Freedom of speech is a vital right that is only respected in the United States. Officials in Europe and other countries are trying to impose their own restrictions on American speech, and unfortunately, American officials are joining them.
The problem is most evident in Elon Musk's handling of X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, which he acquired. Musk's acquisition took control of the website away from a censorship-heavy American liberal mindset filled with “safety teams” and executives open to censorship requests from government authorities. Musk, despite his own contradictions, replaced Twitter's censorship regime with one that allows for much freer political debate.
More freedom of speech? That doesn't sit well with the average European bureaucrat. In an open letter, the European Union's Internal Market Commissioner threatened to block X from operating in Europe unless Musk addressed the “potential risks” posed to the EU by “content that may incite violence, hatred or racism” around political debates and elections. Musk also revealed that a formal process was already underway with X on “the effectiveness of countering disinformation.”
France, along with other social media sites, has also launched a fight against X-targeted freedom of speech. This comes after the Olympic controversy over whether Algerian boxer Imane Kherif, who competed against a female boxer, was biologically male. Kherif filed a criminal complaint in France, and the French Office for Crimes Against Humanity and Hate Crimes opened an investigation into “gender-based cyber harassment, public insults based on gender, public incitement to discrimination and public insults based on place of origin.”
The charges were filed against social media platforms, rather than individuals, meaning French law allows French investigators to target anyone who posts on the named social media sites, which in X's case includes Musk, the famous author J.K. Rowling, and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who may become vice president in a few months.
These threats of censorship are not unique to Europe, as X experienced in its dealings with the Brazilian government, nor are they unique to X. The British police have specialized officers to “scour social media” to identify and arrest people who commit verbal “online violence.” This is not surprising in France, Brazil, or the UK, because outside the US, freedom of speech is practically nonexistent.
The same left-wing forces behind these censorship efforts abroad are also present in the United States. You will often hear Democratic politicians, such as Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz (D-MN), falsely claim that there is no freedom of speech when it comes to misinformation and hate speech. Because these terms are used to describe anything Democrats don't like, many Democrats would like to see them become exceptions to the First Amendment.
Who decides what constitutes “misinformation” or “hate speech”? None other than liberal Democratic bureaucrats. Case in point is the outrageous plan for a “Disinformation Control Board” at the Department of Homeland Security. The committee's chairperson, Nina Jankowitz, is a disseminator of disinformation when it comes to partisan politics, promoting the discredited Steele dossier to damage former President Donald Trump and dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation.
We are then asked to believe that the liberal-partisan-run Department of Homeland Security's “Disinformation Commission” is not going to censor anything. Instead, Jankowitz says, the commission intends to prevent mass shootings from arising from “what people see on the internet,” and “we're going to address that.” As the French and British have argued, the concept of the DHS Disinformation Commission is that online speech must be policed by a police agency or people are “not safe.”
Similarly, State Department-backed groups fund the Global Disinformation Index, a British organization that compiles lists of conservative and right-wing media outlets and blacklists them from advertisers. The State Department's Global Engagement Center is part of this censorship effort. Created to counter ISIS and al-Qaeda propaganda, it now helps target conservative news outlets, including the Washington Examiner.
Equally worrisome is the cultural decline around the principle of free speech, which has resulted in the emergence of left-wing activist groups, supported by diversity, equity, and inclusion officers and other university bureaucrats, on campuses even at prestigious universities like Stanford, that seek to block speech and events they don't like. This cultural decline has led about 53% of people to say the First Amendment is too broad.
Democrats continue to add fuel to the fire that erodes the principles of free speech in America. Speech labeled “misinformation” or “hate speech” carries the implicit suggestion that people should be prevented from saying it, whether intentional or not. On college campuses, “hate speech” is a common accusation from left-wing activists who want to shut down speakers or events, claiming that their lives are endangered simply because people they don't like are speaking out. Such accusations are akin to exercising police powers in the UK.
Meanwhile, “misinformation” and “disinformation” are the default calls for censorship used by politicians and bureaucrats. They complain when politicians, pundits, or influential figures like podcaster Joe Rogan are allowed to speak freely without bowing to the pressures of the liberal media industry or even the federal government. The liberal media itself has weighed in on the latter category, with The Washington Post's Cleve Wootson Jr. asking what role the White House played in “blocking” or “interfering” with Musk's conversation with Trump about X.
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This is like a liberal media journalist pleading with an already censorious regime to be even more censorious. It is a world in which British police and French prosecutors would love nothing more than to see the world's only bastion of free speech slip further and further into the arrogant safety-ism of a European left that believes it should control who can say what.
The Constitution provides a legal barrier to this, but it is only as strong as the determination of the society tasked with enforcing it. As the years go by and left-wing censors continue their war of attrition against free speech, the United States is moving closer to the reality facing Europe, where free speech is practically nonexistent and law enforcement is scrambling to find digital speech violations that can be criminalized.
