The EU and the Globalist Censorship

The EU and the Globalist Censorship of Speech

Michael Rectenwald

As I argued in October of 2022, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter (now X) would represent an important test case for the freedom of speech on social media against the globalist, woke, and totalitarian agenda for the censorship of “hate speech,” “misinformation,” and “disinformation.” In that essay, I also predicted that one of the main obstacles for free speech on X would be the Digital Services Act (DSA) of the European Union (EU), as administered by the European Commission (EC):

But the Digital Services Act threatens to universalize content moderation by social media and search engines, subjecting them to the EU’s stringent and anti-free-speech laws against “disinformation” and “hate speech,” which are not (yet) recognized legal categories in the United States. Given that Twitter [now X] will be forced to abide by EU-enforced content moderation for its EU users, it is possible that it will simply apply the Digital Services Act’s rules to all content…

Sure enough, Musk’s X has been threatened with fines of up to 6% of global revenue by the EC’s Thierry Breton for failure to comply with the EC’s DSA. And now Breton is attempting to bring down the hammer on X for its failure to comply with DSA imperatives, especially in connection with a prospective interview of Trump and revolts underway in the UK over immigration and immigrant violence.

In an X post on August 12, 2024, Breton publicized a letter he sent to Musk and X’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, the weakest link in X’s free-speech chain. The letter lays out the extent to which the EC aims to go and the powers that it arrogates to itself to curtail free speech:

As the individual entity ultimately controlling a platform with over 300 million users worldwide, of which one third in the EU (sic), that has been designated as a Very Large Online Platform, you have the legal obligation to ensure X’s compliance with EU law and in particular the DSA in the EU. (emphasis mine)

Thus, we see that the imperative to control speech on all “Very Large Online Platforms,” including search engines and social media sites, is globalist in character. The EC has no intention of abiding by the constitutional provisions that supposedly protect the speech of individuals or platform owners in any sovereign nation states. No matter the origin of the speech in question, the EC claims the right to regulate it.

In prose rife with the kind of doublespeak and gaslighting that we should expect from the globalists in the EC, the United Nations (UN), and the World Economic Forum (WEF), Breton continues:

Of course, the EC will decide what constitutes “harmful content,” and the harmfulness of said content will be determined based on the EU’s dicta as to what harms its own (globalist) agenda. Never mind whether the content may advocate the reduction or elimination of harm to those subjects it deems to have no right to freedom of expression, like the native Britons revolting against the UK’s immigration policies, aligned as the latter policies are with the EU’s own immigration policies. The EC will decide what speech it condones, what freedom of expression is allowed, and what expression will be disallowed. The EC will decide what are the “relevant events,” “public unrest,” and thus what speech is permissible and what is not.

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