Moraes creates freedom of expression mantra for censorship decisions

Federal Supreme Court (STF) Minister Alexandre de Moraes has repeated a mantra about freedom of expression in several censorship decisions published in recent months. Also present in the decision of Wednesday (14) that censored the influencer Monark, the mantra says, always in bold and with exclamations:

Freedom of speech is not freedom of aggression!
Freedom of expression is not freedom to destroy Democracy, Institutions and the dignity and honor of others!
Freedom of expression is not freedom to spread lying, aggressive, hateful and prejudiced speeches!

The first time these slogans appeared in a decision was in June last year, when Moraes blocked the accounts on social networks of the Partido da Causa Operária (PCO). In July of the same year, Moraes resumed the mantra by ordering the arrest of a man who made threats to authorities. In September, a decision that made Senator Magno Malta (PL-ES) defendant for statements against STF Minister Luís Roberto Barroso also contained the catchphrases.

This year, on January 11, Moraes repeated the mantra in the decision to block the social networks of several personalities – including Monark and deputy Nikolas Ferreira (PL-MG) – who, according to the minister, would have instigated the acts of 8/1 . In May, the mantra also appeared in the decision that threatened to suspend Telegram in Brazil.

Lawyer André Marsiglia, a specialist in freedom of expression, says that slogans of this type do not fit in judicial decisions. “Effective phrases convince through repetition; judicial decisions convince through the technical accuracy of the legal basis used”, he says.

For freedom of expression expert Pedro Franco, master in social history of culture at PUC-Rio and in interdisciplinary studies at New York University, “Moraes embarked on a moralistic crusade and has a sense of self-aggrandizement that needs to be sustained somehow way” and “the most efficient way to sustain this is by repeating the slogan”. “It’s the mantra he’s using to support this image that he’s doing the right thing. Because it has no legal value. The only purpose these phrases serve, in my eyes, is the psychological purpose of self-aggrandizement,” he adds. .

Franco recalls that in Brazil, during the military dictatorship, a similar discourse was adopted. “The justification for censorship was exactly like this. Only the wording was a little different. It is clear that those who use this language are the dictatorial regimes. There is no other definition for it there”, he says.

A 1970 decree, for example, stated that “publications and expressions contrary to morals and customs would not be tolerated” and that the use of certain means of communication obeyed “a subversive plan, which endangers national security”.

The repetition of slogans to fix concepts in the population’s imagination is one of the propagandistic weapons of dictatorial regimes. In North Korea, slogans in support of the regime are often posted on giant posters in cities. This advertising technique is often even parodied in science fiction literary works about totalitarian states, such as George Orwell’s “1984”.

Freedom of expression mantra shows distorted and dictatorial view of freedom of expression, says jurist

For Alessandro Chiarottino, professor of Constitutional Law and Doctor of Law from USP, the mantra of freedom of expression reveals in Moraes “a complete lack of knowledge of what the value of freedom of expression is”.

At the request of People’s Gazettehe commented on each of the three slogans that make up Moraes’ freedom of expression mantra.

Freedom of speech is not freedom of aggression!
Chiarottino: “Now, freedom of expression exists precisely so that people can express their annoyance, their nonconformity, their indignation, their revolt, peacefully, obviously, but verbally or in writing. And that expression of indignation, this expression of revolt or even anger, will always be an aggression against some value or some institution or some person, but it is licit. This is part of democracy, this is part of the concept of freedom of expression.”

Freedom of expression is not freedom to destroy Democracy, Institutions and the dignity and honor of others!
Chiarottino: “What is not possible in democracy is the use of force to destroy democratic institutions. But it is perfectly licit for me to have and express undemocratic conceptions. I am not one of those people, for example, who want to ban communist parties, parties socialists. These parties undoubtedly express and defend conceptions that are not democratic. But if we are democratic, if we are defenders of democracy, then it is up to us to defeat these ideas through dialogue, debate, demonstration that they would bring consequences that we don’t want. But don’t prohibit ideas. What Mr. Alexandre talks about here is the negation of democracy.”

Freedom of expression is not freedom to spread lying, aggressive, hateful and prejudiced speeches!
Chiarottino: “Having hatred and expressing it is licit in democracy, whether I’m right or not. It’s in the very conception of democracy that this system is strong enough to let all ideas come to the fore – as long as it’s peaceful, of course – and the free debate, the free examination of these ideas will be enough to purge the bad ideas and make only the good ideas survive, but not through prohibition.”

For the jurist, what Moraes is defending in this set of statements “is dictatorship”.

“It is the authoritarian regimes that have this conformation, that treat freedom of expression in this way. It is the fascist regimes, the socialist, communist regimes, the regimes prior to the liberal revolutions, they that treated freedom of expression in this way. This has nothing to do with it. to do with the liberal conception of freedom of expression. He also speaks in defense of dignity and honor. Now, for this there are already instruments in the Penal Code, in the Civil Code, if someone feels offended in his honor, in his image But what Mr. Alexandre wants – prohibiting ideas that he does not consider reasonable, the expression of ideas that he finds inappropriate –, this is dictatorship, pure and simple. If implemented, these visions of Mr. Alexandre de Moraes would mean the end of liberal state, the end of the rule of law and the end of democracy”, he concludes.