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In the wake of J.D. Vance’s speech warning European leaders of the dangers that come with rejecting free speech, elitist politicians, legacy media, and the left responded by showing their true tyrannical colors.
Last week, Vice President J.D. Vance kicked the proverbial hornet’s nest when at the Munich Security Conference he gave a tongue lashing to European leaders for embracing censorship.
Instead, what they got was a much-needed reckoning. The key point of Vance’s speech was this: If we are going to function as allies, we must have shared values, namely freedom of speech and religion, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed that European leaders have completely, appallingly, showed not only no interest in protecting those rights but a disdain for them — and a seemingly insatiable desire for greater control over speech.
Vance said that the primary threat to Europe was not external, like Russia or China, but internal, namely Europe’s rejection of shared values that are fundamental to free democracies.
He noted several examples where such values had been undermined. These include a judge’s decision to overturn Romania’s recent presidential election due to the supposed influence of “disinformation”; the European Union’s threat to shut down social media during times of civil unrest; and the use of armed police and early morning raids to arrest and jail those who violate “hate speech laws.”
Vance seemed particularly disturbed with the increasingly Orwellian atmosphere in the U.K., where the adoption of “buffer zones” have served to criminalize prayer, even silent prayer, within 150 meters of an abortion clinic. Rather than recoil at the absurdity of such a law, U.K. police now eagerly arrest anyone who have the “wrong” thoughts about terminating the lives of unborn children — whether they are standing on a sidewalk or sitting inside a private home located within a buffer zone.
Vance specifically cited the prosecution of Adam Smith-Connor, an Army veteran whose three-minute silent prayer while facing away from an abortion clinic resulted in his arrest, interrogation, conviction, and punishment.
He also pointed out that the “democratic” organizers of the security conference had banned the leaders of a so-called “far-right” opposing political party from attending the conference.
Vance’s audacity in suggesting that Europe ought to respect the rights of its people to voice views that differ from those in power has led to an avalanche of shell-shocked and incensed European leaders, American politicians, and legacy media members.
Christoph Heusgen, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, broke down in tears after Vance’s speech, stating that “we have to fear that our common value base is not that common anymore.”
By contrast, Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister, could barely contain his anger, saying, “…if I understood him [Vance] correctly, he compares the condition of Europe with the condition that prevails in some authoritarian regimes…This is not acceptable.”
Some European diplomats claimed that Vance’s comments were offensive, inaccurate, and “a direct assault on European democracy” and that the U.S. is now an “adversary” instead of an ally.
Soon thereafter, CBS’s Margaret Brennan interviewed Secretary of State Marco Rubio about Vance’s speech in a series of accusatory questions. She asked , “What did this accomplish other than irritating our allies?”
Then came Brennan’s mind-boggling comment that has shocked the senses.
“Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide. And he met with the head of a political party that has far-right views and some historic ties to extreme groups. The context of that was changing the tone of it. And you know that, that the censorship was specifically about the right,” Brennan stated.
Of course, just as cars don’t just “drive themselves” into crowds of innocent people they hate, free speech didn’t murder 6 million Jews and other minorities in gas chambers.
As Rubio and many others pointed out, Germany had numerous speech laws during the Weimar Republic that were used to censor and punish defamatory speech, inciteful speech, and even antisemitic speech, and historians and others have contended that those speech laws actually aided the rise of the Nazis, who would then leverage those same speech laws to silence just about everyone.
In other words, there was no “free speech” to be “weaponized,” whatever that means.
Many American politicians have responded to the speech with apologies to Europe and claims that they were “embarrassed” by Vance’s supposed lecturing of Europeans. Others have accused Vance of hypocrisy because President Donald Trump has removed the Associated Press’s access to press briefings at the White House. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., went so far as to essentially label Vance and the Trump administration as Nazis, saying they use the same rhetoric.
Yet Vance’s response has been different. To the claims that his speech threatens European democracy, Vance said on X,
“Always funny to me that ‘listen to your people when they object to mass migration’ and ‘censorship is bad’ is treated as a ‘threat to democracy.’ Do you know what ‘democracy’ actually means? The transatlantic elite have created so many institutions to silence their own people and to delegitimize the beliefs of the public. Of course, the Biden administration was the worst offender.”
Though European leaders and members of the American left can pout and deny it, Europe has been censoring its people for years, even decades. Ironically, CBS, Brennan’s employer, actually made Vance’s point on Sunday night when 60 Minutes aired a segment on how Germany is policing speech in order to bring about “civility.”
The interviewees talked enthusiastically about enforcing speech laws so severe that posting an online meme that insults another person is now considered a criminal act and punishable by fines and jail time.
CBS even showed Germany’s practice of conducting coordinated pre-dawn raids on people’s homes due to their online use of disfavored words, ideas, cartoons, and memes. In the raid filmed by 60 Minutes, six armed police officers arrive at a suspect’s apartment, bang noisily on the door, barge in, and sift through the home’s belongings before confiscating the person’s phone and computer.
State prosecutor Dr. Matthäus Fink said that most of the time people don’t know what they did is illegal and claim they have a right to free speech, to which prosecutors say, “No, you have free speech as well, but it is also has its limits.”
German speech laws prohibit any speech that could incite hatred or be considered insulting. That means that calling a person an insulting word in public or on the Internet is a crime, and posting something the government claims is not true is also a crime. Reposting one of those forbidden posts is also a crime.
Prosecutor Frank Michael-Laue said that his unit has about 3,500 cases each year, and he has “successfully prosecuted” approximately 750 cases in the last four years.
Josephine Ballon, the CEO of Hate Aid, which supports victims of online “violence,” explains the reasoning behind the crackdown. “Free speech needs boundaries. And in the case of Germany, these boundaries are part of our constitution. Without boundaries a very small group of people can rely on endless freedom to say anything that they want, while everyone else is scared and intimidated.”
That is a belief shared by many of Europe’s leaders. The European Union passed a law last year that requires social media companies to actively censor what it considers to be hate speech. The U.K. has used its Online Safety Act to actually jail people for posts on social media.
Despite Trump’s threat of tariffs and Vance’s speech, the U.K. claims it will not moderate its Online Safety Act and may even intensify its efforts.
While Europe’s governments may continue headlong down the censorial path, there are many everyday people in the U.S. and in Europe who are thankful that the Trump administration is putting pressure on leaders across the Atlantic.
Smith-Connor said that he was happy that Vance called out the U.K.’s censorship.
British comedian Katie Hopkins told PragerU’s Marissa Streit the harrowing story of how censorship and lawfare were used against her for opposing the U.K.’s policy of importing scores of Islamic refugees and calling attention to the Pakistani rape gangs tormenting white families. Her fellow British compatriot Tommy Robinson, meanwhile, was actually sentenced to prison for 18 months for posting a documentary about the Pakistani rape gangs and the U.K. government’s failure to stop it; he remains there, held in solitary confinement due to jihadi threats against his life.
Hopkins said that American’s rejection of censorship and globalism means that “for the first time in the longest time British people feel hope.”
This is the reality of Europe. Average citizens are being crushed under the booted heel of globalist elites who seek to impose a new order on their people through mass Islamic migration, the rejection of Judeo-Christian values, the adoption of abortion and radical gender ideology, increasing government control, the expansion of the all-encompassing nanny state, and the elimination of private property ownership through oppressive taxation.
The key to making it all work is vast, tyrannical censorship.
That was also the plan of the American left under the Biden administration and other blue state governments.
There was one problem which global leftists didn’t count on, Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter.
Prior to the billionaire businessman’s takeover of what is now known as X, governments were successfully bullying tech companies into censoring content that went against the left’s narratives.
Yet once Musk created a public forum that was largely immune to the demands of authoritarians and bureaucrats, people found a voice and information began to flow. The Twitter files were published and the global censorship apparatus began to crumble.
Europe has responded by trying to force Musk into complying with their speech laws — even threatening to put him in prison.
The truth is that most average Europeans object to the suicidal, left-wing agenda that is being foisted upon them.
They object to paying inheritance taxes that will force them to sell their family farms. They don’t want millions of unvetted military-age males pouring into the country from Islamic nations and setting up their own nation states. They are tired of seeing their children murdered. They are tired of being told to ignore the Islamic terrorism decimating their people and way of life and that their government won’t protect them or their children from sexual assault committed by Islamic migrants. And they don’t want to sacrifice their own prosperity or access to reliable power on the altar of climate change.
Yet if they say those things, they are fined or jailed by their governments.
That isn’t democracy, it’s tyranny.
J.D. Vance is right: The biggest danger to Europeans right now are their own governments.
It’s high past time Americans stopped worrying what European socialists think and started worrying about what they do.
Free speech is a fragile principle, and America must remain vigilant and proactive in calling out those who would betray it. And that means those who love free speech must never rest because tyrants certainly won’t.
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