In Brazil, the government is weaponized to target, harass, and arrest political opponents. Investigative journalists who dare expose the corruption within the government are censored, their assets are frozen, and their passports are revoked.
And all without due process of the law.
Last week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a subcommittee hearing on Brazil's democracy, freedom, and rule of law crisis that's gripping the nation. Witnesses included American investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger, Brazilian investigative journalist Paulo Figueiredo, and Rumble founder and CEO Christopher Pavlovski.
Figueiredo remains a target of the far-left government. During his testimony in Washington, he testified that he is the face of "human rights violations in Brazil" — and that his punishment for doing his job and reporting the news was muting his voice with total censorship.
But that wasn't all. In addition to taking the investigative reporter off social media platforms, the Brazilian government froze his assets and canceled his passport — without any warning and without due process. The same happened to his fellow Brazilian journalist, Allan dos Santos, who was also attended the hearing.
Pavlovski's testimony was just as shocking as the Rumble CEO testified about the pressures from not only the Brazilian government, but from governments all over the world — asking his social media platform to mute the voices of people that those governments opposed politically. The CEO even went a step further, saying that "countries in every hemisphere – all of the members of the United Nations" are censoring political speech.
Following the hearing, The Conservative Caucus (TCC), the leading grassroots conservative network in the U.S., hosted a press conference at the Heritage Foundation — just blocks from the Capitol — that featured TCC President Jim Pfaff; Brazilian Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro; Brazilian Congressman Gustavo Gayer; Brazilian Congressman Nikolas Ferreira; and journalists Figueiredo and dos Santos.
And what did all the Brazilian speakers have in common? They are currently being targeted by Brazil's Supreme Court, while Figueiredo and dos Santos are currently living in exile in the U.S.
In April, X owner Elon Musk ignored Brazil's censorship demands, saying "principles matter more than profit" after Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered X to block certain accounts or face massive fines for ignoring the court order. In response, Musk refused to comply with what he called "unconstitutional" orders, angering the powerful justice who then initiated an inquiry of the X owner for obstruction of justice.
The censorship of opposing political voices is spreading around the world like a cancer, and it threatens to destroy every democratic-loving country in the world — including the U.S.
And as TCC President Jim Pfaff warned during last week's press conference,
"The free speech and censorship crisis in Brazil looks eerily similar to the one that conservatives are facing here in the U.S. under the Biden administration. If anyone wants to know what a Biden second term will look like, look no further than Brazil, where free speech rights are under attack and people are jailed for expressing their opinions that run contrary to the government's narrative."
It's no wonder Biden loves Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — he's hoping to shape America into the Brazil of the west.
And if Biden is elected to a second term in November, he'll become President Lula da Biden — and it will mark the beginning of the end for the onetime freest nation in the world.
From 2007-2010, Mark Vargas served as a civilian in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, traveling to Baghdad, Iraq, 14 times. Follow Mark on Twitter: @markavargas. Read Mark Vargas' Reports — Click Here Now.
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