Friday, January 17, 2025

"Why Europe fears free speech: A war of repression is under way"—Wolfgang Munchau

European politicians and their Eurocrat masters/minions (its complicated) seem to think they are rulers rather than employees.

From UnHerd, January 13:

We all know the old joke: when a European referendum delivers the “wrong” outcome, the country votes again until they get it “right”. The EU thought this would be the case after Brexit. But so far, no one’s laughing.

If anything, things have got worse. Take Romania, which recently cancelled its presidential election when Călin Georgescu, leader of a nationalist Right coalition, won the first round. Thierry Breton, former French European Commissioner, revealed the EU’s mindset during a damning recent TV interview. “We did it in Romania and we will obviously do it in Germany if necessary,” he said. In other words, if you can’t beat the far-Right, ban them.

I disagree with almost everything Breton has ever said, but I am grateful to him for stating his case with such revealing clarity. During his time as industry commissioner in Brussels, from 2019 until last summer, when Emmanuel Macron replaced him with a more compliant figure, he was the driving force behind a series of laws designed to keep Europe in the digital dark ages. The most extreme of which is the Digital Services Act (DSA) which compels “very large online platforms”, such as X and Meta, to check facts and filter out fake news.

“In the pecking order of democratic rights, freedom of speech has a relatively low priority in Europe.”

But, thanks to Breton, the truth is out there. Europe’s ultimate aim isn’t to save public discourse, it is to suffocate far-Right parties by depriving them of the oxygen of information. The DSA isn’t even the last word in the EU’s anti-digital jihad. One of Ursula von der Leyen’s big ideas last year during the European election was the so-called “democracy shield” — effectively launching even more legislation to prevent outside interference in EU affairs. This notion conjures up images of laser beams and light-sabre fights. And in some respects it’s not far from the truth: a frightened bloc needs a shield to protect itself from the encroaching enemy.

Mark Zuckerberg is certainly on the attack. Last week he announced that he is abandoning fact-checking on his platforms — effectively defying the DSA. And he is betting on Donald Trump to protect him from the legal consequences. Given that J.D. Vance, the Vice President-elect, has already threatened to end US support for Nato if Europe tries to censor Elon Musk’s X, surely the same will apply to Facebook. And the EU is far too dependent on the US to be able to mount an effective campaign against any of America’s social media platforms once Trump is president. The DSA, hastily drawn up during the pandemic, not only misjudges the nature of the social media, it misjudges political power. It exposes Europe’s essential weakness before America.

This isn’t just a geopolitical battle, though. It is also a European one. The attempted clampdown reveals that there is something the bloc fears more than free speech: populism. MEPs found it hard enough to stomach Nigel Farage’s brutal outbursts when he was a member of the European Parliament. Now they have Musk breathing down their neck, endorsing candidates from the AfD, a party that sits on the far-Right in the European Parliament’s benches and which supports German withdrawal from the EU.

The German media had a collective breakdown when Musk tweeted an endorsement for the AfD, interviewed Alice Weidel, the party’s co-leader, on X, and then endorsed her in an article for Die Welt. The op-ed editor of the German daily resigned in protest. And an article in another newspaper hysterically described Musk’s intervention as unconstitutional. That journalists would advocate censorship seems shocking, until one understands the role of journalism in continental European society. It operates firmly inside a narrow centrist political consensus, which spans all the parties from the centre-left to the centre-right. Naturally, the AfD does not get much airtime in the German media....

....MUCH MORE

While I might disagree with Munchau on some of his specific conclusions, the broad outline seems almost too kind. For example, what he describes as centrists in that last paragraph could also be called control freaks desperately grasping any lever they think might help keep them in power. But maybe that's just me.

We happened to catch Breton's word's on January 10:

Democracy, European Style—"Ex-Commissioner Breton: ‘What Was Done in Romania May Be Needed in Germany’"... (it's a gas, gas, gas)

And though we didn't link, it did bring to mind a prior post:

January 23, 2008
Climate goals to cost European euro 3 a week
This is, of course, light by an order of magnitude but the EU rulers (alas, they think of themselves as rulers, not servants of the people) are masters of the "Camel's nose under the tent" school of government. They know that if they told the populace the truth they might be treated rougher than Louis XVI was.

When MEP's dream, are they Capetian or Carolingian?
Capetian, methinks.

I've always liked the Carolingians better,
they seemed more human-

Charles II, the Bald
Louis II, the Stammerer
Charles, the Fat
Charles III, the Simple
Along the lines of the Brit's Aethelred II, the Unready
(my fav. royal nickname)

Anyhoo, from the Economic Times (India)....
Seventeen years later the German hausfraus (and the German economy) are indeed paying more than three euros per week for the privilege of living under their wannabe royals and their rules. And of course after the "costs so low you won't even notice" pitch we saw, three months later: "European Politicians Think They are Rulers; Need Energy Wasting Palace".
Possibly also of interest:
Always, Always Remember That Control Freaks Are Mentally Ill