Negacionismo, desinformação e erosão democrática
Abstract
This article examines political denialism and organized disinformation as structural factors of constitutional democratic erosion, with particular attention to the limits of freedom of expression and to the institutional duties of the State and the Prosecution Service in protecting the legal order and the democratic regime. It starts from the premise that contemporary denialism should not be confused with informational error, controversial opinion or legitimate scientific dissent, since in certain contexts it operates as a deliberate strategy to delegitimize institutions, corrode public trust and weaken the epistemic conditions of democratic deliberation. Disinformation, in turn, is understood as a communicative practice marked by the production, manipulation or strategic circulation of false or misleading content, especially when associated with coordination, artificial amplification, concealment of interests and concrete risk to sensitive constitutional goods. The research problem is to determine how anti-democratic communicative practices, intensified by digital platforms, recommender systems and generative artificial intelligence, challenge freedom of expression and trigger positive duties of constitutional protection. The study adopts a qualitative, legal-dogmatic methodology, combining interdisciplinary literature review, normative analysis, case-law examination from the Brazilian Supreme Court, the Superior Electoral Court and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and an institutional-propositional approach. Its original contribution lies in moving defensive constitutionalism from a merely principled level to an operational matrix for institutional action, composed of material filters, procedural guarantees and extrajudicial and judicial tools for protecting democratic information integrity. The article concludes that confronting disinformation requires structural prevention, transparency, democratic education, interinstitutional cooperation and careful application of constitutional self-defense mechanisms, without turning the defense of democracy into censorship of legitimate dissent.