Brazil is essentially living under a judicial dictatorship for the last 5 years or so. The media and press have been looking the other way (as well as actively helping in the persecution) because they didn't like the people being persecuted, so they were fine with the whole thing.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I don’t see how a government elected by the people can be considered a dictatorship. This also applies to Bolsonaro’s government as well. Just because you don’t agree with the ruling party doesn’t make it a dictatorship.
I worked for a (large, powerful) company where our Brazilian compliance people were 100% outside of Brazil to reduce the risk of them being thrown in jail because a judge wasn't getting answers fast enough.
Not sure if those judges are elected but it doesn't really matter.
You should expand on that more if it's actually unreasonable.. because what you wrote sounds exactly the same as the US. The court can issue legal subpoenas, and if they aren't complied with by the deadline specified, the court has the right to enforce those orders, which can include jail time. That's an important tool for the rule of law and an independent judiciary.
You might have been told that but there is no way jail is the first thing a judge will issue. First comes an order, then fines, lots of them. A company will only get anyone arrested if they willingly ignore judicial decisions for a very long time. The only path I see for a company deciding to keep their "compliance" department away from the country would be if they're not planning on complying at all. Judges have a lot of power but they're still bound by process.
Brazil is a conservative leaning country with neoliberal aspirations that looks up to the US (florida specially) like the paradise on earth. Judges are friendly to business and it takes a lot to piss them off if you're part of the circle (rich). These examples from twitter are a niche where the company is caught between the politics of the supreme court and what it sees as threats (some times correctly, sometimes too much and dangerously overbearing).
Supreme court judges are not elected, they are appointed by the president. As a tradition during the years where the current party was in power before Bolsonaro the court itself made a list of candidates that they voted for and the president was asked to pick from the top three (as a request, not binding), Lula and Dilma always picked the top candidate to avoid any showing of interference. President Temer picked the second choice and Bolsonaro picked someone outside the list (twice) and that tradition will likely die down because of it, Lula already picked from outside the list too now.
Another fact people seem to ignore/disregard, the Brazilian STF cannot just issue orders without a request from the prosecution or lower courts. An example where Judges exert the god like power is on lower courts where the prosecution aligns politically with a judge and work together like they did on the Lula trial and ended up overthrown by the supreme court for it. If they do it for someone less popular, they get away with it.
True, but given the fact that Brazil has in recent years voted the left in, then the right, and now the left again it doesn't strike me that a dictatorship has been established.
Dictatorships can be perfectly legal. Especially if a court says so.
And, given the fact that this is about the judicial branch taking dictatorial actions, almost by definition anything that they decide or choose to do would be legal (As the judicial branch is the one that decides in the first place if its legal or not!)
But judges can only interpret the law (legally), they can't author the law. If they are taking dictatorial action that implies executive action, which is not within their remit in most countries (even including most non democracies). If a court issues an order it is up the the executive to enforce that order (for example an arrest warrant). So then to your argument, it would have to be more than the judicial branch in order to be dictatorial, it would also require at a minimum non opposition from the executive, or more likely cooperation.
And so, where is the evidence? Even 3 high impact examples would suffice as a starting point.
Either the people are suddenly that fickle, or the results are being manipulated, and Hacker News of all places should understand the problem with modern electronic voting systems that require highly competent IT and MIS people to manage and secure. People who we know do not often work for the government.
Keep in mind that in practice in Brazil, the elected party does not have the same kind of control that the elected party has in Canada, U.S. or Australia.
I did. And rare were the autocrats government which came in power from a non-rigged, open election.
Two exemple which are frequently used as exemple are Italy and Germany in the 1930´s but neither Hitler nor Mussolini came in power through the election, but by strong arming the power in place, and after that (at least for Germany) use the excuse of rigged election to validate their power.
First, I never said than a dictator never came to power through fair and healthy election. Just that it is rare, much rarer than a lot people think.
Second, I would say that the jury is still in debat for Bukele. Yes, it’s re-election is anti-constituai but he seems to still have the support of the population, as the election seemed to be fair and healthy.
But I agree that his legal shenningans to allow for his re-election don’t bode well for the future. Let’s wait and see.
> I don’t see how a government elected by the people can be considered a dictatorship.
You're a couple votes from becoming a dictatorship in any democracy, by definition: 1) amend constitution or equivalent to allow the vote, 2) vote in the dictator, 3) there is no step 3.
You forgot all the votes you need to win to be able to cast your first vote. It’s not easy part, at least in a more-or-less healthy democracy.
In France, for exemple, you need first to have majority in both chambers (Senate and parliament) to validate the content of the modification.
Then you need to have of 3/5 of parliament OR the majority in a referendum for apr roving the modification and putting it in the constitution.
And for almost every healthy constitutional democracy, it the same order of difficulty.
for me that’s exactly how it’s work. For a government to be a dictatorship, you need a dictator. And one key element which define a person as a dictator is that his word is law, that’s in the name. doesn’t seem to be the case in Brazil right now.
The second key element, which more implied in the modern definition of dictator, is that it stay in position of power against the will of the majority of it’s country inhabitants. Against, doesn’t seem to be the case in Brazil right now.
I would welcome any elements which would invalidate my (quite incomplete, I recon) perception of the situation.
I did. And Hitler was never elected in a position of power. He strong armed the weimar republic to be named in chancellor, and only after that he held some referendum to validate his decision.
Also, when he is named chancellor, it’s been a while since the democratic value of weimar were hurting. Paul Von Hindenburg started as soon as 1930 to govern through executive act, ignoring and/or strong arming the Reichstag. Not really what I would call a healthy democratic government.
Also, Hitler was named as chancellor through a plot of the current weimar government to avoid calling new elections, like the laws said they must.
The last point is incorrect - as you yourself note, Hinderburg had the power as symbolic head of state to declare who was to form a government. Therefore, although the Nazis won more votes than anyone else in 1932(the Nazis won 232 to the SDP's 133 seats), conservatives and the SPD blocked it.
> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I don’t see how a government elected by the people can be considered a dictatorship.
Just to add my two cents, even though it's not a link to documents with proof, but Brazil is a tightly controlled country with very little that is democratic. Yeah there are elections but politics do NOT operate here the same way they do in North America. You've got a lot of corrupt government and even if you elect someone else, they can do very little to make it more democratic.
For the record, I'm Canadian, and I've been living in Brazil for almost two years. When you actually experience it, you feel you are under a system that acts a lot like a dictatorship...or at least something VERY far away from democracy.
The "Anglo-Saxon model" does not involve an elected Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is not directly elected. Nor is the Supreme Court of the United States. Nor the Supreme Court of Canada. Nor the High Court of Australia. Nor the Supreme Court of New Zealand.
The US is unusual in having an elected judiciary at the state and local levels (only in some states, however) – but not at the national/federal level. However, this is not the "Anglo-Saxon model" since none of the other major Anglosphere countries do that.
It did. Their excuse (both the court itself as well as the media trying to justify the court's actions) was/is something among the lines of "Oh, Bolsonaro would establish a dictatorship [an hypothetical that never happen, Bolsonaro unlike the Supreme Court, never crossed a red line], so we will instead establish our actual dictatorship to prevent his dictatorship".
And here we are in 2024, Bolsonaro is not president anymore, the elections (organized by people who pretty much opposed Bolsonaro btw...) are over, but the Supreme Court is still arresting people. They are still having trials were the court is the accuser, the "victim", and the judge – all in the same figure. They are still ordering profiles on social media to be blocked. They are still trying to arrest journalists abroad. They are still sentencing protesters, or at best rioters, to 17 years in prison because they broke some stuff – they accuse those random people without any real power, random common people, to have threaten the rule of law.
> Bolsonaro unlike the Supreme Court, never crossed a red line
Crossing the line and failing is not the same as "never crossing the line".
Anyway, Bolsonaro was quite supportive of that same structure. Because he wanted the money-flow that came with it (previously illegal flow, but since 2021, well, it's up to be seen). Just like Lula, and Dilma, and Temer...
Are we just going to ignore all the people that were camping in front of military barracks? The manifesto that was going around in the Army, in support of a coup to prevent Lula from taking power? How the US government, thanks to Biden, pressured generals in Brazil to uphold democracy (which means if Trump was president, there might have been a successful coup?).
We have the documents. We have the witnesses. Don't play disingenuous games and try to gaslight us that it is all in our heads. Alexandre de Moraes will go down in Brazilian history as a men who did everything to keep Brazil a democracy.
One look at the photos of Bolsonaro eating the Florida KFC immediately after the elections would tell you immediately that he never had the "it" to be a dictator, especially one that would need to actually do the regime change(and not simply inherit like Maduro).
Not the full story. You are omitting the fact that Bolsonaro made several allegations of voter fraud on social media, and Brazil had their own version of January 6th after he lost (what you called "at best rioters"). These decisions are a response to those events, but your post paints him as a blameless victim.
It sounds very misleading to frame those responsible for storming into the Congress on January 8th, while attempting to "stop the steal" that the elections supposedly were, as simply "at best rioters, to 17 years in prison because they broke some stuff".
This would only sense if you also believe the rioters of 6th of January that stormed the capital also "just" broke some stuff.
This is what the far right in Brazil wants you to believe, but it's not true. It's especially not true in regards to X, as they have repeatedly ignored judicial decisions that are very similar to those by European courts (ie, remove illegal content).
Well, one of the people calling out this insanity is Glenn Greenwald. How can he be "the far right in Brazil", when his reporting on Lava Jato is one of the main reasons Lula is not in jail any longer?
I admire Glenn, he did a great job reporting on Snowden revelations and the Vaza-Jato scandal in Brazil. I believe his stand is principled, but he appears to have the shortcoming of often trying to apply concepts from the US legal and institutional framework to places where it simply doesn't apply, like trying to fit square pegs to round holes. This sent him into a wild goose chase in this case.
Greenwald is an odd one, I'll give you that. He seems to see this issue from a libertarian perspective. He would also say that Germany banning Nazi speech is censorship, for example. It's worth nothing that his last professional occupation was being a stooge in a far right show.
How do you know that they’re similar? As the source article describes, the court has not published the orders they’re asking Twitter to enforce, and they don’t seem to be available at all to the public.
...how is that different to EU court rulings? Take your comment, and swap out "Brazil" with the name of any other country, and absolutely nothing changes.
Criminals facing the judicial system (and others doing crazy things to avoid it) is what's being considered a judicial dictatorship in Brazil by some. Crazy times.
The seemingly unlimited[1] power of the Judiciary is showing its ugly head in many countries: Brazil, the US, Israel and many others. We take it as God-given word, but it's worth remembering that the theory of the separation of the Judiciary from the other powers came from the head of a single man, and maybe he was mistaken. There's no reason for judicial review, despite the name, be in the hands of the Judiciary and not Congress or other elected body. If laws are unclear, let those with the power to change it to determine its meaning and improve the wording.
