The Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and the Global Disinformation Index: Both organizations – to use a rather tired but unfortunately appropriate analogy – do sound rather Orwellian. That’s because they are. Words like “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “hate speech” have come into common use over the past decade or so by those whose goal is large-scale censorship. It’s certainly reminiscent of “Newspeak” from Orwell’s 1984. And while they are currently out of power in the US, these despotic types – leaders of the globalist left – are very much in control across the Atlantic. But the Trump administration has begun to fight back with real consequences.
Ballon once told CBS’s 60 Minutes that “Free speech needs boundaries.” Ahmed currently resides in the US, but his future here is now uncertain.
Protecting Americans from European Censorship
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that the five were sanctioned because they “have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.” The statement continues: “These radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states — in each case targeting American speakers and American companies.”
Rogers, discussing Britain’s Online Safety Act of 2023, told GB News recently:
“It’s misguided and unfortunate to apply that law in Britain, but applying that law extraterritorially – which means applying it to speech that has nothing to do with Britain, does not occur in Britain, is on American platforms by American users on American political issues, purporting to censor Americans in America – is a dealbreaker. It is a non-starter. It is a red line.”
The Online Safety Act holds social media and internet search companies liable for failing to protect users not only from illegal content, but also what the act describes as “harmful content.”
What exactly is “harmful content,” though? Like “hate speech,” it is a nebulous term that could be applied to absolutely anything the British government doesn’t want people to see. Those who wish to use censorship as an instrument of control can classify anything they choose as “hate speech” or “harmful content” – and they frequently do.
This British law is somewhat like the European Union’s Digital Services Act, another censorship effort against which the Trump administration is fighting. Thierry Breton can fairly be described as the architect (or one of them) of the DSA.
There’s really no debating that these censorship efforts are less about online safety than they are about politics and control. Breton wasn’t happy when he found out in 2024 that X owner Elon Musk was planning to interview then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Breton warned Musk – perhaps, threatened would be a more accurate word – that he would be “monitored” and may be subject to fines.
Europe’s War on Free Speech
Ironically, the Global Disinformation Index described the US travel ban as “an authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship.” Ironic, because the UK has, in recent years, all but gutted any notion of free speech. There have been arrests over memes posted on social media or comments critical of immigrants.
One British man, Jon Richelieu-Booth, was recently detained for posting a photograph to LinkedIn of himself with various firearms. The picture was taken during a Florida vacation when he was offered the opportunity to do some shooting. British police arrived at his door, claiming someone had filed a complaint and warning him to be careful about what he posts. Days later, they stormed his house late at night and arrested him.
Any suggestion that it is the Europeans who are fighting to protect free speech is laughable. And European officials, not content to impose draconian censorship regulations on their own citizens, are now attempting to bully American companies into compliance. As legal scholar Jonathan Turley wrote in The Hill, “this is a war over whether Europe or the U.S. Constitution will dictate the scope of free speech for American companies and citizens.”
“The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” This adage is attributed to James Boswell, from a biography – The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. – that he wrote in 1791. The original version of this cynical but apparently accurate observation dates to the 1100s and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Many statesmen and thinkers over the decades and centuries have made the same point.
Every dictatorship and authoritarian state that has ever existed came into being with good intentions – genuine or feigned. But even those political leaders and revolutionaries who started out as small-d democrats eventually decide that liberty itself is a threat – that, to protect the people from themselves, those in power must limit what those people are permitted to do and say.
Secretary Rubio says the US “will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship” and implied more sanctions could be coming. Europe is on the verge of complete cultural collapse. Hopefully, the Trump administration will fight to ensure that, for at least another three years, America does not follow the same trajectory.
