Folha reports that Fux received a lesson on freedom of expression from Bolsonaro.

This excerpt is from an editorial in Folha de S.Paulo, which became a headline in the online version, attacking Alexandre de Moraes' decision to restrain Bolsonaro with an ankle monitor and house arrest:

"Freedom of expression is a right that does not abandon even those serving a prison sentence – a lesson that Minister Luiz Fux, who in the past censored Folha de S.Paulo in an attempt to interview then-former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) in prison, now seems to have learned from Bolsonaro."

To attack Moraes and defend the coup leader, Folha praises Fux. Their hero is the minister who, as the only dissenting voice in the Supreme Court's first panel, attempts to oppose the consensus surrounding his colleague dedicated to the case against the coup plotters.

What Folha doesn't say, but has been known for a long time, is that Luiz Fux denied Lula, not Folha, the right to speak while he was imprisoned.

Egocentric, self-centered, and arrogant, Folha believes that the newspaper, which would have listened, and not Lula, who had something to say, was silenced. Let's repeat: the editorial reports that Fux "censored Folha" in its attempt to interview Lula. 

Fux censured a former president convicted and imprisoned in connection with the Lava Jato corruption scandal. A politician who never attacked democracy nor threatened authorities or the press. 

But now, in a pro-Bolsonaro editorial, Folha says: "Moraes erred in attempting to silence Bolsonaro with a Kafkaesque order, impossible to fulfill."

According to Folha, Bolsonaro is censored and silenced when he sends messages through his sons and henchmen against the Supreme Court. But when Lula tried to speak, it was Folha that suffered censorship.

What Folha doesn't say, and no major newspaper will say, is that a common criminal, without Bolsonaro's political weight, wouldn't continue making the threats he made with impunity. He would be stopped by the justice system.

No notorious and powerful drug trafficker would say what Bolsonaro says. No militia leader, without political weight, would threaten the institutions, ministers, and families of ministers of the Supreme Federal Court.

But Bolsonaro can, because he has political backing and has the benefits of democracy at his disposal to attack democracy.

And because Folha, Globo, Estadão, and all the analog newspapers owned by corporations depend not only on the old right wing but also on the new fascism to prolong their survival.

It's more than just ultraconservative; it's connected to the far right—the audience that sustains these newspapers. A predominantly reactionary audience, like the clientele of all traditional media outlets brutalized by Bolsonaro's policies.

This hearing, which calls for a coup as a permanent measure and now depends on the power of American neo-fascism to conspire against the Supreme Court and against Lula, sustains the major newspapers and inspires their editorials.

We need to keep attacking Lula in search of 'another' savior figure. An impossible mission, which has been trying to reinvent itself since the end of Fernando Henrique Cardoso's government.

For over 20 years, they've been searching for a figure that doesn't exist and that corporations can't create. Folha, Globo, and Estadão are retracing their steps from the one they took after the 64 coup.

During the dictatorship in the 70s and 80s, they were pushed by pro-democracy movements into the struggles for the restoration of the rights to come and go, to speak, and to vote. The businesses of corporations were saved by the democrats.

The niche they are competing for today, as a market, is that of the old right-wing audience swallowed up by the far right. There is less ideology and more marketing aimed at building customer loyalty, a strategy that the three organizations compete for with precarious and unscrupulous journalism.

This leads Folha to see in Fux's change of stance an inspiration from Bolsonaro, the champion of freedoms, the homeland, and the family. And so Folha, which claimed to be beholden to its readers, is once again wagging its tail for fascism.