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 Wikimedia Commons, Daniel Oberhaus (2018)

(LifeSiteNews) — Elon Musk’s social media network X, formerly Twitter, has shut down its offices in Brazil after a leftist Supreme Court judge threatened to arrest its legal counsel.

On Saturday, August 17, X announced the decision “to close our operation in Brazil, effective immediately” to “protect the safety of our staff.”

“Last night, Alexandre de Moraes threatened our legal representative in Brazil with arrest if we do not comply with his censorship orders,” the company said in its statement. “He did so in a secret order, which we share here to expose his actions.”

“Despite our numerous appeals to the Supreme Court not being heard, the Brazilian public not being informed about these orders and our Brazilian staff having no responsibility or control over whether content is blocked on our platform, Moraes has chosen to threaten our staff in Brazil rather than respect the law or due process,” the statement continues.

X said de Moraes’ “actions are incompatible with democratic government.”

“The people of Brazil have a choice to make – democracy, or Alexandre de Moraes,” the statement said.

The company noted that X will remain available to users in Brazil.

READ: New ‘Twitter Files’ show how Brazil’s deep state interfered in the 2022 presidential election

Elon Musk commented on the situation, stating, “The decision to close the 𝕏 office in Brazil was difficult, but, if we had agreed to @alexandre’s (illegal) secret censorship and private information handover demands, there was no way we could explain our actions without being ashamed.”

Over the past years, leftist judge Alexandre de Moraes has targeted conservative accounts on social media platforms in a sweeping censorship effort for allegedly “threatening” Brazil’s democracy.

Even the left-wing New York Times admitted that de Moraes’ “orders are typically sealed from public view and do not explain what an account did to warrant suspension.” The Times also noted that the judge “has also overseen several criminal investigations into [former Brazilian President Jair] Bolsonaro and his allies.”

The New York Times further pointed out that while X remains available for users in Brazil for now, Judge de Moraes may block the social media site if it fails to meet his demands.

Alexandre de Moraes: a Marxist judge at war with Elon Musk

In March 2022, de Moraes took office as president of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE) and ramped up censorship pressure on social media against accounts supportive of conservative sitting President Jair Bolosonaro in the lead-up to the presidential election.

Investigative journalist and author Michael Shellenberger, who broke the story about de Moraes’s apparent election interference, said that the censorship efforts by the powerful judge are “an attack on the democratic process” and “If there ever is electoral fraud in Brazil, nobody will be allowed to talk about it, if de Moraes gets his way.”

The spat between Elon Musk and de Moraes has gone on for months. In April, the X owner announced that de Moraes tried to force the platform to censor accounts via a court order. Musk defiantly said that he would not give in to the demands and called for the impeachment of the high-ranking judge, referring to him as “Brazil’s Darth Vader.”

In a U.S. congressional hearing held in May, Shellenberger and Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski testified about the numerous anti-free speech and dictatorial policies that have been enacted in Brazil under socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his close ally, Judge de Moraes, who one witness described as the “de facto dictator” of the country.

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