When the “defense of democracy” goes too far and undermines freedom

Since 2019, Brazil has witnessed a sui generis investigation: open ex officio, carried out by a hand-picked judge, with little or no supervision by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, with a broad and growing object, lacking in transparency and in which it is difficult for lawyers to exercise their discretion. defense of those investigated and of indefinite duration. Open for more than four years, the fake news inquiry, and its offspring, the inquiries into anti-democratic acts and those of digital militias, are focused almost exclusively on the right or anything related to it – nothing that the left does in any way. similar passes through the magnifying glass of researchers.

Everything is done in the name of defending democracy and the democratic rule of law. There is even a theory, imported from Germany, to justify the harsh measures against those investigated: the so-called “militant democracy”, which admits supposedly exceptional acts to protect the democratic regime from actors who would use their own rules to undermine the institutions. In the name of this, censorship of citizens has been practiced in Brazil, intrusions into people’s private lives, prolonged arrests, blocking of bank accounts, stratospheric fines.

Now, social networks have also become targets. Platforms were forced to withdraw their own opinions critical of a bill that directly affects them, forced to publish a favorable and contrary view of them. A message service was threatened with being removed from the air and its users fined if they used servers outside the country to access it.

Perhaps too late, some voices of public opinion, in the press and in the intellectual milieu, are beginning to be alarmed by the excesses, and to ask how long and to what extent these restrictions will remain in place. Meanwhile, the right became afraid to demonstrate, on the streets and on the networks, at the risk of criminalizing everything they do or say.

This is the theme of Monday’s Second Opinion (15), with Renan Ramalho, Paula Marisa, Flávio Gordon and Adriano Soares da Costa.