Multiple newspapers in Brazil reported on Friday that the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), the nation’s top election authority, had spent much of the week working to dismantle conservative chat groups on Whatsapp and Telegram in an attempt to “demobilize” massive nationwide roadblocks and protests.
Tens of thousands of conservatives in nearly every major city of Brazil have taken to the streets this week to protest the results of Sunday’s presidential election, in which convicted criminal Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated incumbent conservative President Jair Bolsonaro by about two million votes. Lula, a hardline socialist who served as president between 2003 and 2011, received 50.9 percent of the vote to Bolsonaro’s 49.1 percent.
Bolsonaro supporters are demanding a constitutional “federal intervention” to keep Lula from taking over. Some have convened outside of military offices, including the top headquarters in Brasilia, demanding a military coup.
The “federal intervention” supporters argue that, as a convicted felon, Lula should never have legally been allowed on the ballot. Lula was convicted in 2017 of taking bribes while in office as president and, after multiple appeals, sentenced to more than 20 years in prison. Last year, the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), the nation’s top court, overturned the condition on procedural grounds, failing to exonerate Lula with any new evidence showing he did not commit the crimes in question. As no one has challenged the evidence against Lula, opponents contend that he was never a legitimate presidential candidate.
The Brazilian Constitution allows a “federal intervention” in select cases of emergency, which supporters contend fits the current situation. Bolsonaro himself has taken no actions to indicate that he supports such an intervention and has begun the official presidential transition process, according to his chief of staff.
In addition to street protests, truckers who support Bolsonaro launched a wave of hundreds of blockades on major highways, creating fears of supply chain disruptions and potential blocking of emergency vehicles. Bolsonaro has personally issued messages on two occasions this week urging supporters not to block highways.
“The current popular movements are the fruit of indignation and a feeling of injustice about how the electoral process went about,” Bolsonaro said in a brief statement to reporters on Tuesday. “Peaceful protests will always be welcome, but our methods cannot be those of the left.”
“Protests, marches are very welcome, they are part of the democratic game and, throughout the years, Brazil has done much of this,” Bolsonaro said in a video posted to social media on Thursday after his initial request was largely ignored. “But this is something that is not ok: the closing of highways in Brazil hurts the right of people to come and go. It is there in our constitution, and we have always been within those four lines [within the rules].”
According to O Globo, the TSE, led by supreme court justice and anti-“fake news” crusader Alexandre de Moraes, began moving on Tuesday to take down pro-Bolsonaro chat groups on Whatsapp and Telegram in an attempt to limit the ability of conservatives to organize roadblocks and protests. The largest group taken down identified by O Globo was a Telegram chat titled “Super Grupo B-38 Oficial,” which at the time of its demise contained 59,000 users.
“When trying to access [censored groups], Telegram displays the message, ‘This community was blocked in Brazil by decision of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE)’ or ‘This group cannot be displayed because it violated local laws,'” the newspaper documented.
The Brazilian news service Agência Pública documented the takedown of several other groups on Telegram run by evangelical leader Jackson Villar as of Tuesday. Two of those groups combined reportedly contained more than 200,000 users. De Moraes reportedly personally signed off on censoring the communications channels.
Both Whatsapp and Telegram are extremely popular messaging applications in Brazil. Telegram grew increasingly popular among Bolsonaro supporters, O Globo claimed, because it did not have a limit on how many people could be in one chat group. Whatsapp in Brazil allows up to 257 people in one group.
“Therefore, there are gigantic groups [on Telegram] that exceed the population of 70 percent of Brazilian municipalities,” O Globo noted.
The censorship on Telegram, O Globo asserted, has led some Bolsonaro supporters to return to the 1990s messaging application ICQ, which still exists in an updated version.
“There are already pro-Bolsonaro channels [on ICQ] with about 2,000 followers, but camouflaged, without the president’s name – such as ‘Avengers Brasil,’ in reference to the saga The Avengers, from Marvel,” the newspaper observed.
A peek into one pro-Bolsonaro Whatsapp channel published by the outlet UOL showed that the groups were largely used to organize messaging around the protests and emphasize peaceful and legal messaging. While UOL attempted to depict the group, titled “Civil Resistance #15,” as an unhinged conspiracy, it documented calls for peace and constitutional demands. One message, for example, suggested slogans and messaging for signs that included “federal intervention [as opposed to military], civil resistance, march of the families, the power emanates from the people, no censorship!, [and] STF get out.”
One user wrote a message reading, “Patriots, the time has come to face the corruption of the system and reconquer it directly. May it be in a peaceful and orderly way, but firm and with conviction, because, beloved fatherland, your children will not flee the struggle.”
The chat groups that the TSE did not take down experienced a surge in socialist users joining and then spamming the groups with pro-Lula memes, rendering them unusable. In one case documented by UOL, a new user posted 50 pro-Lula images in a conservative Whatsapp chat within two minutes.
The trucker blockades, which at their peak numbered in the hundreds, are no longer a significant obstacle, according to the federal transit police, which documented no blocked highways as of Friday morning. Five states reported some form of roadblock – Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Pará, and Rondônia – but not any significant disturbance in the public’s ability to travel. Police revealed they had dismantled nearly 1,000 roadblocks by the end of the week.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.