Major players in the Democratic sphere have been unusually silent about Brazil’s recent crackdown on the X social media platform, according to a review of public records and comments.

Arguing that the company had failed to comply with the country’s orders to remove certain accounts, a Brazilian Supreme Court judge ruled on Friday to block X (formerly Twitter) nationwide, an order that went into effect on Saturday. The move, aimed at curtailing “misinformation,” has jeopardized tens of millions of X accounts and sparked concerns about the government’s ability to limit citizens’ free speech, but has been met with silence from prominent left-wing figures and organizations, some of whom previously advocated for more strict censorship laws. (RELATED: Harris Honeymoon Shows No Polling Boost After The Convention)

“We shouldn’t kid ourselves. The situation in Brazil, if it stands, will embolden other countries to set out on a similar censorial agenda,” Jeremy Tedesco, senior executive at the Alliance Defending Freedom, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “What we’re seeing, really, is that global censorship is on the rise, and it’s the duty of Western countries like the United States to resist those things. It’s disturbing that we’re not seeing more of bipartisan pushback on this.”

X’s future in Brazil is unclear, though for the time being it remains banned across the country, a decision which was upheld by the Brazilian Supreme Court on Monday. Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the man solely responsible for banning the platform, also instituted a $8,900 per-day fine for Brazilians who use a virtual private network (VPN) to access X, although this rule was rolled back because it threatened to affect other companies.

“The people of Brazil are not happy with the current regime,” Elon Musk, business mogul and owner of X, said on Sunday.

President Joe Biden has not made a statement about Brazil’s decision over the weekend to ban the X platform. More broadly, the Biden administration has said nothing of Brazil’s ban of X. The White House or the State Department, the latter of which is tasked with U.S. foreign policy, have not made a statement on the matter.

Neither the State Department nor the White House responded to multiple requests for comment.

It isn’t clear what the Biden administration’s position on the matter is, though it has promoted or engaged in censorship activities on previous occasions.

Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has not commented on Brazil’s ban of X, nor has her campaign, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the matter. Harris previously promoted the idea that social media platforms be regulated by the federal government.

“You can’t have one set of standards for Facebook and another for Twitter,” Harris said during a 2019 interview. “All of these social media companies and these online platforms, which are so powerful in their ability to impact perception about an issue and to influence behaviors. Let’s be clear about that. There have to be standards.”

Some organizations that typically promote freedom of speech have also made no statement on Brazil’s X ban, including Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and PEN America. A spokesperson for Amnesty International told the DCNF that the organization did not want to offer a comment “because we haven’t properly engaged with the issue.”

The editorial boards of The Washington Post and The New York Times, which are typically outspoken about political and cultural issues, have remained silent on the matter as well. Neither outlet responded to multiple requests for comment.

X had been in the crosshairs of Moraes for months, according to The Associated Press. Moraes opened an investigation into Musk and his supposed spread of misinformation in April, later demanding that the X platform comply with Brazil’s free speech laws, but X refused to comply, withdrawing its legal representative from Brazil last month, according to NPR.

The Brazilian people will learn of his crimes no matter how much he tries to stop it https://t.co/welqIkUyIj

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 31, 2024

Moraes subsequently banned X inside Brazil due to X’s decision not to have a legal representative inside the country, although users can still access the site through Starlink, another Musk company that maintains a network of satellites to provide internet access worldwide, according to the AP. Moraes froze the company’s financial accounts in Brazil last week.

Starlink is refusing to comply with the Brazilian government’s orders to stop providing access to X until its financial accounts are unfrozen, according to the AP.

X has come under fire from other world governments as well, including the European Union (EU), which is investigating the platform to see if it is violating the union’s digital speech laws. A top EU official warned Musk to comply with the EU’s digital speech laws ahead of his interview with former President Donald Trump in August, prompting Musk to issue a sharp rebuke.

The laws in question come from the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which prohibits the country’s citizens from promoting or posting anything the EU government deems as hate speech or misinformation. The DSA has raised concerns that the EU is limiting citizens’ freedom of speech while taking on the role of the arbiter of truth.

“The question for American citizens is whether we’re going to allow these global censors to basically control speech from Europe. Free speech is in a free fall in Europe,” George Washington University (GWU) law professor Jonathan Turley told Fox News in August. “There’s a very dangerous slippery slope that comes from these laws, and American citizens should not be distracted from the implications of things like the DSA.”

Musk has said he plans to continue fighting for X to be allowed in Brazil and Europe.

“The more the people of Brazil learn [about Moraes], the worse it will get for him,” Musk said on X on Monday. “He violated the constitution of Brazil repeatedly and egregiously, after swearing an oath to protect it. Nothing worse than an oathbreaker.”

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