Determined to stamp out the vibrant marketplace of ideas that characterizes American society, European governments have declared war on the First Amendment, a declaration backed by police chiefs, prosecutors, public figures and even journalists.
Central to this effort is having X censor political speech that European officials deem objectionable. This follows recent riots in the UK and the posting of hateful comments about X. For these posts, UK prosecutors have won convictions against several individuals, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has strongly supported these prosecutions. To be clear, the X posts that led to these convictions would not meet the US criminal standard unless a probable and imminent intent to commit unlawful activity could be proven.
That gets to the heart of the concern. It's one thing to arrest a Brit for posting something that violates British law while in the UK. It's quite another to target an American with the same net. And that's exactly what's happening here.
Take for example recent comments from Sir Mark Rowley, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, who leads national security policing across the UK. He warned that he would arrest individuals outside the UK who post X things he considers unacceptable. In response to a media question about whether “someone like Elon Musk” could be arrested, Rowley replied, “Just because you're a keyboard warrior doesn't mean you're safe from the law… Whether you're committing crimes on the streets of this country or further afield online, we will pursue you.”
This rhetoric can only be interpreted as a threat to arrest US citizens for lawful speech in the US. Conversely, Rowley's words are clearly an unacceptable threat to the civil liberties of the American people – the same kind of threat that prompted the rise of the US in the first place. This threat alone could chill the willingness of the American people to speak freely in their own country. Nevertheless, the US could very easily neutralise Rowley's ambitions by warning that such arrests would lead to restrictions on US-UK cooperation in the areas of intelligence and security.
But Rowley is not the only rising First Amendment crusader. Across the English Channel there is another influential figure calling for action against Americans.
Thierry Breton, the European Union's Commissioner for the Internal Market, helps wage the EU's protectionist blackmail campaign against American technology companies and embodies the casual anti-Americanism that animates France's elite.
On Monday, Breton took great pains to warn that Musk “must ensure that all appropriate and effective mitigation measures are taken with regard to the amplification of harmful content linked to related events, including livestreaming, which, if not addressed, could increase X's risk profile and have negative implications for civil debate and public safety.” Breton added that the EU legal “obligations apply without exception or discrimination to X's entire user community and content moderation accessible to EU users.”
Breton's “live streaming” reference was clearly a reference to Musk's X interview with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Monday. In that sense, note Breton's utterly unbridled mockery of the American political process. And it is equally telling that the EU Commissioner urged Musk and X to comply with EU legal standards even before the live interview. In effect, Breton was warning Musk to bring his conversation with Trump into line with EU standards. In short, two Americans talking about American political issues in the US ahead of the US presidential elections were told by EU politicians to be careful what they said before they spoke.
To say that this foreign campaign of coercive censorship against Americans is unacceptable is equivalent to saying it was unfortunate that Russia held journalist Evan Gershkovich hostage for nearly 18 months. This isn’t complicated. Foreign allies, at least nominally close, are threatening to arrest Americans for lawful speech on American soil. If the EU and UK want to restrict domestic access to X for content they consider unacceptable, that’s their right. But if American CEOs like Musk want to adopt their own standards for their platforms, that’s their right too. If the EU and UK are still determined to have their way, they can ban X.
Of course, censors know that such extreme actions may not be so well received by many X users in their own country, and in doing so, they may risk reinforcing a very real sense of populist detachment from the political elite. There is no denying that this populist sentiment is already swinging towards extremism, as evidenced by the recent riots in the UK, the victory of the far-right in Germany, and the near-victory of the French far-right in June's EU elections.
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Either way, the U.S. government, and the American people at large, must stand firm in defending our most sacred principle: the individual's freedom to speak freely about matters of public importance.
If foreign officials wished to challenge that right, they would face immediate and decisive consequences.
