The United States funds a lot of think tanks in Europe. All of them should be shut down as foreign interference.
Trump’s Oligarch tech pals should pay no tax! And the Yank consumer stands ready to pay any punishment tariffs that war on Oligarch taxation demands.
This is a huge threat and we owe it to ourselves to defend against this sort of meddling. Look at the results of similar campaigns that pushed Brexit and Trump’s candidacy.
Several European countries are going down the censorship hole. Best to fight that now.
There is a humanist middle ground between domestic state censorship on the in hand and capture of the media and political agenda by American tech-giants on the other. Both can lead to totalitarianism.
I for one would be more concerned about the increasingly fascist foreign power seeking to meddle with political discourse and sovereignty in the EU.
One can find common ground here: anti-censorship; free speech. An enemy of your enemy is temporarily helpful; help which is important to further mutual aims.
Just be specific: what european law do you think is holding back free speech? Just so we know what you really mean when you say that.
Let me give you an example of one that I think upholds free speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bans_on_Nazi_symbols by setting ground rules. Without rules, there is no free speech, it’s like the rules of the road: you need a common ground to even start to debate things productively.
what european law do you think is holding back free speech?
The UK is the most obvious: https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2025/09/09/people-are-being-thrown-in-uk-prisons-over-what-theyve-said-online-can-free-speech-be-saved/
Example from the article: “…sentenced to 31 months in prison for what police said was an unacceptable post. In contrast, a child molester was sentenced to 21 months in the slammer.”
Do you find it acceptable for common speech to be a crime worse than child molestation?
Come on, that’s not serious journalism. It’s an opinion piece written by a notorious conservative American media oligarch. Cherry picking examples to support some kind of anti woke narrative. Pull the other one.
The UK is the European country that has most closely attempted to emulate American national conservative capitalism, and what a shit show that has been.
Does that matter when you radicalize conservatives by arresting people and publicly shaming them? And there are other “serious journals” discussing the same
https://apnews.com/article/britain-students-free-speech-guidelines-9df46d8ed3d621f9e83c93f4346e1cb8
When conservatives get in power, they will do the same to you. I’m not anti woke. It’s just important to realize that things need to calm down. There are other ways to get what you want. “Violence [arresting] is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/german-town-pulls-one-over-on-neo-nazis
Yeah, ok, the grandma thing is wrong, not sure how a court would ever mishandle that. But the elon thing, you’d hope he’d hold himself to the same standard that he holds whole countries to.
Adopting the American obsession with ‘free-speech’ is not helpful imo.
For one, the term itself has become a right-wing dog-whistle that essentially means that billionaires can publicly say fucked up stuff without pushback by civil society, courts, etc. Their freedom of speech entails complete freedom from consequences for that speech.
Also, there is no such thing as free speech in a society of such structurally unequal footing. There are many, many reasonable and kind people all over the world speaking freely in daily life. But their reach is naturally limited to their local community.
They are being drowned out, however, by individuals such as Musk and Trump who have immense reach on both linear and social media and both actually own their own social media platforms. If they exercise their free speech, they sway international politics, the stock market, and slowly derode our shared sense of moral decency.
There is no free speech without independent and pluralistic media, rule of law and a liberal civil society.
So if you’re concerned about free speech, you should rage against centralized social media, consolidated media conglomerates, overexerted courts and public bureaucracies, and the general sense of despair and hopelessness that causes the public to become apolitical - and certainly don’t put your hope in the help of subversive far-right tinktanks financed by American fascists.
Also, on that note, you can be sure that those right-wing think tanks will not only promote ‘free speech’, whatever that means. They will fight European integration and the EU, social security, liberal democracy, LGBTQ rights, etc.
Imagine thinking that Trump is doing this to combat censorship.
