Brazilian justice forces Elon Musk to give in: a victory, really?

This looks like an unconditional surrender. Having been locked in a standoff with the Brazilian justice system for over a month, Elon Musk has given in to all demands to get his X platform unblocked. At the end of August, a Supreme Court judge, Alexandre de Moraes, ordered the unprecedented suspension of the social network, accused of allowing accounts suspected of disseminating false information to proliferate in a country still traumatized by the attempted coup d’état by supporters of the far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro in January 2023. In addition to blocking the offending accounts, Musk has agreed to pay fines totaling 28.6 million reais (nearly 5 million euros) and to appoint a new legal representative in Brazil.

But for the reactionary billionaire, this defeat may not be one. Of course, economically, his stubbornness has been disastrous.While the platform had twenty million users in Brazil until now,
it has lost a significant portion of them, who have moved to competitors Bluesky or Threads

(which belongs to Meta), and will not have failed to scare advertisers even more. Politically, on the other hand, it is a sacrifice that has paid off.

According to the Fundação Getulio Vargas, a local think tank, 90% of the political messages from Internet users who defied the ban by connecting to X via a VPN (risking an 8,000 euro fine in the process) defended Elon Musk and criticized Judge Moraes’ decision . For weeks, the billionaire has undermined the authority and legitimacy of the magistrate, calling him a “dictator” and publicly calling for his dismissal.In early September, thousands of Bolsonarista activists even took to the streets of São Paulo to defend the “freedom of expression” so praised – and exploited – by Musk.

In the style of Steve Bannon

In his way, the businessman is taking up the fight where Steve Bannon, once an advisor to Trump at the White House and architect of an international radical right, left off. The latter advised the Bolsonaro clan through his son, Eduardo, in 2018 and developed a passion for Brazil, hoping to exploit the institutional fragility there to export his national populism.

Sentenced to four months in prison for obstructing the parliamentary investigation into the January 2021 assault on the Capitol, he rejoiced over his Brazilian response two years later and added salt
to the wounds by questioning Lula’s victory. Bannon has never hidden his formidable strategy for occupying all the media space: “Flood the area with shit”. A method that Elon Musk, accustomed to verbal fracturing on the social network he paid for, has made his own.

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The connection is all the less far-fetched since Musk is now playing his cards on the table: after announcing his support, including financial support, for Donald Trump’s campaign, he spoke at a
rally for the Republican candidate in Pennsylvania last weekend.”If Trump doesn’t win, I’m screwed,” he then joked to Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News star who now hosts a show on X. The richest man on the planet, Elon Musk has a new role: an agent of political destabilization. In short, a Steve Bannon with the means to match his ambitions.