The left in Britain
- Thread starter ClarindaA's
- Start date
According to the article this has been a law since 2003. The people voted for this and they can change it if they want.
One of the greatest threats to free speech today is the European Digital Services Act. The act bars speech that is viewed as “disinformation” or “incitement.” European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager celebrated its passage by declaring that it is “not a slogan anymore, that what is illegal offline should also be seen and dealt with as illegal online. Now it is a real thing. Democracy’s back.”
In Europe, free speech is in free fall. Germany, France, the United Kingdom and other countries have eviscerated free speech by criminalizing speech deemed inciteful or degrading to individuals or groups. The result had made little difference to the neo-Nazi movement in countries like Germany, which is reaching record numbers. It has, however, silenced the rest of society.
According to polling, only 18 percent of Germans feel free to express their opinions in public. Fifty-nine percent of Germans do not even feel free expressing themselves in private among friends. Only 17 percent feel free to express themselves on the internet.
They have silenced the wrong people, but there is now a massive censorship bureaucracy in Europe and the desire to silence opposing voices has become insatiable.
Some in this country have the same taste for speech-regulation. After Elon Musk bought Twitter and dismantled most of the company’s censorship program, many on the left went bonkers. That fury only increased when Musk released the “Twitter files,” confirming the long-denied coordination and support by the government in targeting and suppressing speech.
In response, Hillary Clinton and other Democratic figures turned to Europe and called upon them to use their Digital Services Act to force censorship against Americans.
Musk’s defiance has only magnified the unrelenting attacks against him in the media, academia and government. If Musk can be broken, these figures will once again exercise effective control of over a large swath of speech globally.
This campaign recently came to a head when Musk had the audacity to interview former president Donald Trump. In anticipation of the interview, one of the most notorious anti-free speech figures in the world went ballistic.
European Commissioner for Internal Markets and Services Thierry Breton issued a threatening message to Musk, “We are monitoring the potential risks in the EU associated with the dissemination of content that may incite violence, hate and racism in conjunction with major political — or societal — events around the world, including debates and interviews in the context of elections.”
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To recap, the EU is now moving to force censorship upon American citizens to meet its own demands of what is false, demeaning or inciting. And that includes censorship even of our leading political candidates for the presidency.
The response from the Biden administration was not a presidential statement warning any foreign government from seeking to limit our rights or even Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling the EU ambassador to his office for an expression of displeasure.
That’s because Biden and Harris are not displeased with but supportive of letting the EU do what they are barred from doing under our Constitution. This administration is arguably the most anti-free speech government since John Adams signed the Sedition Act. They have supported a massive system of censorship, blacklisting and targeting of opposing voices. Democratic members have given full-throated support for censorship, including pushing social media companies to expand in areas ranging from climate control to gender identity.
just so I understand what I need to be terrified of ...
hillary tweeted something 2 years ago and it resulted in no policy changes...and now the party she's aligned with has virtually no power in Washington (and didn't really do anything when they did)
I can't think of a single thing that scares me more
People uncovered and rejected what that warmongering disinformation agents was for, and the result was her party has lost power.
I'd count that as a policy change from the days when Jen Psaki stood at the podium in the White House briefing room and bragged about how the administration was working with social media companies to censor their opposition.
YMMV
and now we have another admin who lobbied social media to police content
and regularly threatens media companies for coverage he seems "unfair"
but I know how this goes ...those things are somehow different
Yes, but it's only a problem now, when right-wing trolls run around harassing people and are being held accountable for it.
