Free speech, not censorship, remains the only weapon for defeating disinformation and hate speech

Michael Shellenberger

Apr 11, 2024

When I was in my early 20s, I became enamored with Brazil’s left-wing Workers Party (PT) and its leader, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. I read an inspiring 1991 book, Without Fear of Being Happy, whose title is the English translation of Lula’s campaign slogan. It described Lula and the PT as democratic socialists who embraced anti-poverty measures but also rejected the authoritarianism and censorship of Communist regimes such as the one in Cuba.

In 1994, I interviewed the great man himself in his office in São Paulo. I asked Lula, if he were elected president, would he transform Brazil into another Cuba, complete with censorship? He said, emphatically, “No.” The Brazilian people loved freedom too much, he explained, as did he. After all, Lula had risen to fame in the 1970s when he led mass protests against Brazil’s military dictatorship as a labor union leader.

Now, 30 years later, President Lula is seeking sweeping restrictions on freedom of speech as severe as the ones that have been in place in Cuba since the early 1960s, after Fidel Castro seized power through military violence. Last year, shortly after taking office, Lula created two new agencies, the National Prosecutor’s Office for the Defense of Democracy (PNDD), under the supervision of the Attorney General of the Republic, and the Orwellian-named “Department for the Promotion of Freedom of Expression,” with extraordinary censorship powers.

Lula also created the Digital Policies Secretariat, a body linked to the Ministry of Justice. “The Digital Policies Secretariat is responsible for,” it explained, efforts to “combat misinformation and hate speech on the Internet, in conjunction with the Ministry of Justice and Public Security.” Lula also created an innocent-sounding “fact-checking” website whose real purpose was to serve as a foundation for demanding censorship — a de facto “Ministry of Truth” straight out of 1984. And Lula supported the “Fake News” Bill, which would have created steep financial penalties for social media companies that refused to censor “fake news.”

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