Mother Jones illustration; Jordan Strauss∕AP
In an alternate universe where you had no access to any source of information beyond Elon Musk’s tweets, it might appear that the owner of Twitter/X is currently fighting a pitched and heroic free speech battle with the Brazilian government. In reality, an extremely petty spat—Musk’s refusal to name a local legal representative in Brazil, per its laws—has spiraled wildly, leading Justice Alexandre de Moraes to suspend X from the country last week.
Now Musk is interweaving his feud with Brazil with his ever-growing boosterism of Donald Trump, warning that if the former president isn’t reelected, America will become just like Brazil.
Musk has directly linked his Brazilian feud with the need to defeat Kamala Harris.
In recent days, Musk’s Trump-backing has taken a more frenzied turn, with constant tweets about the need to reelect Trump, and warning of dire and increasingly farfetched consequences if he doesn’t retake office. He’s shared a lengthy series of stories about crimes supposedly committed by undocumented people, writing in one instance, “So many lives have been lost, because Democrat policies pander to the criminal clients. Criminals vote overwhelmingly Democrat, so they don’t want to lose their votes.” In a continued fixation on migrants and crime, he’s also reshared posts from Chaya Raichik of the far-right Twitter account Libs of TikTok, in which she claims that “migrant gangs” took over an apartment building in Colorado. (Aurora’s interim chief of police has denied that, telling a local ABC affiliate that “gang members have not taken over this complex.”)
Musk has also directly linked his Brazilian feud with the need to defeat Kamala Harris, retweeting and agreeing with the account End Wokeness, who wrote, “Kamala supports what Brazil just did to X. How do I know? She wants to do it here.” The clip the account linked to is an interview Harris did with CNN’s Jake Tapper in 2019, where she said that Donald Trump has “lost his privileges” in his use of Twitter and his account “should be taken down” by the company. These remarks were made during a period when Trump was heavily using the platform during his impeachment proceedings to engage in what Democrats called witness intimidation. Some Twitter users resharing the clip in 2024, like presidential-dropout-turned-Trump-booster Robert F. Kennedy Jr, have falsely implied that the conversation happened more recently and that Harris was referring to Elon Musk.
Musk also reshared and agreed with a post from contrarian pundit and Musk-booster Michael Shellenberger, who wrote, “People think Brazil-style censorship couldn’t happen here, but it could. Indeed, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and Barack Obama have all called for heavy-handed government censorship like that of Brazil and Europe, complete with banning disfavored individuals across platforms.”
Musk also continues to platform far-right ideas and Twitter users; early Tuesday, he shared an episode of Tucker Carlson’s Twitter-only talk show, deeming it “very interesting.” The episode was an interview Carlson did with a self-styled historian and Substack user named Darryl Cooper, who declared that his latest project is investigating World War II, which he describes as a historical event about which there are “taboos” in how it is discussed. Both men agreed that people in Germany and Austria have been jailed for “looking into the wrong corners” when researching World War II, as Cooper put it. In response, a Twitter account representing British Holocaust denier David Irving thanked the two men for their conversation, writing, “Glad we are in the mainstream conversation, but it would be nice to get a credit.” (The account’s bio says that it is run by a bookstore continuing Irving’s work, while he himself “steps back for health reasons.”)
Twitter remains suspended in Brazil, with, on Monday, a Supreme Court panel ruling that it will stay so until the company names a legal representative and pays fines currently exceeding $3 million. Brazilian Twitter users who access the site with a VPN can also face a daily fine of 50,000 reais, or about $8,900, the Associated Press reported. The Brazilian bar association has objected to this move, saying in a note to the Supreme Court that the daily fine “to individuals and legal entities in a broad and generalised manner represents a serious affront to the fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution.” On Monday, Musk reshared a tweet that falsely reported that VPN use won’t be fined in Brazil, hailing it as “a step in the right direction!” (It was not, because it wasn’t true and didn’t happen.)
Pundit Glenn Greenwald, who is based in Brazil and is a prolific Twitter user, has posted intermittently, but has not said if he’s in the country or using a VPN. Marcel Van Hattem, a conservative political scientist who serves in the country’s Chamber of Deputies, tweeted on August 30 that he’s accessing the site using a VPN, adding, “Thank you @elonmusk for standing with us. Your attitudes against censorship and authoritarianism are giving us hope and strengthening our cause for freedom in Brazil!”
