TMTG and Rumble Initiate Free Speech Counteroffensive

The censorship war is but one of the many battlegrounds in a much greater worldwide struggle: the fight between populism and globalism. This war has raged violently for the last eight years, with wins and losses on both sides. The fight takes place both in the court of public opinion and in actual courtrooms across the world, and one country where the pro-censorship camp has seen unprecedented success is the nation of Brazil.

In Brazil, there is one Supreme Court judge in particular who has taken the censorship crusade to places only very few had previously dared and currently enjoys the god-like power to determine what speech should and should not exist. I’m, of course, referring to the Sith-like Alexandre de Moraes; a name that should be well-known at this point to anyone who cares about online censorship.

STF Justice Alexandre de Moraes

It might seem unimportant, a legal battle taking place in a foreign country, but this is how the censorship war is fought. There are various flashpoints around the world where stress tests take place in an effort to see how far governments can go to censor dissent, places like Brazil but also in the EU and the UK where legal frameworks like the Digital Services Act and the Online Safety Bill were implemented respectively.

NOTE—In case you care to read deeper, we covered some of these initiatives in greater detail back in Fall of 2023 in an article called The Censorship Regime and the Road to 2024 and another on my personal SubStack called The War on Dissent, in which I outlined some of the most shocking text in these bills. 

This morning, not hours before I began writing this piece, Donald Trump’s media company TMTG, along with the American video platform Rumble, filed a joint lawsuit in a U.S. federal court against Moraes.

In December 2023, Rumble departed Brazil as a result of what it deemed to be a plethora of unlawful "censorship orders" from Moraes, which sought to prohibit the participation of numerous creators and voices on the platform, including elected members of Congress. Moraes demanded that Rumble maintain the confidentiality of those orders and threatened to terminate the company's operations in Brazil if it did not comply immediately. This action was comparable to Moraes' decision to close X in Brazil in August of last year for failing to comply with orders to remove posts and prohibit users.

Here was Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski’s response:

Recently, the Brazilian demanded that we remove certain creators from Rumble. As part of our mission to restore a free and open internet, we have committed not to move the goalposts on our content policies. Users with unpopular views are free to access our platform on the same terms as our millions of users. Accordingly, we have decided to disable access toi Rumble for users in Brazil while we challenge the legalioty of the Brazilian court’s demands.We are disappointed by the court decisions that have caused the Brazilian people to lose the ability to view a wide range of Rumble content. This action will not have a material effect on our business, but we hope the Brazilian courts reconsider their decisions so that we can restore service soon.

Glenn Greenwald, who’s reporting on this has been widely read by Brazilian audiences, broke it down on his show System Update.

Rumble has since made its content available again in Brazil, following the recent withdrawal of an order blocking the Rumble account of the podcaster Monark (described by some as the Joe Rogan of Brazil) by Moraes. Almost immediately, Moraes sent orders to Rumble's lawyers in the country, instructing them to re-represent Rumble in order to receive his orders on behalf of the company.

The lawsuit is centered on Moraes' recent order, which instructed Rumble to completely close dos Santos' account and prohibit him from opening any new ones. In contrast to Moraes' previous mandates, this one does not merely compel the platform to deny access to Allan dos Santos' (a Brazilian conservative journalist) content in Brazil, it requires that Rumble ban dos Santos entirely from using or monetizing Rumble in any way, including outside of Brazil. Much like previous orders, this one gave Rumble an unreasonable two hours to comply.

Several offenses were claimed to have been committed by Dos Santos in Brazil in connection with the alleged disinformation he posted about the STF and the 2022 election. However, Santos fled to the U.S. in 2020 and the Biden administration rightly rejected Brazil's extradition request in April of last year on the basis that such actions are not and cannot be classified as offenses in the United States, as they are safeguarded by the right to free expression.

In general, countries refuse to extradite a foreign national if the acts that constitute the request are not offenses in the country in question, as stipulated in extradition treaties. Dos Santos' application for political asylum in the United States is currently pending, and he continues to be a legal resident of the country.

In a statement, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski stated that the American rejection of the extradition request should have terminated Moraes' endeavor to restrict dos Santos' speech in the United States. Instead, he stated,

“This case is a landmark battle for free speech in the digital age, In March 2024, the U.S. government formally rejected Brazil’s request to extradite the political dissident, ruling that the charges were nothing more than 'crimes of opinion' and violated fundamental free speech protections. This should have ended Moraes’ pursuit of the political dissident. Instead, he is now attempting to sidestep the U.S. legal system entirely—using secret censorship orders to pressure American companies into banning the political dissident worldwide.” -Chris Pavlovski (SOURCE)

E. Martin De Luca, a lawyer at the prominent law firm Boies Schiller, represented Rumble and asserted that Dos Santos, who is a legal resident of the United States, is entitled to compensation.

“Alexandre de Moraes is attempting to sidestep U.S. law entirely. Rumble and Trump Media’s lawsuit seeks the protection of a U.S. federal court to ensure that American businesses remain governed by American law and that no foreign court can unilaterally dictate what speech is allowed on American platforms without proper authorization from the U.S. government.” -E. Martin De Luca, (SOURCE)

Trump 2.0 Steps Up

As evidenced by infamous boy-lizard Mark Zuckerberg’s recent reformation and kissing of the ring down at Mar-a-Lago, Tech companies are hoping to enlist Donald Trump’s aid in their fight against political censorship imposed by foreign governments and, potentially, future administrations.

Zuckerberg has claimed that senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, exerted pressure on Meta to remove certain content, particularly related to COVID-19, in 2021. In his August 26, 2024, letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, he wrote that these officials "repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire," and expressed frustration when Meta resisted.

Zuckerberg announced in January that Facebook’s “fact-checking program” would end, he asked the U.S. Government to protect tech companies against foreign governments who are “going after American companies and pushing to censor more.”

When asked about Meta’s announcement, Trump expressed approval for it. This protection is not meant to be reserved for Meta alone, but all American tech companies who’ve brushed up against the international and domestic censorship industrial complex, namely Rumble and X, who’ve both been forced to contend with this monstrosity on multiple occasions.

Which brings us to the complaint filed today, which you can read in its entirety HERE.

Lawyers representing Trump's media company contend that any attempt to impede Rumble's operations in Brazil would also have a detrimental impact on Trump's company, Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. (Trump Media), and its Truth Social social media platform. The cloud services that Truth Social relies on are provided by Rumble. Trump Media contends that any interference with Rumble will also undermine Truth Social, providing the company with a legal foundation to contest Moraes' directives regarding Rumble.

This new case may have political repercussions that are just as important as or even more so than its legal ones. Numerous influential members of Trump's new administration have long had grudges against Moraes and what they see to be Brazil's increasingly oppressive censorship system. Tensions between Moraes' now-powerful American opponents are expected to rise if his instructions are highlighted and portrayed as an assault on American sovereignty, American businesses, and the right to free expression of Americans.

Elon Musk comes to mind, who is seen by many as one of the most powerful members of Trump’s team. Musk repeatedly used harsh rhetorical attacks against Moraes throughout X's conflict with the STF, referring to him as “a tyrannical dictator masquerading as a judge” and a “criminal.”

In August, Musk published an AI-generated photo of Moraes behind prison bars and wrote: “One day, @Alexandre, this picture of you in prison will be real. Mark my words.”

Trump's media company's choice to join Rumble's case against Moraes clearly indicates that the new administration intends to challenge a number of the censorship orders issued by the Brazilian judge. Up until now, the Trump administration has mostly refrained from employing the same punitive tariffs, demands, and penalties that are applied to other nations explicitly against Brazil. However, this action by Trump's media firm against Moraes has the potential to exacerbate these dormant tensions between the two governments, and it most likely will.

The lawsuit asks that Apple and Google be ordered to refrain from following any orders from Moraes to remove Truth Social or Rumble's platform from their stores, in addition to requesting a decision that Moraes' order breaches American law and sovereignty. In order to ascertain whether the corporations' allegations against Moraes are legitimate, it also asks for a jury trial.

This is a developing story, but it bodes well for the pro-free speech camp. In the context of the greater information war and the fight against state-sponsored censorship, what Trump and Rumble are doing is the equivalent of a counterattack from a defensive position; A force absorbs an enemy assault from a fortified or prepared position, then launches an immediate strike as the enemy weakens or overextends.

It’s yet to be seen how Moraes and other censorship proponents—like the EU’s Thierry Breton—will respond to this lawsuit, but watching them attempt to fight back against Donald Trump when he’s arguably at his strongest will certainly be interesting.