Moraes mocks fake news about communism in the country – 10/06/2023 – Power

STF (Supreme Federal Court) minister Alexandre de Moraes mocked the “communist threat” in the country — commonly used by former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and his supporters — and said that the subject “gets a lot of buzz.”

The statement took place during an event at the São Paulo State Court of Auditors this Friday (6).

The minister also cited false news that Venezuela had invaded Acre and stated that “99% of the people who speak don’t even know what communism is.”

“The 1% that knows, knows that there is no longer communism. China is communist, but it is more capitalist than us. [Vladimir] Is Putin the king of communism? [Quando] You talk about communism, especially older people, it’s a business… [Quando perguntadas] why are they against such a thing, [respondem]: ‘Because they are going to install communism in Brazil’.”

The judge stated at the event that, around the world, attacking democracy no longer generates buzz.

“We are not going to say: ‘let’s close Congress’, ‘let’s carry out a coup’. No. We are going to be the ‘great defenders of democracy’, of freedom. Not for anything else, freedom without limits has come to be defined. Freedom to do whatever you want. And we are going to attack an instrument that guarantees democracy, it is the second pillar and great pillar of Western democracies: elections.”

Moraes continued stating that today it is “bad” to speak against the elections and has started to point out fraud. “There [nos EUA] if attacked what? Vote by letter. ‘They are fraud’ and ‘there was fraud’. In Brazil, the electronic voting machine was attacked. If the vote here were on paper, it would attack the paper. ‘It has to be an electronic ballot box’. If the vote was by smoke signal, they would attack the smoke signal,” he said.

The minister stated that it was only possible to discredit the elections because, with the help of social networks, it was possible to confuse fake news with news published in the professional media. In the midst of the statement, Moraes also joked that, if cell phones were removed from Brazil, productivity would increase. Those present laughed.

At the event, the magistrate also cited attacks on members of the Judiciary, including himself, and his family members.

“Attacking the Judiciary alone, talking about an institution becomes a little ethereal. You have to personify and find within the institution an enemy of flesh and blood because then you personify it. In the case in Brazil it was flesh, blood and no hair. A prejudice. You impersonate and you keep hitting, you keep hitting because it makes you laugh. It’s a soap opera. There is no soap opera where the villain is an institution. It has to be a person.”

For Moraes, the Constitution provided all the instruments so that institutions, especially the Judiciary, had “independence and autonomy to react to these attacks” on democracy.

Still at the event, the minister said that since the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution, Brazil has experienced “the greatest period of democratic stability in its republican history”. Moraes pointed out that, in 35 years, perhaps Brazil, among the largest democracies, is the one that suffered the most attacks and had problems, but they were overcome due to the “strengthening that the Constitution gave to its institutions”.

Moraes mentioned that the country has recently suffered attacks on democracy and stated that Brazilian institutions were able to respond. “We had an election, we had inauguration, we had January 8th and we are here on October 6th in democracy and the Rule of Law, thanks to the institutional strengthening of State bodies”, he declared.

Due to this institutional strengthening, said the minister, a new form of action emerged: attacks in conjunction with the use of social networks.

The minister declared that social media algorithms were also modified to “win the voter, transform the voter into a mass of maneuver and, regrettably, into a political fanatic”, creating bubbles that reproduce hate speech.

“It’s true brainwashing. The algorithm perceives your interest bias and, from there, it induces information, in an attack on democracy.”