RIO DE JANEIRO — Standing before the audience in a red shirt emblazoned with the words, “HA HA,” the comedian warned the audience that he wasn’t going to hold back.
“I make jokes about everything and everyone,” the comedian Leo Lins during his set in mid-2022. “What show could be more inclusive? I even hired a sign language interpreter just to be able to offend the deaf-mute.”
By the end of his act, which quickly went viral and has collected more than 3 million views on YouTube, Lins had made fun of Black and Indigenous people, obese people, elderly people, gay people, Jews, northeastern Brazilians, evangelicals, disabled people and those with HIV.
Now he faces eight years and three months in prison.
Calling his comedy “bigoted and discriminatory against minority and vulnerable groups,” a judge in the São Paulo state criminal court on Tuesday convicted him of “practicing” or “inciting” racism and religious prejudice, as well as discrimination against people with disabilities.
“Freedom of expression is not absolute nor unlimited,” wrote Judge Barbara de Lima Iseppi in her decision. “When there is a confrontation between the fundamental precept of liberty of expression and the principles of human dignity and judicial equality, the latter should win out.”
The decision, which the comedian plans to appeal, marks the latest effort by the Brazilian judiciary to place limits on freedom of expression, especially on social media. In recent years, the country’s Supreme Court has repeatedly moved to block and remove the online accounts of people it alleged were spreading misinformation that could endanger Brazilian democracy.
The country has also assumed an increasingly hard-line position against racist speech, which is considered a crime in Brazil, unlike in the United States. While the laws have been on the books for many years, it is only recently that they have been aggressively enforced. Prosecutors have opened thousands of criminal cases; penalties have been stiffened.
Last year, social media provocateur Day McCarthy was after she made racist comments about the Black child of a White celebrity couple. Like Lins, she has been allowed to remain free as she appeals the ruling.
Even in a country that has long defined freedom of speech more narrowly than other places, Lins’s conviction has been met with significant pushback. Voices across Brazilian society, including columnists, free-speech advocates, conservative politicians and progressive comedians, have united to condemn the ruling as an unjust infringement on civil liberties.
“It’s absolutely justified to repudiate his jokes; they’re in terrible taste,” . “But they don’t put anyone at risk. They’re jokes — not crimes.”
Jamil Assis of the Sivis Institute, a free-speech think tank in Curitiba in southern Brazil, said there has been a rise in what he calls “modern judges” who are moving to remove protections historically granted to satirical speech. He described the emerging legal precedent as “dangerous” to society.
“In Brazil, we’re more careful to protect the dignity of certain groups,” he said. “But humor is very important discourse for a democratic society that values freedom of expression.”
In a video posted Thursday evening to Lins’s YouTube page, which has 1.6 million followers, the comedian responded to the ruling against him.
“This video is not a joke,” he said. “This is Leonardo de Lima Borges Lins, not the comedian Leo Lins, a comedic character created over many years that makes acerbic jokes.”
He said Brazil was going too far in prosecuting speech, “with rulings based on emotion, in which no one wants to hear the person next to them, but to convince them of their own truth,” he said.
The comic, who has millions of followers on social media, has long sought to test the limits of free speech and common decency. “Secret Jokes” was the name of one set. Another was called, simply, “Disturbing.”
In 2022, a judge ordered him to pay around $8,000 to the mother of an autistic child he had offended. He soon generated more controversy by joking about a child with hydrocephalus, believed to be associated with the mosquito-borne Zika virus. In his “Disturbing” act that same year, he made light of his legal issues.
“I like this crowd,” Lins said, after the audience laughed at one of his jokes. “You’re complicit in a crime. I’m going to use you all at trial.”
At the end of the set, he paid homage to dark humor and the importance of laughter. He said those offended by his routine could choose not to watch it.
“I know for some people, a joke can be a cure and awaken good feelings, while for others, it can be a trigger and bring bad feelings,” Lins said, in a video this week. “But I think it’s very unjust and even arrogant that someone’s optional pain could serve as a justification to impede the smile of others.”
While many have risen to Lins’s defense, some have defended the decision against him.
Fábio de Sá Cesnik, an attorney with the Brazilian law firm CQS/F, there must be limits on freedom of expression.
“Harming the dignity of someone else is equally important,” he said.
Lins’s conviction is shaping up as the next front in Brazil’s ongoing struggle over freedom of expression. The comedian is expected to visit lawmakers in Brasília next week in search of relief. A member of the conservative Liberal Party, to which former president Jair Bolsonaro belongs, has proposed a new bill that would grant wider freedoms to comedians.
“Humor, even if it provokes discomfort, cannot be treated like crime,” the sponsor of the bill, Marcelo Álvaro Antônio, wrote on Facebook on Wednesday. “This is a law that protects art, criticism and the right to laughter.”
