaign coordinator – mocked Moraes’ visit to Argentina.

“Brazil’s deeply authoritarian and censorship-crazy Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes (who effectively governs Brazil) is visiting Argentina this week. President Milei’s campaign manager welcomes him saying: No one will arrest you here for your opinions”, wrote Glenn Greenwald on the social network X when sharing Cerimedo’s comment.

“The genuinely alarming authoritarianism of this Supreme Court judge in Brazil is so extreme that even the NYT – obviously favoring Lula over Bolsonaro – sounded the alarm about him weeks before the 2022 elections,” added Greenwald by sharing an article in which the newspaper The New York Times asks whether the STF would not be going too far to “defend democracy”.

Moraes flew to Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, to participate in the Seminar “Updating the Brazilian Civil Code – Dialogue with the Argentine Civil Code”, promoted by the magazine Justiça e Cidadania. The event took place at the Faculty of Law of the University of Buenos Aires, between February 29th and March 1st.

When commenting on the minister’s visit, Milei’s marketer quipped: “Welcome, enjoy our country, our freedom and above all our steaks. Also visit Patagonia and our whales, no one will accuse you of seeing ‘too close’.”

“Here you can feel free to comment whatever you want. Even about the elections in our country (a foreign country for you) and about the conspiracy theory of the use of digital militias and Artificial Intelligence. No problem, do it for free, here no one will persecute you, censor your social networks, arrest you, lock you in jail with dangerous criminals and drug traffickers just for giving your opinion, enter your home or hotel to look for information like what we did to journalists and much less to prosecute them in court. Feel free, and enjoy this freedom to question, ask and even think about conspiratorial things, here you will be free to do so. You can even ask for the source code of our systems, just like I did before this election, and they can also show you”, said Cerimedo in another part of the message.