“STF at School” goes beyond functions and generates fear of ideological indoctrination

In the last week of February, the Federal Supreme Court launched the “STF at School” program which, according to the President of the Court, Minister Rosa Weber, aims to bring the Supreme Court closer to the school environment and combat “disinformation” against the Judiciary.

The initiative is part of Program to Combat Misinformation of the STF, created in 2021 during Luiz Fux’s presidency, which has 56 partner institutions, including NGOs, representative associations, checking agencies and public universities. The idea is that these institutions replicate the stf at school in the states to expand its reach.

The program includes lectures with civil servants and even ministers of the STF, distribution of printed materials, writing competitions and visits by students to the Court.

When speaking at the launch event of the program, Minister Rosa Weber mentioned the episodes of vandalism to the buildings of the Three Powers, on January 8, and said that the stf at school aims to “break the chain of disinformation”, “contribute to strengthening the institutional image of the Supreme Court and increase the credibility of the Court in society”.

“The program was created to react to practices aimed at affecting people’s trust in this Federal Supreme Court, undermining its credibility, including distorting or changing the meaning of its decisions, as well as to combat actions of various natures that put risk fundamental rights and put pressure on democratic stability,” said the minister.

According to Rosa Weber, the Judiciary’s action against misinformation began in 2018 after intensifying criticism of the electronic voting machines used in Brazil. The STF, according to her, also became a target, and some decisions of the Court would have been misrepresented or distorted. “You only love what you know”, added the minister when defending the Court’s closeness to the school community.

Despite the appeal of misinformation, the measure is also part of a strategy to mitigate the negative image that the majority of the Brazilian population has of the Court. According to a survey by Datafolha released in December last year, only 31% of Brazilians approve of the work of the STF. In 2020, approval reached just 19%, which has motivated a series of initiatives by the Court to reverse the situation.

Extrapolation of Judiciary functions

In the assessment of professor of Constitutional Law and Doctor of Law at the University of São Paulo (SP), Antônio Jorge Pereira Júnior, the measure represents an “evident extrapolation” of the functions of the Judiciary, since public policies related to education are the attribution of power Executive. “Funds from the Judiciary are being dedicated to a function that is not up to that power to perform. In addition, the use of public funds is occurring in the sense of trying to force a favorable reading of an organ on students”, says the jurist.

For Pereira Júnior, there is a mistake in the interpretation of the Supreme Court, that criticism has been directed at the body itself. According to him, several questions are directed not at the institution, but at conduct seen as reprehensible by some of its members. “There is a lot of criticism regarding abuses of institutional power that are being committed. Instead of seeking to correct these notes, they want to perpetuate the error by creating some kind of argumentative guise to justify them”, he points out.

Finally, the jurist points out that the excessive concern of ministers in guiding public opinion on various subjects compromises the Court’s own productivity. At the end of last year, the STF had more than 22,000 cases pending, some of them awaiting a decision for decades.

Former federal deputy Paulo Martins (PL-PR), who is critical of the judicial activism embraced by the ministers, also highlights the extrapolation of functions in the STF at School. “The Court is completely outside its scope of action and assumes a proactive stance in search of popular support. The purpose of this is to further extend the power of the Court itself,” he says.

Martins also points out that the resounding search for popular support by a Judiciary body is strange. “The impression is given that they are looking for a direct connection with the population, in violation of the elected representative forces. There is no analogous case in history. Democracy needs balance between powers and not the construction of a superpower”.

Federal deputy Adriana Ventura (Novo-SP) assesses that the initiative does not constitute extrapolation of functions, as long as it is institutional and not political. “Despite all the political activity of some STF ministers lately, I don’t think this program was designed to be a political instrument. I think it was a ball-inside the STF”, says the parliamentarian. “It will be up to teachers, school directors and parents, in the conversation at home, to know what was said – if there was education, or if there was ‘brainwashing’”.

Launch of the “STF at School” generates criticism and concern with the approach

The comments on the STF’s social networks about the launch of the program, composed almost entirely of criticisms of the Court’s initiative and actions, show that the measure encounters significant popular resistance. Part of the messages mention the successive “hijackings” by ministers of the Constitution itself, with disrespect for due legal process to advance guidelines of interest to members of the Court or contrary to their enemies, and express concern about the content to be taught to students.

In recent years, accusations of unconstitutional actions by ministers have grown, especially since 2019, when the Supreme Court opened, ex officio, a confidential inquiry to investigate alleged false news, threats and crimes against honor that were related to ministers. of the Court and their families. In this process, the STF assumed the positions of accuser, victim and judge, functions that should be taken by different agents to guarantee the fairness of the legal process, as provided for in the Constitution.

Since then, the Court, without a request from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Attorney General’s Office or a police authority, as is also provided for in the Constitution (the STF could not act without being provoked), ordered the blocking of profiles on social networks, arrests and search and seizure warrants for electronic materials of suspects critical of the conduct of STF members.

In May of this year, it will be three years since the lawyers of those investigated in the fake news survey (4,781) and in some of its developments, such as the digital media survey (4,874), are without access to the full records of these processes, which hurts the Binding Precedent 14, from the STF itself.

The ministers’ outbursts are often defended by politicians, activists and part of the press aligned to the left from the perspective of defending democracy and the Democratic State of Law, and criticism of the body is usually generically identified as “disinformation”, “discourse of hatred” or “attacks on democracy”. On the other hand, renowned Brazilian jurists and legal practitioners have tried to draw attention to excesses. Abroad, some of the main newspapers in the world have been showing great concern with the direction taken by the Brazilian Court.

Moraes’ excessively hard-line conduct against dozens of supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL), who are investigated in inquiries carried out by the STF itself, is the subject of several questions as to its legality. A recent article in the New York Times, the main American newspaper, questioned the minister’s actions and defined some of them as “alarming”.

More recently, during the electoral campaign, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), which is presided over by Moraes and has other STF ministers in its composition, assigned itself police power to remove from the internet, without provocation from any part or Prosecutor’s Office, profiles and channels in which it considers there to be “systematic disinformation”. The determination was valid only during the 2022 elections, but it is still in force, which has allowed the Court to continue censoring from ordinary users to elected politicians even without any process in progress, compromising the constitutional right to freedom of expression.

At the beginning of this year, concerns about the decisions of the highest levels of the Judiciary reverberated with unprecedented intensity in international public opinion. In addition to new material in The New York Timesvehicles like the North American ones Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, and the Spanish El Country, there were some who denounced the measures.

One of the risks for the program is that cases like these are transmitted to students as legitimate, with no room for contradiction. One of the points that Rosa Weber mentioned as elements of disinformation, to be eliminated, during the launch of the stf at school it was precisely “the distortion of the meaning of the decisions” of ministers.

Risks of bringing political ideology into the classroom

The risk of politicizing the program stf at school is another point of concern, according to sources heard in this report. In recent months, the episodes of involvement of Court ministers with political groups have multiplied, as shown here by People’s Gazette.

Last month, for example, minister Ricardo Lewandowski attended an event by the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), which maintains solid links with the Workers’ Party. This measure breaks the necessary distance between magistrates and political party activities, advocated by the Constitution and by the Codes of Ethics of the Judiciary and the STF.

Within the scope of the Program to Combat Disinformation, the STF entered into a partnership with an entity made up of radical leftist organizations, the National Network to Combat Disinformation (RNCD). As already mentioned, the partner institutions of this program will conduct the student-oriented program in conjunction with the Supreme.

Several of the organizations that make up the RNCD have a clear left-wing ideological agenda. The list of affiliated organizations includes the Sleeping Giantswhich has a long history of targeting conservative groups and intimidating sponsors, and the Brazil in fact Pernambuco – who openly support radical left agendas. Instituto Vero, another member of the network, has youtuber and left-wing activist Felipe Neto as a co-founder.

Another partner of the STF initiative is the website “Vaza, Falsiane”, whose self-description is “an ultrapop online course to understand and combat fake news and misinformation”. In addition to the course, “Vaza, Falsiane” – led by left-wing activist partners, such as journalist Leonardo Sakamoto – usually gives lectures on disinformation in educational institutions, unions and government bodies with a vision of “combating disinformation” that encourages the censorship of conservative or right-wing positions – which is unconstitutional.