Musk Has Defended His Right-Wing Bro in Brazil, Not Free Speech

Source: The UnPopulist
by Hugo Bueno

“Elon Musk, the U.S. tech magnate and world’s richest man, regularly presents himself as one of society’s greatest champions of free speech. When he bought Twitter two years ago, he promised to reconfigure the social media behemoth so that it reflects his ‘free speech absolutism.’ But the billionaire businessman … has a selective commitment to ‘free speech,’ invoking it only when it advances his anti-left crusade and abandoning it when it doesn’t. On X, his rebrand of Twitter, he has suppressed benign terms used by political outgroups, banned accounts critical of him or his companies, and petitioned the state to take punitive action against organizations for their constitutionally-protected speech. But Musk’s cynicism about free speech is evident even in the event he’s gotten the most credit for: his protracted international standoff with Brazilian authorities, particularly Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.” (12/04/24)

https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/musk-has-defended-his-right-wing