One of the many awkward moments in a meeting between Donald Trump and Keir Starmer this year was when the topic of censorship and freedom of expression was raised. Starmer’s defence, “we have had free speech for a long time in this country”, could slightly ominously be read in the past tense. Certainly, that is how it must feel for the thirty people a day who are being arrested for violations of hate speech laws in Britain.
This phenomenon, however, is not limited to Britain. The rest of Europe, and the rest of the Anglosphere are similarly reckoning with how to balance the right to free expression with the powerful new communication tools provided by the tech revolution.
In America, the First Amendment to the Constitution (with further protections in the 14th) provides a robust defence of this sacred right, saying: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”.
Absent this clear-cut protection, other Western nations have been hit by a wave of censorious legislators, regulators and bureaucracies that are intent on circumscribing what can be said.
GB News has been valiant in exposing many of these issues, and incredible groups like the Free Speech Union have sprung up to fight for British subjects ‘cancelled’ or hurt by this issue.
And a new organisation, Speak, has launched in Britain to try to change the law to protect speech. The Conservatives passed a bill protecting it in universities – it was, of course, scrapped by Labour.
It falls on America to rescue Britain from its free speech emergency. This is why - James Price | Getty Images
But other countries in Europe have suffered even more, and this has led the Trump administration to highlight censorship as a key civilisation threat to its European allies.
Perhaps some of this is meant by the Republican leadership as atonement for the overzealous censorship that sprang out of American campus culture and tech firms.
Whatever the reasons, the Americans are right that it is a major threat to European civilisational health. At a time of mass migration causing crime and cultural tensions, we need more exposure of what is happening across Western societies, not less.
This is why the US State Department announced sanctions against five Europeans, including two Britons, on charges of crimes against freedom of speech.
Why, in both the new American National Security Strategy and beyond, there is a push from the US State Department (their Foreign Office) to direct its embassies to track the human rights and public-safety impacts of mass migration.
The new Under-Secretary for Public Diplomacy, Sarah Rogers, has publicly condemned free-speech violations by mainstream media and warned in London that the Online Safety Act is already being used to suppress lawful political speech.
Rogers then travelled to the continent, and highlighted that with her diplomatic passport, she was able to make factual statements that could have seen European citizens arrested had they uttered them.
Efforts by left-wing governments are tightening their grip on the public square by capturing institutions meant to be independent, especially the media.
This is not isolated to the over-regulated and faltering economies of Western Europe, principally France and Germany, as bad as it is there. Poland, the great hope of European dynamism in both its economy and military growth, offers the latest warning of the lawfare-censorship complex that stalks the continent.
A court case in Liechtenstein threatens control of Cyfrowy Polsat, the country’s largest private broadcaster and one of the last open to conservative voices.
If it falls, its newsroom will be “rebalanced”, as the public broadcaster was, tilting the media landscape of a key NATO ally. The Trump family have now publicly called this into question too, with Donald Trump Jr tweeting, in the Trumps’ own inimitable style: WTF is going on in Liechtenstein?
Imagine if a court case in a foreign land were to threaten the growth of GB News, Britain’s most successful news channel!
These sorts of censorship challenges are rife across Europe. A Finnish MP, Päivi Räsänen, has been sued for tweeting passages of the Bible and forced to undergo over 13 hours of police interrogation.
In Germany, a young woman was arrested for referring to a Syrian rapist as "scum" online, under hate speech laws that prioritise protecting offenders over victims' expression.
In fact, it is now basically illegal to insult any public official in Germany, either.
In Winston Churchill’s greatest speech, the ‘fight them on the beaches’ oration, he predicted that “In God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old”.
This is what the United States did, sending its best and bravest back to the old continent of many of their ancestors, to help rid it of the villainy of totalitarianism.
Along with Britain, they helped defeat the Nazis, and then they stayed until that other totalitarian evil empire, the Soviet Union, fell to defeat against the superior power, will, and ideas of the West.
We must hope that the same victory can happen again. Washington has already drawn a line that American companies will not be used to enforce European censorship.
We must hope that they similarly inspire us in Britain and the wider continent to stand up against those who feel that highlighting the crimes of mass migration and elite misgovernance is worse than the crimes themselves. Speak up, whilst we still can.
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