EZRA LEVANT ｜ Hundreds of thousands rally for free speech in Brazil with support of Elon Musk and X
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Summary
The President of Brazil has banned all access to the internet in his country, and I'm using a VPN to get around the government's censorship. But is Trudeau really as bad as he appears to think he is, or is there more to it than that?
Transcript
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I'm in Brazil, so I'm using a VPN to get on the internet. What's a VPN? It stands for a virtual
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private network, and you get around these government firewalls. Suddenly, the president
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of Brazil banned his whole country from going on Twitter. It was a political censorship news.
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I've downloaded the VPN from a company called PIA VPN. We've teamed up with them at Rebel,
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and it's a great deal. I got on the internet really quickly, safely, and even a bit of a
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technophobe. I managed to figure it out with two clicks, and here's the great news. If you go to
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PIAVPN.com slash Rebel News, not only do you get a big discount, but they pay us a bit of a commission
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too. Everyone's a winner. Your freedom, your VPN, and a little bit of cash coming to support Rebel News.
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I'm using it myself to get around the sensors in Brazil. You can use it too. That's PIAVPN.com slash
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Rebel News. Tonight, I went halfway across the world to see the largest free speech gathering
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I've ever witnessed. It's September 9th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show from Brazil.
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Ezra Levant here for Rebel News. I am in Sao Paulo, Brazil, one of the largest cities in the world.
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There's about 20 million people in Sao Paulo. It's really a whole country in the form of a city. I'm
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here because I came in the night flight last night, landing early this morning, because I want to see
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what's going on in Brazil, because there is a kind of civil war. It's not really violent yet, but it
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feels like it could go that way. On the one hand, you have their authoritarian president, Lula, as he's
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named, and his right-hand man, a crusading judge, Alexandre de Moraes. And the judge has decided to censor
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and silence critics of Lula, and he does this through social media. He has secret trials of
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political figures, of journalists, and orders that their Twitter account be silenced, censored, banned,
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suspended, deleted. I'm sure he's doing that to the other social media companies too, like Facebook
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and Instagram and WhatsApp. But the only reason we know about it is because when Elon Musk bought Twitter
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and renamed it X, he decided to make it a free speech platform, not a censorship platform. And
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so when this out-of-control activist judge started having secret trials and saying, you've got to
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suspend this political opponent of Lula, but you can't say anything about this trial. We're having
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a secret trial with secret evidence and the outcome is secret. Elon Musk said, whoa, no, that's not why I
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bought Twitter. We're not going to go along with it. And we're going to publicize this. Well,
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you don't defy authoritarians in this part of the world easily. And so they banned Twitter.
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The only way I'm able to come to you by Twitter is I'm using something called a VPN, which if I'm not
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mistaken, it's a virtual private network. It allows you to spoof the local internet and pretend that you're
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in Argentina or America instead of Brazil, if I tried to use Twitter from Brazil, it wouldn't work.
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I'm going on a VPN and it's working. And for a while there, they had huge fines for anyone caught using
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a VPN. By the way, I don't usually do this, but I want to give a shout out to the VPN I'm using. And I
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downloaded it in about 30 seconds on my phone. It's called PIAvpn.com. And they actually give us a commission
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if you sign up for it. So I'm going to toot their horn as a kind of advertiser. By the way,
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it works great. It was easy even for a technophobe like me. If you go to PIAvpn.com
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slash rebel news, you get a big discount and we get a couple of bucks. Anyways, that's my commercial
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picks. Thanks for letting me say it. Actually, the only reason I mentioned it is because I've never
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had to use a VPN to get around censorship before. And if you're back home in Canada, you're probably
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saying, well, what's the likelihood that I'll ever need a VPN to get around something that
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Trudeau is doing? Well, what do you think the odds are? 10%, 20%? The answer is 100%. He actually is
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already banning things for Canadian. Try going on Facebook or Instagram to see any Canadian news story.
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It'll be blocked. You need a VPN in Canada to get around Trudeau's censorship. That's why I recommend
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PIAvpn.com slash rebel news. I didn't know I needed it, but now I do. Let me talk about Trudeau
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for one more minute. He is proposing a new censorship law in Canada called Bill C-63 that allows for the
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kind of secret trials they have here in Brazil. The secret trials contemplated in Trudeau's law,
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Bill C-63, allows the accuser to remain secret, allows witnesses to remain secret,
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and allows people to make complaints against neighbors or rivals and actually get a bounty
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of $20,000 per person that they rat out to the government. So what's going on here in Brazil isn't
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just of interest to Brazilians. It's of interest to everyone around the world because I promise you
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that other leaders, whether it's Keir Starmer in the United Kingdom, Kamala Harris in the United States,
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or Justin Trudeau in Canada, they are all looking at Brazil to see what can they get away with.
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Now, the good news is there is an opposition in Brazil. That's why we're here. Today is the
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Independence Day of Brazil and the chief opposition figure, Jair Bolsonaro, the former president,
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he's having a massive rally in this massive city of Sao Paulo. It starts in about 90 minutes and we'll be
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there. Lula, the communist authoritarian who's doing all the censoring, he's having his own
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counter rally in the capital city of Brasilia. So in Brasilia, you've got the big Lula censorship
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rally. And in Sao Paulo, you've got the freedom rally for Bolsonaro. And it'll be interesting to see
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how important Twitter is in that conversation. I look forward to finding that out. To sum up,
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I made it into the country okay. As you know, I didn't announce I was coming until I was through
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customs because I wanted to make sure that I wasn't kept out. I did disclose to them that I was here
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as a journalist to cover the Independence Day rallies. I didn't get into the politics, but I was
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very candid at the border and they were happy to see us come through. I hope that that is a sign that
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things aren't quite as bad as I had feared. But we'll give you the straight goods. Sao Paulo as a
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city is fascinating. The first thing that stands out is the graffiti. It's just astonishing. It's
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everywhere, but it's almost like it's being rebutted by massive murals on every block. A huge
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skyscraper has a gorgeous massive mural on it. There are more murals in this city than maybe
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any other city in the world. Now, unfortunately, there's more graffiti in this city than anywhere else
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in the world too, but it's a visual feast for the eyes. As we drove in, there's some astonishingly poor
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neighborhoods in Sao Paulo, and there were some unusual things. We didn't stop, but we saw,
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I think, someone selling voodoo bones. Like, there's a lot of exotic things. Let me just use that
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adjective in this city. But we're not here as tourists. I can assure you that we are here to cover
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this rally. We flew overnight. Our head of video, EfraÃn Oswaldo Flores Monsanto, myself,
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we flew overnight. We can't even check into the hotel yet because it's not available. We're going
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to go straight to the rally, do that all day, go to the hotel, and then probably do some more wrap up
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journalism tomorrow, and then home we go. We're going to have all our reports at a website called
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thetruthaboutbrazil.com, and that's what we want to do. We want to follow the facts wherever they lead.
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We just got here. We haven't gone to the protest yet. We're going with an open mind. I speak no
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Portuguese. A lot of Brazilians don't speak English, but I'm sure we'll find people to help us figure out
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what's going on. You can follow us at thetruthaboutbrazil.com, and the only way we're able to do
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that is because in this censorship jurisdiction where they have a China-style great firewall,
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we're using a VPN, and I'm afraid that other tyrants around the world are watching the censorship here
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as sort of a lab experiment. Can they get away with it or not? I hope freedom rules the day,
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and I'm glad that Elon Musk is throwing the weight of X, which is what he calls Twitter. I'm glad he's
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throwing the weight of his companies and his own convictions behind the freedom side. All right,
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we'll keep you posted. I'm making my way on foot to the big Bolsonaro rally, which is also a free
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speech rally, which is also a rally against the censorship of the social media company called
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X, formerly called Twitter. It's been a big battle. An out of control judge named Alexandre de Moraes
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has been banning individual accounts of political opposition, and then the government just outright
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banned Twitter altogether. Today is Independence Day, so Yair Bolsonaro,
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who's basically the leading opposition figure, he's the former president, is having his rally in
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Sao Paulo, while Lula, the tyrannical, in my opinion, president, is having his rally in Brasilia,
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the capital. You can see it's sort of gridlock on the way in. I see lots of Bolsonaro supporters,
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some candidates. He has adopted the colors of Brazil. You can see the beautiful Brazilian flag,
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green and yellow. It's also sports colors. So you, I mean, I guess if you see someone today
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wearing green and yellow, they might just be supporting a football team or a sports team.
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But I get the feeling the closer we go to the rally, it's going to be a symbol of support. I spoke to
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this young lady here who's selling this merch. Unfortunately, she doesn't speak a word of English. I'm ahead of
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her because I speak one word of Portuguese, which is obrigado. Anyways, oh, there you go. Yeah,
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that's thank you. Well, thank you for letting us film in front of your stuff. I'll let you know how
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it goes. We're going to keep walking in this 32 degrees Celsius heat. That's about 90 degrees
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Fahrenheit. I'm not built for hiking in that weather, but I'll do it for you. We're just on the fringes of
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it. You could see it's sort of a festival atmosphere. Roads are closed. Food trucks are here.
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It's sort of like, I don't know, in Rio, they might call it carnival. And we're just at the fringes of
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it. Politics is a huge affair in a country with 200 million citizens. And it was a razor's edge by
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which Lula beat Bolsonaro in the last election. Bolsonaro wants back in. But Lula's right-hand man,
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an extremist judge named Alexandre de Mores has actually issued a ruling saying that Bolsonaro is
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not eligible to run in the next election just by judicial fiat. It's really modeled after the U.S.
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Democrat lawfare against Donald Trump. Imagine just simply saying you're not allowed to run again
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because I'm a judge and I say so, and I'm protecting democracy by not letting the opponents of the regime
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run. That's how nutty it is in Brazil. But that's another reason to be here. Because although we
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might think of a Latin American country as perhaps not the heart of a liberal democracy, this is a
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large democracy, 200 million souls. And if they can get away with the kind of tyranny, lawfare and
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chicanery, censorship and abusiveness, really lurching back to a banana republic style dictatorship,
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if they can do it here in Brazil, don't think for a moment that other leaders around the world won't
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think they can copy it, especially this censorship aspect. We're going to make our way in. Hopefully,
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we'll find some English speakers. But I had to stop and remark on sort of the party atmosphere.
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That's Brazil for you. But what's very interesting is how many signs are here for freedom of speech.
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And for Elon Musk, there are also signs saying Moraes, Moraes, which means Moraes out.
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Who is Moraes? He is an extremist judge who has been conducting secret trials, censoring opposition
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leaders. I want to show you this. This guy right here, he's dressed up as Alexandre de Moraes. What
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We have to take courage. We have to take courage. We have to take courage. We have to take courage. The
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freedom is our own heritage. And we have to fight for the anistia of the people who are
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arrested unjustly. They are parents and mothers and families. This here is a retrace. It is the
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carne. It is the justice that we have today. And it's not just penalizing him, Alexandre de Moraes, but his
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pares, for inertia, for lack of respect for the citizens of Brazil. The Venezuela is there. We are going to pass.
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A liberdade é o maior patrimônio. Temos que lutar por nossa liberdade. Liberdade. E bota pra torar.
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There he is. You don't need to know Portuguese to know that. He's a critic of Alexandre de Moraes,
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the extremist judge who wears a black cape like this and has a bald head like that. What a character.
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We've met a few of them in São Paulo. Obrigado. Thank you. Thank you. Very good.
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And look over there. We're standing in front of the federal justice building. A very symbolic place.
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You can see this is a stage from which the speeches will begin shortly. Lots of Brazil flags.
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And why are you here today? I'm here representing my friend Alan dos Santos.
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He is one of the journalists that is in exile in America due to Alexandre de Moraes' actions,
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illegal actions. Why is he in exile? What did he do? He's a journalist. So he spoke the truth and now
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he's paying for it. And what has Moraes done to him? Took his passport, all his assets,
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separated his family for over three years. And what do you make of Moraes and Lula fighting against
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Elon Musk in Twitter? They are wrong. They are doing illegal things. Moraes should be put in jail
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and pay for his actions. He's crying. We're right at the front. This is a stage where the speeches will
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happen in a matter of minutes. But even looking around the crowd is fascinating. For example,
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look at those three flags at the top. The Brazilian flag, then the American flag, then the Israeli flag,
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which is a very interesting statement because Lula, the authoritarian leader of Brazil,
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is very sympathetic to different countries. Iran, China, Cuba. And I don't know if you can see it now,
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but there's a fellow there that has a sign saying Bolsonaro and Trump are both against communism.
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There's lots of placards, some of which call for the ouster of Brazil's censorious judge,
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Alexandre de Moraes. There's posters for Elon Musk. It's a very interesting mix.
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These people care about freedom. I love Elon Musk. I love Elon Musk. Brazil loves Elon Musk.
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Thank you. Are you worried that Brazil is becoming a dictatorship again?
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We are expecting hundreds of thousands of people. The last manifestation that we had was about a
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million people. And how about Lula in Brasilia? What do you think is about his counter-protest?
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Brazil, they had a death. Today is a Brazilian independence. They hold a parade that nobody supported.
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The people of Brazil do not want to Lula. They do not vote for Lula.
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It's a Trump-style rally. But this ain't Pennsylvania. It's Sao Paulo, Brazil.
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And they're introducing Jair Bolsonaro, sometimes called the Donald Trump of Brazil.
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He used to be the president. Then the left-wing regime won by a sliver. They've been conducting
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lawfare against him ever since. This is one of his comeback rallies. But more than that,
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it's a rally for freedom of speech. Because just like in Canada, America and elsewhere,
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the authorities are cracking down on social media. Jair Bolsonaro is on the stage.
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The other side that won the elections, no one follows. In any place in Brazil that I go,
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from the south to the south to the south to the south to the south to the south, or the north,
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the people treat us very well. We can see, one day, a team of football will be champion
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with the team, but the president without the people, it's the first time that we are watching in the history of Brazil.
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People say that I should pass a faixa for that guy. I don't pass a faixa for a ladrão.
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Do you see that sign there? For Alexandre de Moraes. That means get out, Moraes. Let me explain that for Americans and Canadians.
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In Canada and the United States, there's lawfare that is using and abusing the courts to criminalize your political opponents.
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Here in Brazil, they take it to a whole new level. They have secret trials and ban politicians.
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and journalists in secret trials and journalists in secret trials and order social media companies to block them.
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Only Twitter says no. And so now, the tyrannical regime of Lula and Moraes are seizing assets belonging to Elon Musk.
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That's why we're here today on a whistle stop trip to Sao Paulo. We're going home tomorrow. We're just here for today and tomorrow morning.
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We've walked about a block off the main drag on each side of the podium there. There's got to be a mile of people.
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And we were jammed together so closely. I tell you, it was like a bride and groom.
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I, uh, it's about 32 degrees or about 90 Fahrenheit. But when you're jammed up with people like that, it's 37 degrees.
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It's body temperature. They were passing out little chilled containers of water near the front.
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I think they were worried people were going to faint. 95% of the remarks have been in Portuguese,
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which unfortunately I speak very little of. But there was a particular mention of Elon Musk in English,
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thanking Elon Musk for providing Twitter and through Twitter a freedom of speech social media platform that has not been censored.
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Well, let me correct myself. It has been ordered to be censored by an activist judge, Alexander de Moraes.
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But Twitter has resisted, which by omission suggests that the other social media companies have complied.
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By the way, historically, the conservative freedom oriented president before the current left wing authoritarian president,
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Yair Bolsonaro, he organized using WhatsApp, the social media app that is owned by Meta.
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So they've cracked down on his party's use of WhatsApp. And Mark Zuckerberg and Meta are fine with that.
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Same with Instagram and Facebook. Only Elon Musk's social media app of Twitter has stood up against this activist judge.
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And so you saw signs in the audience with praise for Elon Musk, thanking Elon Musk.
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And there was a shout out to him in English from the podium.
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It was interesting looking at the crowd. And again, I find it hard to measure a crowd when you're in the middle of it.
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We put our drone up and I saw some images on our videographer's phone. It looked enormous.
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I don't think I've ever been to such a large protest in my life. I mean, even the truckers was measures in tens of thousands.
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But here, I think they measure their protests in hundreds of thousands and occasionally by the million.
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Makes sense in a country with 200 million souls. I wouldn't be surprised if there were 200,000 here today.
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But there was an observation because I go to protests around the world.
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I went to a protest a few months ago, you might recall, in Dublin, Ireland.
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And one of the things I look for are the flags. What flags were there here today?
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Well, obviously, there was the Brazilian flag, green and yellow. You probably know it. It's an interesting flag.
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And Bolsonaro has adopted the colors of the Brazilian flag as his own campaign colors.
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But in addition to the green and yellow of the national flag, there were American flags.
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And I must say, there were quite a few Israeli flags.
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What I did not see at all was a single pro-Hamas Gaza flag, not a single one in the audience,
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because simply that's not reflected by the grassroots will of this country.
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I contrast that to the allies of the incumbent president, Lula is his name,
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who is allied with the likes of Iran, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, and China.
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Now, I don't speak any Portuguese, so I wasn't much good at understanding what was said from the stage.
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But it was a high-energy, Trump-like rally. That is, lots of energy, music.
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They have their own Bolsonaro theme song that they played.
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They also played what I think was the Brazilian national anthem.
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And it was beautiful to see so many Brazilians sing along quite passionately.
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I've never been to Brazil before, but one thing you'll note right away is the racial heterogeneity of the country.
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They have people of all different backgrounds, black, white, indigenous.
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And I would guess, just from anecdotal observation, that most Brazilians are a mix of the above.
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To see a rainbow of colors of people united in singing a patriotic anthem was actually quite a moving thing.
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Again, that's Trump-like. I don't think you would have that on parties of the left as well.
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We found it difficult to upload video in real time because there must be 50,000 people trying to stream this event on their cell phone.
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So even though we were using a VPN and we bought extra data, it slowed to a crawl.
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So we're going to go to a local cafe and upload our videos.
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Go and upload the video so you can see them live.
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People are selling cold water, cold pop, cold beer.
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There's very few people here who speak English.
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And because of that, it's hard to understand what they're saying.
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And it's hard to do streeters, which is one of our favorite ways of doing journalism.
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It's also a sign that people here don't follow Rebel News.
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I've been in places all around the Anglosphere.
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And he came up and wanted to share his thoughts.
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Because I am eager to hear from someone in English.
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We'll now ask George what's cooking here today.
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I can tell you that today, it is one of the most important rallies in our country.
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And we celebrate that, celebrating also our liberty.
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Because without liberty, without freedom, you don't have any independence at all.
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So, all that you are seeing here today, we are about to reach over a million.
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To speak against the banning of the X from our country.
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So, are you a Twitter user yourself, an X user?
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Do you currently have access to X or Twitter right now?
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So, this Alexandre de Moraes, he actually, he shut up 22 million people that use X or the X
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For mayors and House of Deputies, it's going to be here next October.
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Now, I understand that this same judge, De Moraes, who's banned Twitter, has also ordered
00:27:41.760
that Jair Bolsonaro is not allowed to run in the next election.
00:27:49.760
As, what they did, it is, they turned Bolsonaro unelected for the next election.
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But now, there will be many of the, some of the House of Deputies, they are fighting for,
00:28:01.760
to get back his right to be elected as president again.
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So, what we are looking for, it is to be sure that he will be our next president.
00:28:10.760
Because he's the only one who has fought for our freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of thinking, freedom of thought.
00:28:18.760
So, he's the one that actually should be in that chair today.
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You speak about freedom and I saw a lot of people here with placards about freedom.
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But when I came in from the airport, I passed through some extremely poor neighborhoods.
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People, there's an enormous number of homeless people in parts of Sao Paulo, grindingly poor.
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Do they think about freedom? Would they vote for Bolsonaro?
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Or would they vote for Lula, the socialist, because he's promising to take money from the rich to give to the poor?
00:28:55.760
You seem to care about freedom, but what about people who are shockingly poor?
00:29:04.760
Before, people from northeast of Brazil, they used to vote for Lula because Lula used to give them money.
00:29:10.760
Bolsonaro did different. Bolsonaro gave them jobs.
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Bolsonaro gave them the freedom to work and have their own money without depending on the government.
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So, I'm pretty sure that today we have a lot of minds that were for Lula before transformed into go to Bolsonaro today
00:29:28.760
because they saw that you only reach our freedom economically, freedom of speech, if you have independence.
00:29:36.760
If you work, if you are capable to have your own salary. So, that's what Bolsonaro was doing.
00:29:41.760
Instead of giving money, he was giving jobs. He was creating jobs around the country.
00:29:46.760
So, that will make, for example, foreign investors to invest in Brazil, to invest in companies, in the industry, in everything that we needed here.
00:29:57.760
So, Bolsonaro was on the right path for our prosperity. And now, we are seeing everything that we are seeing around the country.
00:30:04.760
Our deficit is go over and beyond the charts. Do you understand?
00:30:09.760
So, now, Bolsonaro was able to cap that in check. And actually, we have over money, not over deficit. Do you understand?
00:30:18.760
So, we have money enough to do all those social programs that use the left wing used to do it.
00:30:24.760
Only by giving money, Bolsonaro was able to give jobs. And that's what is important for the people.
00:30:30.760
For you to know how you catch your own fish, not only by giving.
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All right, George. Great to catch up with you. Thanks very much.
00:30:37.760
There you have it, George. One of the few protesters we've seen today who speaks English.
00:30:42.760
A lot of similarities between how they attack Donald Trump in America and how they attract Bolsonaro here.
00:30:48.760
using lawfare, censoring, demonizing. It'll be interesting to see what terrible lessons Lula teaches Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Justin Trudeau.
00:31:02.760
To follow along, go to thetruthaboutbrazil.com.
00:31:09.760
This place is a good fast, awesome fast. The future of Brazil is the in Bolsonaro, in ever, ever, ever Brazilians.
00:31:47.760
He did things that no other president before him was prepared to do.
00:31:52.760
And he acted with a strong hand, with the direction of God.
00:31:57.760
But he managed to remove our people from a situation that no other president before him could do.
00:32:03.760
My Portuguese is as good as your English. What do you think about freedom? And freedom of expression? Libertad.
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they are not respecting the freedom of expression of our country.
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So we are here as a way of protest to make this constitution
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because they say that they respect, but they don't respect.
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So we are here fighting for our freedom of expression.
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but we are here fighting not only for generations of today,
00:33:10.760
It's a natural right for us to defend ourselves,
00:33:14.760
to be able to speak, to be able to express ourselves.
00:33:48.760
that's the only place where we could express ourselves,
00:33:55.760
was there, and they were able to do something like that.
00:34:05.760
I'm against the system, but they don't let me talk.
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Tell me why you brought the flag israeli today.
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And the Christianism comes from the root of the Jews.
00:34:32.760
and gave the name of Brazil because of the wood that came to Israel.
00:34:58.760
these pillars of the West, which is the Christianism.
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And, also, we have our representative out there,
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That's why I brought the band of the United States.
00:35:31.760
And, over and over, the number one answer I got was freedom.
00:35:36.760
of expression it's not something you normally hear people go to rallies for partisan reasons
00:35:41.380
or even for economic pocketbook issues but to go to talk about freedom of speech i was impressed
00:35:46.740
many of them talk specifically about elon musk and they call it x here they don't use the old
00:35:51.740
word twitter i asked them if you had one message to say to elon musk what would it be boy i got
00:35:58.300
an earful take a listen why were you here today why did you guys come to the rally we came here
00:36:04.080
today because we are fighting for our freedom you know we listen to and we we saw all the things
00:36:11.220
that elon musk show to us and we hear for fighting for our freedom you know elon musk inspired us i
00:36:19.680
know that both lula and maurice have publicly criticized musk it's easy to be against the
00:36:28.740
world's richest man it's easy to be against the a foreign person um our ordinary brazilians
00:36:36.320
how do they feel about elon musk do they even know who he is you know most of the people are
00:36:42.740
with elon musk because we see what's going on we see we know what is right and that's why we think
00:36:49.020
that we and we support him uh but it's easy to be at lula's side right now do you use social media
00:36:57.000
like twitter instagram facebook no she is anymore x anymore oh yeah instagram you used to use x yes
00:37:04.600
he used to use no more they cut off don't you know this i do know this i use a vpn to get around
00:37:12.800
that my husband has this vpn because he's from united states well then they get who use vpn here
00:37:20.780
and they catch too don't want to use because you go x from vpn they block this too why am i be in
00:37:30.660
trouble because i'm using x to the vpn for another country you are in brazilia it's okay do you use
00:37:37.240
social media yes i use i use i used to my favorite was twitter like x but now i'm using
00:37:46.480
blue sky instagram tiktok i use a lot so you stopped using x when it was banned by the government
00:37:53.260
i stopped it because more i stopped us elon musk has stood up to alexander demoraes
00:38:00.600
very noisily and he's pushed back what do you think of that i think it's good for brazil
00:38:06.960
because he's not brazilian but he's going to help us a lot
00:38:14.200
is up you x x eu usava só agora foi bloqueado então você pode ver que eu tenho ele aqui
00:38:18.640
ok só que é bloqueado a gente não pode usar mais spanish block aqui ó eu tenho um x só
00:38:26.120
que a gente não pode usar mais tá bloqueado você usa vpn se eu falar isso perigoso ser mutado
00:38:32.960
então espeta rio if i say that i use vpn i am i am subjectable for a fine of 50 000 reais
00:38:40.400
which will be ten thousand dollar fine mas ele dá um jeitinho we are here because this
00:38:46.240
because he is let us to talk in in the biggest platform of brazil so we are here to fight to
00:38:58.480
i love elon musk i love elon musk thank you if you had one message you could send to elon musk
00:39:10.560
today what would it be we are on your side how do you feel about elon musk he's taken a great
00:39:17.040
interest in brazil i love elon musk oh love elon musk he's helping us so much i hope so because he
00:39:26.400
has a lot of power a lot of money a lot of everything i hope he can help us you trust him a lot
00:39:35.920
if you had one message for the owner of x elon musk what would it be
00:39:41.760
brazil we need to fight for our future and we need to to stop more eyes hello musk thank you for
00:39:51.280
fighting for our freedom we are with you thank you very much you are friend of brazilian people
00:40:05.120
musk fica firme não desanima nos ajuda porque o brasil precisa de você e o mundo precisa de você
00:40:10.960
porque a gente precisa de liberdade e você é um guerreiro é um lutador para nós é de grande
00:40:15.600
importância foi pelo que você está fazendo não pelo dinheiro certo mas pelo que você é então
00:40:20.720
isso nos orgulha muito então meu feliz demais pelo musk is not amazing that gave me a lot of hope
00:40:26.640
but the fact that they rely on an industrialist and a free speech activist from america to save them
00:40:33.520
in brazil it's delightful that x is doing that but it's also deeply sad that without x these people
00:40:41.920
would be thrown to the wolves we heard several instances today where people who express themselves
00:40:48.000
on instagram find themselves censored immediately so all the censorship that elon musk is fighting
00:40:54.000
against mark zuckerberg is accepting and rolling over for all our reports from sao paulo
00:41:00.800
go to the truth about brazil dot com and if you like this journalism please help cover the cost
00:41:07.120
of our citizen activism journalism it's about four thousand dollars all in for my cameraman and
00:41:12.960
i to come down from canada for a couple days you can chip in at the truth about brazil dot com
00:41:18.640
thanks we're a couple of blocks away from the big rally uh on a fence i see this enormous
00:41:24.160
banner impeachment of the dictator alexander demoraes and a shocking picture of him he is quite easy to
00:41:34.240
caricature because he's uh got a completely shaved bald head and he wears this black cape like he's some
00:41:43.600
i don't know member of the spanish inquisition or some quasi-religious high priest and the reason they
00:41:51.840
call him a dictator is because he has unilaterally banned anyone that comes to his attention who
00:42:01.680
criticizes the current left-wing regime he's ordered the leader the end of the conservative
00:42:08.720
opposition the trump-like figure here javier bolsonaro he's banned him from running again and he's
00:42:15.680
basically declared war on elon musk because elon musk won't go along with his censorship it's quite
00:42:21.520
incredible to see that personified in one man and you might look at that and say that that's just
00:42:26.880
such a shocking grotesque image bloodthirsty but i i think that more ish actually cultivates that image
00:42:35.760
no one wears a black cape and has that astonishing look by accident he really thinks he's some high
00:42:43.200
emperor and the trouble is brazil is not so far removed from a military dictatorship past i have to
00:42:50.480
tell you um he would be at home being a ruler of any tin pot banana republic that's what he's trying
00:42:57.200
to turn brazil into yeah your bolsonaro wants to make it more freedom oriented be interesting to see
00:43:03.120
which way that goes but i just have to stop and remark on this banner why did you come to the bolsonaro
00:43:09.120
rally today i i come here because i'm here to to defend the free of brazil because chandong is
00:43:23.280
he's cream of speech yeah yes he's closing our our mouth oh really because lula is doing that or moray
00:43:30.960
morays morays is um that's the judge he's a judge he's uh literally just a toy for him it's just a
00:43:38.800
toy this alexandre de morais he actually he shut up 22 million people that use x or the next twitter
00:43:47.840
here he's in brazil so 22 million it's a lot it's a lot 22 million i think in the united states what
00:43:56.000
they're doing to donald trump trying to censor him trying to take legal action against him i feel
00:44:02.640
like they're doing the same thing here as well uh and this alexandre de morais i think he's a
00:44:08.320
radical judge does it look likely that he'll be impeached or do you think he's going to continue
00:44:13.920
doing what he's doing i think he is unfortunately going to keep doing what he's doing which is a shame
00:44:20.480
for us brazilian because this he doesn't represent us but i hope one day it will stop there's gonna be
00:44:27.680
one impeachment they're gonna ask for impeachment this time have a lot of power the judge alexander
00:44:33.520
de morais yeah yeah then it's gonna be a lot of power this impeachment for 90s i hope so you win
00:44:40.960
him so who's more powerful lula or morais morais really lula is he's just a part of this wrong thing
00:44:50.480
this bad thing in brazil now i understand that this same judge de morais who's banned twitter
00:44:57.360
has also ordered that jair bolsonaro is not allowed to run in the next election
00:45:02.560
is that does that the current state of the law all right then as uh what they did it is
00:45:08.640
they turned bolsonaro unelected for the next election but now there will be many of the
00:45:15.520
some of the house of deputies they are fighting for to get back his right to be elected as president
00:45:21.440
again so what we're looking for it is to be sure that he will be our next president i don't usually
00:45:28.960
do this but i want to give a shout out to the vpn i'm using and i downloaded it in about 30 seconds
00:45:35.360
on my phone it's called piavpn.com and they actually give us a commission if you sign up for
00:45:42.320
it so i'm gonna toot their horn as a kind of advertiser by the way it works great it was easy
00:45:48.800
even for a technophobe like me if you go to piavpn.com slash rebel news you get a big discount and we get
00:45:57.520
a couple of bucks anyways that's my commercial picks thanks for letting me say it i'm worried that what
00:46:03.040
we see with lula and demora is lurching back in time towards a less free brazil do you feel that
00:46:12.160
way are you worried that brazil will become a kind of dictatorship i am afraid of that and i hope
00:46:19.760
things change in the future i hope donald trump win to help us because it's a terrible country to live
00:46:26.480
right now why does maurice wear the black cape i find that very weird me too me too i can't
00:46:34.640
does he think he's like i can't understand why he isn't he's the judge because he's not judge here
00:46:40.560
does he think he's maybe uh like a a high priest or an or a head of the inquisition it's it's almost
00:46:48.320
like he's dressing up in a halloween costume as some emperor or something like voldemort yeah or
00:46:55.920
palpatine in star wars yeah uh i think he's like voldemort here um for my friends and and i uh he's
00:47:03.600
voldemort and what do you think he's just a monster
00:47:07.440
well it's about 5 15 p.m here in sao paulo and the rally for jared bolsonaro and freedom
00:47:23.040
is officially over people are slowly making their way home but i gotta say it's still that
00:47:28.160
festival feeling that carnival feeling there's so many food trucks and stands selling stuff people
00:47:34.400
are in no rush to get home they blocked off all these streets so it's sort of turned into a street
00:47:39.200
festival lots of beer is drunk here in brazil i can testify to that um everyone's so friendly you
00:47:45.760
know when we do what we call streeters or man on the street interviews in toronto people or new york
00:47:52.880
people are too rushed they sort of brush you off um they're they're sort of gruff about it but i found
00:47:58.240
that everyone here was very polite now i have to say very few spoke english but we did manage to find
00:48:03.600
someone we found a fella who helped us translate but there's such a friendliness here to brazil was
00:48:08.080
very welcoming and i mean i suppose this is all a brazilian society but it's such a diverse mix of
00:48:13.840
people from different ethnic backgrounds uh it really is an amazing looking people and the harmony
00:48:22.400
is quite something my favorite part of today i have to tell you was when we were right at the front
00:48:28.000
in the rally and they sang the brazilian anthem at least what i think was a brazilian anthem and
00:48:33.040
everyone sang it with passion and to see faces of every race and ethnicity sing that unifying song
00:48:41.920
i was touched by it and i was touched by how many brazilian flags i saw and it was notable that i didn't
00:48:47.840
see a single hamas flag the whole time there were some israeli flags some american flags these people
00:48:53.200
know what they believe in it's hard to measure the size of a crowd when you're in one how can you
00:48:59.200
possibly do that we flew our drone part of the way down the street but i think there were some gps
00:49:05.280
limitations in this area i saw a lot of other drones so we just showed one half of the street but there
00:49:11.760
was as many people on the other half of the street too i heard someone gave an estimate i don't even
00:49:17.680
want to repeat it because i don't believe that there were a million people i just find that hard to
00:49:21.600
believe but do i believe there were more than a hundred thousand people here today absolutely i
00:49:26.400
do we'll have to see what the police estimate is wouldn't surprise me if it was a quarter million
00:49:31.520
that's how they roll i mean think about it brazil is the kind of place that puts a hundred thousand
00:49:35.920
people in a soccer stadium so they're used to coming out and there was there's some entertainment
00:49:41.200
here i mean there were some great speakers there was even some songs they've got their bolsonaro
00:49:47.120
song that's pretty catchy um like i say sort of a festival feeling i was sort of squished and crushed
00:49:53.280
near the front and uh it was extremely noisy the front so i wasn't very able to do some journalism
00:49:59.280
there but i enjoyed the streeters that i did after and everyone here when you ask them why did you come
00:50:06.640
here why did you come to this rally they all answered the word freedom every single one of them and
00:50:14.400
that's impressive to me that people care about something like that we'll have some more reports
00:50:19.120
that we put up over the next little while we got to go and edit them you can follow all those at the
00:50:23.760
truth about brazil.com and by the way efron and i crowd we're crowdfunding our tickets to come out here
00:50:30.720
to economy class airfares about three thousand dollars canadian combined plus a hotel room and some
00:50:37.120
taxis if you can help chip in you can do that right there about the truth about brazil.com all right we're
00:50:44.080
going to make our way back to the hotel and start doing some editing