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We are still back to European values; that sort of Olympic javelin that globalist parties in Europe wield against conservatives, traditionalists, patriots, as a throwing weapon, to drive them out of the public space. These values that have been invented and that do not represent the soul, the spirit, the history and the tradition of European, and therefore Western and Christian, thought and civilisation.
So it is with freedom of expression or opinion, twisted by Wokist globalism to the point of becoming globally imposed censorship. A regime of generalised censorship that began, perhaps, in the universities, with the cancellation of brilliant professors and lecturers who opposed the compulsory imposition of the officialist theses.
Another expression of this censorship regime is, for example, the laws that seek to rewrite and impose an official narrative on the history of countries. Thus, in Spain, the so-called laws of democratic memory that the socialists and popular parties promoted and developed, imposing a wall of silence and a criminalisation of the second republic, the Spanish civil war and the almost forty years of Franco’s regime.
Freedom of expression is under attack all over the world. This summer alone we have witnessed threats by the European Commission to the social network X for hosting a conversation with Donald Trump, attempts to censor dissenting views in the UK on mass immigration through arrests and swift and summary trials, the Canadian government’s draft legislation to punish the publication of certain opinions labelled as hate speech, Mark Zuckerberg’s revelations about pressure from the Biden administration to censor certain content related to his family and in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the suspension of X Brazil in violation of the country’s federal constitution.
Certainly, this latest episode in Brazil is – in political and constitutional terms – the most serious as the orders of Lula’s judges to the social network ‘X’ to block profiles or content are directly contrary to the Brazilian constitution itself.
With the so-called ‘traditional media’ virtually controlled by the dominant political parties and lobbies after their declining revenues and absolute loss of credibility, there is a global trend to censor freedom of expression and opinion on social media platforms in order to control public opinion.
But to censor freedom of expression is to censor or prohibit freedom of thought, ideological freedom, freedom to dissent, to be truly human; for expression or opinion is only the ‘outward’ expression of thought, reflection, intuition, complaint, or whatever.
At the EU level, the Commission and some member states – I have no doubt Spain in the lead, with a social-communist government seeking the practical imposition of a personal, family and party autocracy – are pushing to use so-called content moderation as a political tool, as well as never-independent fact-checkers and other means.
But content moderation, in itself, constitutes a violation of freedom of opinion, which is recognised in all European nations’ Constitutions, in the UN Convention, in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and, of course, in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. Content cannot be moderated. Either it is criminal and prosecuted or it must be allowed to be broadcast freely.
Whether or not the opinion may constitute a crime is another matter. In my opinion it does not. Even if someone were to say that the Earth is flat or that the Sun orbits our planet, the content cannot be removed or censored. The problem that someone, or many, can accept as valid and believe such content is not the fault of the sender but that the same elites, governments, parties and pressure groups, for decades, have eroded the value of Truth, of Good, of certainty, of Justice; the value of history and reality; and now anyone is able to believe anything. But censoring opinion is an act essentially contrary to the dignity of man.
Man, in the image and likeness of the Creator, manifests himself through speech. The word is the effective and efficient expression of the human being. To censor speech is to mutilate the human being; and in reality, I suppose, that is what they ultimately want.
Traditionally, in Europe, speech was only a crime when it became slander and libel; because it was about defending two good things, namely truth and honour. Now, slander and libel have become our daily bread, and are protected by the left and many judges; but the freedom to express love of country, love of security in neighbourhoods, the dream of protected nations or the rejection of failed multiculturalism is to be banned.
While member states face many challenges, such as hybrid attacks and propaganda from hostile third countries, denying EU citizens access to information and the right to express their views lacks proportionality, is an attack on democracy and creates a sense of distrust that makes these rules neither fit for purpose nor pass the most basic democratic scrutiny.
Without freedom of expression, there is no true democracy and no free citizens.