We can all see that free speech is under threat in Europe. It feels like every week, a new horrific story about someone getting thrown in jail for having the “wrong” opinion goes viral. To the rest of the world, the continent has become a laughing stock. Americans in particular watch with horror as EU states punish their populations for criticising governments or posting rude words on the internet. Elon Musk, owner of social-media platform X, often draws global attention to these cases, to such an extent that even the U.S. government has expressed alarm and concern that European citizens are in danger of totalitarian-style speech restrictions.
So why do our elites keep pretending none of this is happening? When asked about Musk and his criticisms of Europe at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos this January, then German chancellor Olaf Scholz had this to say: “We have freedom of speech in Europe. And in Germany, everyone can say what he wants, even if he is a billionaire … What we do not accept is if this is supporting extreme right positions.”
This was a display of an almost impressive lack of self-awareness. For starters, Scholz’s statement is inherently a contradiction. Speech cannot be free if it is only protected for some people. Censoring anyone, even if they support “extreme right positions,” is still a violation of that most fundamental right.
It also could not be further from the truth that free speech is safe today in either Germany or Europe as a whole. Under Scholz’s own government, there were several cases of Germans being convicted, fined, and even jailed for comments they made online. Last year, a man was fined €600 for using the poop emoji to describe then vice-chancellor Robert Habeck on X. In a separate case, also last year, 64-year-old Stefan Niehoff had his house raided and tablet confiscated after he had posted a meme on X calling Habeck (who appears to be particularly sensitive to ridicule) an “imbecile.” Niehoff thankfully escaped conviction for this, but earlier this year was fined €825 for making another post on X that featured Nazi imagery—which Niehoff had argued was satirical. In one of the most shocking recent cases, a 74-year-old man was sent to prison earlier this year, having been found guilty in November of “using symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organisations.” The pensioner, who received a 75-day sentence, used the Nazi-era phrase “Alles für Deutschland” (everything for Germany) on X last year. Scholz’s successor, Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz, hasn’t done much better. In May, not even two months into Merz’s chancellorship, police officers raided hundreds of homes across the country in response to ‘hate speech’ posted online.
Perhaps Scholz somehow also failed to notice that, under his watch, the German intelligence services classified the right-populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party as an “extreme” right-wing group. This was a nonsensical and almost certainly politically motivated move. The AfD regularly competes for the top spot in opinion polls and is currently the second-largest party in the Bundestag. Are the 10.3 million Germans who voted for the AfD in the federal elections this February all far-right extremists? Surely not, even if Scholz would like to think so. This ridiculous classification was just the latest attempt in the German establishment’s long-running plan to ban the AfD outright.
If Germany’s track record on free speech is bad, the European Union’s is even worse. The EU has no qualms at all about silencing those who push back against its orthodoxy and is constantly looking to expand its already vast censorship regime. Yet, incredibly, Scholz isn’t the only member of the European establishment trying to gaslight us about free speech in the EU. EU president Ursula von der Leyen declared in 2024 that “in protecting our democracy, we will always respect our enduring commitment to preserving and promoting free speech.” Months earlier in January, also at Davos, she had announced that “misinformation and disinformation” were the gravest issues facing the world, ahead of conflict or climate change, and warned that countries and companies needed to do more to crack down. How this is compatible with ”promoting free speech“ is yet unclear. We all know by now that ”misinformation and disinformation“ are often euphemisms for opinions that challenge the EU’s hegemony.
Shortly after Scholz gave his speech at Davos, European Commissioner for Technology Henna Virkkunen claimed that the controversial Digital Services Act (DSA) “does not censor content” and in fact “contains strong safeguards to protect freedom of expression of platforms’ users.”
This is patently false. The DSA is one particularly deadly weapon in the EU’s war on speech, used to police and restrict speech online. Like so many other draconian laws, the DSA was ostensibly introduced to protect children from seeing harmful content and to stop dreaded “misinformation” from being spread. But it is far more common to see it deployed against the EU’s critics.
It’s no surprise that the DSA had Elon Musk, as one of the EU’s most outspoken detractors, firmly in its sights. Last year, in the run-up to the U.S. presidential elections, then-internal market commissioner Thierry Breton warned Musk that livestreaming his planned interview with Donald Trump on X could fall foul of the DSA’s rules. If it did, Musk’s social platform could be fined or even banned completely in the EU. The bloc has also threatened to hand Musk a €1 billion fine for refusing to hand over data in order to comply with the DSA.
Not satisfied with implementing its own censorship laws, the EU also demands that its member states severely punish dissent. Brussels recently declared that hate speech laws in Ireland and Finland were not strict enough and that they must introduce more legislation or face legal action. Infamously, Finland has been dragging grandmother and politician Päivi Räsänen through its courts since 2021 for the ‘crime’ of quoting a Bible verse and expressing traditional Christian beliefs about sexuality and marriage. Ireland was last year also planning to introduce draconian new laws that would see people thrown in jail for up to two years if they so much as even downloaded a controversial meme on their phones. Thankfully, this aspect of the bill was scrapped before the Criminal Justice (Hate Offences) Act became law last year. This is presumably the sort of anti-speech legislation the EU would like to see on Ireland’s statute books.
Europe’s elites must think we are incapable of seeing what’s in front of us. Trying to gaslight Europeans into believing that there’s no free speech problem in Europe is an insult to our intelligence. This is also a clear attempt to redefine what ‘free speech’ really is and legitimise censorship of the Right. The EU establishment wants to send the message that the right to free expression is not inalienable but rather comes with certain conditions attached. That it does not apply to beliefs that are hateful, controversial, or otherwise uncomfortable. And that some groups—namely, the so-called far Right—are undeserving of these rights.
The reality is that free speech is not something that can be awarded and taken away. In fact, free speech that excludes certain groups of people is not free speech at all. No matter what the Eurocrats and establishment elites tell themselves, Europe—the birthplace of the Enlightenment—is no longer a free continent. Freedom of speech is either for everyone—or for no one.
Europe Is Being Gaslit About Freedom of Speech
euconedit composite; Ralf Hirschberger / AFP
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We can all see that free speech is under threat in Europe. It feels like every week, a new horrific story about someone getting thrown in jail for having the “wrong” opinion goes viral. To the rest of the world, the continent has become a laughing stock. Americans in particular watch with horror as EU states punish their populations for criticising governments or posting rude words on the internet. Elon Musk, owner of social-media platform X, often draws global attention to these cases, to such an extent that even the U.S. government has expressed alarm and concern that European citizens are in danger of totalitarian-style speech restrictions.
So why do our elites keep pretending none of this is happening? When asked about Musk and his criticisms of Europe at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos this January, then German chancellor Olaf Scholz had this to say: “We have freedom of speech in Europe. And in Germany, everyone can say what he wants, even if he is a billionaire … What we do not accept is if this is supporting extreme right positions.”
This was a display of an almost impressive lack of self-awareness. For starters, Scholz’s statement is inherently a contradiction. Speech cannot be free if it is only protected for some people. Censoring anyone, even if they support “extreme right positions,” is still a violation of that most fundamental right.
It also could not be further from the truth that free speech is safe today in either Germany or Europe as a whole. Under Scholz’s own government, there were several cases of Germans being convicted, fined, and even jailed for comments they made online. Last year, a man was fined €600 for using the poop emoji to describe then vice-chancellor Robert Habeck on X. In a separate case, also last year, 64-year-old Stefan Niehoff had his house raided and tablet confiscated after he had posted a meme on X calling Habeck (who appears to be particularly sensitive to ridicule) an “imbecile.” Niehoff thankfully escaped conviction for this, but earlier this year was fined €825 for making another post on X that featured Nazi imagery—which Niehoff had argued was satirical. In one of the most shocking recent cases, a 74-year-old man was sent to prison earlier this year, having been found guilty in November of “using symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organisations.” The pensioner, who received a 75-day sentence, used the Nazi-era phrase “Alles für Deutschland” (everything for Germany) on X last year. Scholz’s successor, Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz, hasn’t done much better. In May, not even two months into Merz’s chancellorship, police officers raided hundreds of homes across the country in response to ‘hate speech’ posted online.
Perhaps Scholz somehow also failed to notice that, under his watch, the German intelligence services classified the right-populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party as an “extreme” right-wing group. This was a nonsensical and almost certainly politically motivated move. The AfD regularly competes for the top spot in opinion polls and is currently the second-largest party in the Bundestag. Are the 10.3 million Germans who voted for the AfD in the federal elections this February all far-right extremists? Surely not, even if Scholz would like to think so. This ridiculous classification was just the latest attempt in the German establishment’s long-running plan to ban the AfD outright.
If Germany’s track record on free speech is bad, the European Union’s is even worse. The EU has no qualms at all about silencing those who push back against its orthodoxy and is constantly looking to expand its already vast censorship regime. Yet, incredibly, Scholz isn’t the only member of the European establishment trying to gaslight us about free speech in the EU. EU president Ursula von der Leyen declared in 2024 that “in protecting our democracy, we will always respect our enduring commitment to preserving and promoting free speech.” Months earlier in January, also at Davos, she had announced that “misinformation and disinformation” were the gravest issues facing the world, ahead of conflict or climate change, and warned that countries and companies needed to do more to crack down. How this is compatible with ”promoting free speech“ is yet unclear. We all know by now that ”misinformation and disinformation“ are often euphemisms for opinions that challenge the EU’s hegemony.
Shortly after Scholz gave his speech at Davos, European Commissioner for Technology Henna Virkkunen claimed that the controversial Digital Services Act (DSA) “does not censor content” and in fact “contains strong safeguards to protect freedom of expression of platforms’ users.”
This is patently false. The DSA is one particularly deadly weapon in the EU’s war on speech, used to police and restrict speech online. Like so many other draconian laws, the DSA was ostensibly introduced to protect children from seeing harmful content and to stop dreaded “misinformation” from being spread. But it is far more common to see it deployed against the EU’s critics.
It’s no surprise that the DSA had Elon Musk, as one of the EU’s most outspoken detractors, firmly in its sights. Last year, in the run-up to the U.S. presidential elections, then-internal market commissioner Thierry Breton warned Musk that livestreaming his planned interview with Donald Trump on X could fall foul of the DSA’s rules. If it did, Musk’s social platform could be fined or even banned completely in the EU. The bloc has also threatened to hand Musk a €1 billion fine for refusing to hand over data in order to comply with the DSA.
Not satisfied with implementing its own censorship laws, the EU also demands that its member states severely punish dissent. Brussels recently declared that hate speech laws in Ireland and Finland were not strict enough and that they must introduce more legislation or face legal action. Infamously, Finland has been dragging grandmother and politician Päivi Räsänen through its courts since 2021 for the ‘crime’ of quoting a Bible verse and expressing traditional Christian beliefs about sexuality and marriage. Ireland was last year also planning to introduce draconian new laws that would see people thrown in jail for up to two years if they so much as even downloaded a controversial meme on their phones. Thankfully, this aspect of the bill was scrapped before the Criminal Justice (Hate Offences) Act became law last year. This is presumably the sort of anti-speech legislation the EU would like to see on Ireland’s statute books.
Europe’s elites must think we are incapable of seeing what’s in front of us. Trying to gaslight Europeans into believing that there’s no free speech problem in Europe is an insult to our intelligence. This is also a clear attempt to redefine what ‘free speech’ really is and legitimise censorship of the Right. The EU establishment wants to send the message that the right to free expression is not inalienable but rather comes with certain conditions attached. That it does not apply to beliefs that are hateful, controversial, or otherwise uncomfortable. And that some groups—namely, the so-called far Right—are undeserving of these rights.
The reality is that free speech is not something that can be awarded and taken away. In fact, free speech that excludes certain groups of people is not free speech at all. No matter what the Eurocrats and establishment elites tell themselves, Europe—the birthplace of the Enlightenment—is no longer a free continent. Freedom of speech is either for everyone—or for no one.
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