SP court maintains conviction of influencer for calling Kataguiri a “neo-Nazi”

The São Paulo Court upheld the conviction of influencer Thiago dos Reis Pereira Santos for calling federal deputy Kim Kataguiri (União Brasil-SP) a “neo-Nazi”, “human trash” and “katabosta” in publications on social media. Appeals can still be made to higher courts.

The trial was held on the 5th of this month by the 4th Private Law Chamber of the São Paulo Court of Justice (TJ-SP). The influencer had been convicted in the first instance in March last year. At the time, his defense appealed, claiming “regular exercise of freedom of expression”.

THE Estadão tries to contact Pereira Santos’ defense. The space remains open for manifestation.

The judges understood, however, unanimously, that “such expressions would not have a critical character, but rather offensive and pejorative content”.

“Criticism and expressions of thought are welcome and healthy for the exercise and maintenance of democracy. However, freedom of expression is not absolute and finds limits in other fundamental rights, especially those that refer to the protection of honor, image and dignity of the human person. The publications made by the defendant exceeded the constitutional limits of freedom of expression, having come up against the equally protected constitutional rights of the author: honor, dignity and image”, wrote judge Fátima Cristina Ruppert Mazzo, case rapporteur.

Also according to the judge, the attribution of qualifications such as “neo-Nazi” and “human trash”, in addition to the distortion of the author’s name to “Katabosta”, “does not have a critical, informative or humorous/satirical nature, but rather a clear offensive character, with the aim of personally disqualifying the author before the defendant’s followers and the general public”.

Pereira dos Santos has accumulated more than 1 billion views on YouTube and has 1.9 million subscribers on his main channel on the platform, Plantão Brasil.