By Diogo Costa

As democracies grapple with misinformation, Brazil’s hardline approach is seen by some as a potential model. The country has taken extreme measures to police online discourse—recently banning X (formerly Twitter) and fining citizens using VPNs to access it. These moves highlight its boldness but also underscore the dangers of empowering the state to treat mistrust as merely a crisis of information.

Brazil’s crisis of institutional mistrust can be traced back to the “Car Wash” operation, a sweeping corruption investigation that began in 2014. Car Wash revealed deep entanglements of bribery within the highest echelons of the government during the Lula administration in the early 2000s. The judiciary, seen as the last bastion of integrity, gained unprecedented public trust, with judges and prosecutors becoming national heroes.

However, as Car Wash extended its reach, the judiciary itself came under scrutiny. In 2019, the magazine Crusoé published allegations implicating Supreme Court Justice Dias Toffoli in the very corruption schemes Car Wash aimed to dismantle. Toffoli’s response—to launch an investigation against the magazine for allegedly spreading fake news—marked the beginning of a dangerous conflation of misinformation and dissent.

Appointed to lead this........

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