(WND)—America has just gone through a number of years where there were massive campaigns to censor the opinions of its citizens. You might recall what happened to those who doubted Anthony Fauci’s wild claim that he was “science” and those COVID shots were the saving of the nation. Or those who questioned the undue influences on the 2020 presidential election, including the FBI’s interference.
From the White House pressure on social media companies to banish ideas with which Joe Biden and his administration disagreed, to the willing cooperation of those companies, to the shunning of those who had alternative views to the stunningly extra-constitutional “canceling” of those individuals, President Donald Trump has pledged to end it.
But now there’s appearing a scheme by European bureaucrats to pick up where Biden, Kamala Harris and Facebook left off.
According to a report from the Washington Stand, those bureaucrats are considering plans to apply their “online censorship” agenda to Americans.
Free speech promoters warn what is being lined up is dangerous.
“Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) debated expanding the Digital Services Act (DSA) last week, according to Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International,” the report explained, noting the controversial DSA took effect just last year and already requires the removal of “illegal” content from social media software.
Now those bureaucrats want to move far beyond cracking down on illegal material to pursue their claimed objective to “protect democracy” in Europe from “foreign interference.”
They specifically are concerned about Elon Musk, who restored free speech to the X platform when he took it over, and the leftists in Europe are accusing him of promoting the “far right” because he’s spoken in support of Trump’s pro-America agenda.
Curiously, it was Democrats in America who for years have claimed to want to be protecting democracy by attacking Trump and conservatives in America. For that agenda, they insisted on controlling what people saw and read, and they even tried to restrict the candidates for whom Americans could vote.
The report said Iratxe Garcia, a lawmaker and chief of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, claimed, “In recent months, we have seen how Elon Musk and his social network X have become the main promoter for the far right by supporting Donald Trump and Alice Weidel’s AfD party through fake news and hate messages.”
She is demanding that all those social media platforms follow the rules she wants to impose.
The European Union also has plans to expand its censorship staff to 200 people, a move that “would potentially allow the European Union (EU) to target American citizens for online speech considered hateful or criminal under European laws.”
There already are situations that have developed in Europe in which a simple statement of Christian faith has been considered hate speech.
The DSA already allows the EU to impose massive fines on social media corporations.
The report noted that while progressives in Europe, like their counterparts in America in recent years, like the idea of government censorship, conservatives there have warned that such programs are a “tool” for limiting political discussion.
Paul Coleman, chief of ADF International, said in the report, “We are living in a new bipolar order of speech. On the one hand, Europe is doubling down on censorship, while the U.S. is recommitting to its free speech heritage.
“This will usher in an unprecedented era of tension within the West itself over this most basic of human rights, and it is the responsibility of all who value freedom to side with the protection of free speech. The effects of the DSA will not be confined to Europe. There are legitimate worries that the DSA could censor the speech of citizens across the world, as social media companies could regulate their content globally to comply with European standards,” he told the Stand.
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