What's behind the Antagonist vs. Supreme Court war?

"If something has a crocodile's tail, crocodile skin, crocodile mouth, crocodile feet, crocodile eyes, crocodile body, and crocodile head, how can it not be a crocodile?" asked the elder Leonel Brizola during the historic 1989 election that consolidated Brazil's redemocratization. In politics, many things are possible, but naiveté is not.

The censorship episode (I haven't found another word to define it yet) involving ministers Alexandre de Moraes and Dias Toffoli against the website O Antagonista is not just a chapter in a convoluted saga that began shortly after Dilma's reelection and led the country to an unprecedented crisis.

O Antagonista is not a media outlet, but a speculation project. Its main shareholder, Empiricus, was recently fined in one of the most emblematic cases of misleading advertising, that of Betina. O Antagonista's criteria for truth are very similar to those of this advertisement.

It is not uncommon for the site to post articles without any factual basis, with the sole purpose of promoting or discrediting groups or individuals.

For some time now, O Antagonista has been targeting Toffoli, and Bolsonaro's support network in the Supreme Court as a whole. The campaign carried out by these groups today doesn't only have the PT as its main target; the STF and its ministers are treated on the same level as Zé Dirceu and Lula.

Since Toffoli is the president of the Supreme Court, by undermining him, O Antagonista knows it is harming the Court as a whole. And this allows an attack to advance on a branch of government that could be a barrier to a more authoritarian project.

That's why General Mourão's statement defending O Antagonista last night sounded quite strange. A general who defends the legacy of the military dictatorship is worried about censorship?

The war between ministers Toffoli and Moraes and O Antagonista is not limited to them. Therefore, even knowing that the prohibition of the broadcast of the report points to a dangerous precedent, perhaps it is important, without neglecting to look at the tree, to try to verify what is happening in the forest.

What interests are behind Betina's group's website? Who wins or loses from this?

There is an ongoing battle of decidedly un-republican interests that today divides the GDP, the government, the Armed Forces, the Lava Jato operation, and also involves external interference. The progressive camp has become a spectator. And in this dispute, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) is now the main target.

In other words, O Antagonista's attack on the president of the Supreme Federal Court is a crocodile tactic. It's important to defend freedom of the press, but we must also acknowledge that a larger attack is being built against one of the fundamental pillars of the democracy enshrined in the 88 Constitution.

The antagonists know this. Mourão knows it too.