Musk Versus Brazil
After X refused to remove profiles inciting political violence, Lula’s government banned the platform, forcing its billionaire owner into a humiliating retreat — and providing a rare victory against Big Tech’s apparently inescapable power.
Elon Musk’s challenge to Brazil’s legal system highlights the increasing assertiveness of global corporations towards democratic governments. (Photo by Nathan Laine / Bloomberg / Getty Images)
‘He may be a liar, even a crook, but I’m voting for him because he’s smart. He’s like our own Elon Musk.’ This comment was made to me on a sunny Saturday in a São Paulo favela, on a small bridge spanning an open sewage stream, the day before the city’s municipal election on 6 October. The position of mayor of São Paulo, the largest city in the southern hemisphere, which controls the third-largest budget in Brazil — behind only the federal government and São Paulo state — is being sought by an unexpected candidate: Pablo Marçal, an evangelical coach and influencer who had surged as the far right’s frontrunner, thanks to his explosive success on social media.
Marçal’s big selling point? Becoming a millionaire and claiming to teach anyone how to do the same. In one of the most unequal countries in the world, and on the peripheries of global power, ideas that are foolish in the West are replicated with deeper tragedy. Brazil’s own Musk hasn’t launched satellites to provide internet connectivity to the Amazon forest; instead, he became wealthy by paying people to clip and share his videos, accumulating likes — and, along the way, allegedly embroiling himself in banking fraud, organised crime, and tax evasion.
Marçal’s political ascent, even the challenge to Bolsonaro’s grip on the far right, can largely be attributed to his social media mastery. He has brought the logic of pyramid schemes into politics, capitalising on the near absence of regulation of social media — or, more accurately, regulation that conveniently favours specific ideologies. While Marçal himself warrants a separate profile, what matters here is the intimate link between social media, the far right, and the future of liberal democracy.
A significant part of the liberal establishment’s struggle to preserve democratic coexistence, as it existed before the 2010s, stems from confusion around the concept of free speech. It’s no secret that elites have always used the idea selectively. A French newspaper’s right to publish racist cartoons of Arabs and Muslims is upheld as free speech, but criticism of Israeli bombing is often deemed unacceptable. The issue is that the rise of libertarianism has led people to believe democracy means anything goes — that all opinions are equally valid.
This has empowered political forces which attack democracy itself by demanding the right to oppress others without challenge. The resultant crisis serves as a reminder that democracy is neither natural nor guaranteed: it requires an active effort to sustain and deepen. At the heart of this threat to the functioning of democracies across the world is the way nation states have caved in to a handful of global corporations. Countries that once labelled others authoritarian for regulating social media now find themselves at the mercy of platforms that refuse to foster democratic dialogue. The libertarian wave these elites once championed has made it politically costly to confront the far right’s coordinated use of social media to undermine democracy.
The transformation of X (formerly Twitter) into a plaything for a messianic narcissist like Musk is emblematic of this broader trend. Musk, who cheers Trump at rallies, embodies a twisted utopia where a billionaire’s conquest of Mars is seen as humanity’s salvation. Musk isn’t just a wealthy backer of reactionary forces — he’s become a symbol of success for disillusioned conservative working-class people. His rise reflects how far public admiration and expectations have fallen in our current economic reality. His influence reverberates from Silicon Valley to the neglected slums of the Global South, recasting an old neoliberal refrain for late capitalism: the hard-working individual’s enemy is an overbearing state eager to regulate every aspect of life.
Platform Politics
The conflict between X and Brazil’s judiciary has roots in the failed coup of 8 January 2023, when Bolsonaro supporters stormed federal buildings in an attempt to overthrow Lula, the recently elected president, and his socialist Workers’ Party government. Unlike in the US, Brazil’s justice system, shaken by the civil–military coalition’s attempt to overturn election results, launched investigations into those who undermined democracy. X and other platforms were ordered to deactivate profiles fuelling democratic erosion, provide financial details, and share user information. While other platforms complied, Musk resisted, aligning with Bolsonaro supporters by accusing Justice Alexandre de Moraes of censorship.
On 15 August this year, Moraes increased the fine for non-compliance with the court order, aiming to pressure X to adhere to the justice system. In response, on 17 August, the social network announced the closure of its office in Brazil, claiming that its employees were facing prison threats due to the company and its owner’s decision to place themselves above Brazilian law.
Under that law, any company operating in the country must have a legal representative based there. More than a bureaucratic detail, this requirement is crucial in ensuring that multinational corporations are subject to democratic control. It is a question of whether sovereign nations should have the power to regulate fake news to preserve the integrity of their democratic institutions. In the case of X, it was also a question of whether the state should have the ability to remove posts inciting neo-Nazi school killings, among other crimes.
The traditional rhetorical strategy of the far right, reproduced by Musk, is to use freedom of expression as a shield to avoid accountability for violating fundamental societal agreements. This fallacy becomes clear when we recall that in Turkey and India, where the governing parties are right wing, Musk complied with court orders to restrict accounts and posts in the lead-up to elections. In Brazil, he used his personal and institutional X accounts to discredit Judge Moraes, the state, and what he framed as censorship. After Moraes gave X twenty-four hours to fulfil the order or face fines and the arrest of one of its lawyers, Musk attempted to call the justice’s bluff and closed down the company’s operations in Brazil altogether. Moraes then ordered a block on the platform until Musk complied and designated a legal representative in the country.
What followed was a period of un- certainty. Would Brazil’s judiciary enforce its decision? Would public backlash or economic disruptions force a reversal? In the end, life carried on, and the state’s technical and political ability to enforce the ban proved greater than expected, affirming the battle could indeed be fought in the name of national sovereignty.
Ultimately, it was Musk who felt the consequences. While he mocked Moraes at first, in the end, he buckled, paying millions in fines and complying with Brazil’s legal demands. Brazil is too important a market for Musk, or any social network, to lose. The country has the second-largest number of WhatsApp users, after India, and ranks sixth in X’s global user base, with 22 million users. Musk faced additional pressure when the judiciary blocked Starlink accounts to uphold the ban, which threatened his plan to expand the use of the satellite internet network in the Global South.
Democratic Threat
It’s no longer news that power struggles are not just between nations but also between nations and corporations. Many of these companies wield revenues larger than that of entire countries and are capable of destabilising governments and launching cyberattacks or coups with little regard for national interests. This marks a shift from bipolar or unipolar geopolitics, when companies’ interests were mediated through state-to-state diplomacy. Now, corporations are asserting their positions directly, free to pursue their own interests, or those of their owners, regardless of the wishes of the governments under which they operate.
Brazil’s case isn’t a final showdown between a billionaire defending free speech and an authoritarian state. Instead, it may be the first major victory of a nation-state against a tech giant complicit in misinformation. It’s no surprise that during President Lula’s recent speech at the United Nations General Assembly, he fielded questions about how Brazil was handling companies like X and what global measures could ensure national autonomy against corporate overreach.
Far-right movements, both in Brazil and abroad, rely on the spread of misinformation and false narratives to justify their exclusionary agendas. Some on the Left naively argue that socialists simply need to learn how to use social media and improve their communications. While not entirely wrong, these statements miss the bigger picture. The crisis isn’t just about communication tools — it’s about building a political agenda that unites new majorities in the face of neoliberalism’s ideological dominance over working-class people. Social media platforms aren’t neutral — they’re designed to amplify sensationalism, promote financial scams, and reward individualism.
Bolsonaro, Brazil’s representative in the international far-right movement, capitalised on these tools in his election campaigns. In 2018, he defeated Fernando Haddad using moral panic, and in 2022 he narrowly lost to Lula only because economic conditions had worsened during his presidency. Yet despite record employment and low inflation under progressive governments, far-right misinformation, supercharged by social media, is on the rise again. Economic improvements aren’t translating into a stronger dialogue between the Left and the people. Instead, these gains seem to create space for the far right to dominate the narrative, a dynamic that deserves closer examination.
Just as financial capital flows impose economic discipline to block progressive advances in low- and middle-income countries, global social media platforms are creating new veto power over progressive narratives. If left-wing forces in government are serious about expanding their opportunities to enact radical change, they must recognise that challenging these powers is essential. Without confronting this new form of control, the space for progressive narratives will continue to shrink, limiting the potential for transformative change.