Europe Has a Free Speech Problem
But so does the Trump administration.
Last week, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance shocked an A-list group of European political and military leaders at the Munich Security Conference in Germany with a blunt message: Europe has gone too far in restricting speech. According to Vance, the main threat against European security does not emanate from Russia or China, but rather from “within” due to “the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.” He then lectured his European counterparts that “Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There is no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t.”
At a time when global free speech protections are eroding, Vance’s critique of Europe could have been a powerful call for realignment between the United States and Europe on advancing free expression. But America’s credibility as a defender of free speech is being undercut by the very government Vance represents. If he and the Trump administration are serious about championing free expression worldwide, they must recognize that the problem isn’t just in Europe—it’s at home, too.
Let’s start with what Vance got right. Free speech is in retreat in the Old World and European governments are increasingly turning to censorship and speech restrictions in a misguided attempt to defend democracy. Some of the examples that Vance offered missed relevant context and were cherrypicked to cater to an American audience. But he didn’t need to twist facts or omit details to prove—beyond a reasonable doubt—that European democracies and institutions see free expression as a double-edged sword.
Take one of Vance’s hosts, Germany’s Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck of the Green Party. In November last year, Habeck authorized a police raid of a man who had made various online posts, including a meme calling Habeck a “professional idiot.” As recently documented by CBS 60 Minutes, police investigations for online speech crimes happen to literally thousands of people in Germany. Those on the receiving end include climate activists, pro-Palestinian activists, and ordinary people critical of their local political representatives. Even posting a book cover on X that features a barely visible swastika on a facemask—intended to draw sarcastic parallels between COVID policies and Nazi-era policies—can lead to a criminal conviction for displaying prohibited symbols.
In France, likewise, President Macron unleashed his lawyers against a man who displayed two billboards sarcastically depicting Macron as Hitler as a protest against COVID policies. The man was initially fined 10,000 Euros, but has since been acquitted on appeal. Under Macron, France has also adopted a law against “manipulation of information,” allowing judges to order the removal of “inaccurate or misleading allegations or imputations of a fact likely to alter the sincerity of the upcoming election.” Perhaps most worryingly, 34 civil society organizations have been banned by decree under Macron, more than any other president during the Fifth Republic. Several of these organizations have been banned for speech crimes including harsh criticism of the government and nebulous categories of hate speech.
Finally, the European Union frequently insists that its landmark 2022 Digital Services Act (DSA) aims to protect fundamental rights, including free speech. But when still in office, Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner then responsible for the DSA’s implementation, threatened that the Commission had powers to shut down platforms that did not comply with the act. He sent a letter to Elon Musk suggesting that a planned live-streamed interview on X with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump might risk violating the DSA. Even with Breton out of office, it’s clear that the EU is deeply concerned about online speech. When Ursula von der Leyen ran for a second term as president of the European Commission in May last year she launched the idea of a “European Democracy Shield” that would focus on detecting “malign information or propaganda,” and ensure that such content is “swiftly removed and blocked” by social media platforms.
So, Vance is right to call out Europe’s free speech failures. But his argument collapses under the weight of his own government’s actions. While he condemns European leaders for silencing dissent, the Trump administration is waging its own war on free expression.
For one, federal agencies seem intent to use their powers to settle scores with Trump’s critics. The Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, has launched an investigation into how 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris in the run-up to the election. Carr also announced an investigation of a San Francisco radio station for allegedly disclosing the location of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. While the FCC has the authority to evaluate whether broadcast licenses serve the “public interest,” assessing and attacking the editorial judgments of news organizations is a substantial example of government overreach.
But Trump’s war on the media goes beyond government agencies—he’s taking personal aim at journalists and news organizations. He sued CBS over its 60 Minutes interview with Harris, then turned his legal guns on The Des Moines Register and pollster J. Ann Selzer, accusing them of “election interference” for publishing a poll that showed Harris ahead in Iowa. These lawsuits aren’t about justice; they’re about intimidation—an attempt to chill critical coverage through sheer legal attrition.
In this vein, Trump and his allies have also pushed for a weakening of the libel protections enshrined in the 1964 Supreme Court case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. Repealing Sullivan, as Jeffrey Cieslikowski has explained, would make it much easier to sue the press for honest mistakes—jeopardizing the First Amendment safeguards that have protected journalism for decades. And while Vance scolded European democracies for censoring misinformation, the White House has taken petty vindictiveness to absurd lengths by banning the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Airforce One for its refusal to adopt the government’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
True, Trump has signed an executive order barring federal officials from pressuring social media companies to remove protected speech—a salutary reversal of Biden-era efforts to combat misinformation. But Trump has also called for jailing flag burners, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that flag-burning is protected speech. When asked about it, Vance dodged, saying that “there are important national symbols that are worth protecting”—a telling sign that the administration’s commitment to free speech is selective. So far there’s little evidence that Vance is acting in good faith when insisting that under “Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer them in the public square.”
In his Munich speech, Vance rightly highlighted how “the Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent.” This alluded to America’s central role in upholding and expanding free speech as central pillars of the post-World War II global order.
That position was staked out in 1941, when Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined a future based on “four essential human freedoms,” the very first one being “freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world.” FDR’s widow Eleanor Roosevelt fought against Soviet attempts to erode free expression in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The United States also played a key role in advancing free speech in the Helsinki Accords, using human rights principles to challenge Soviet repression and empower dissidents. And in the 1990s and early 2000s, bipartisan consensus drove efforts to protect online free speech around the globe.
Yet, troublingly, the Trump administration has gutted funding for organizations and initiatives that support free expression and independent media abroad, providing a voice to dissidents and shining a critical light on authoritarian tendencies in Iran and Russia, Hungary and China. This comes at a time when these countries are openly working to change international human rights norms to serve the interests of authoritarian states to control and export sophisticated systems of mass surveillance and censorship.
In the 21st century, America can still be a bulwark against authoritarianism and a model for how democracies handle disinformation, hate speech, and extremism without betraying core principles. But that requires leading by example. Criticizing Europe for restricting free speech while waging lawfare against American media and giving authoritarian states free rein doesn’t just reek of hypocrisy—it undermines the First Amendment at home, alienates allies, and emboldens oppressive regimes abroad.
Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media.
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While I agree with your underlying premise your examples of recent suppression of free speech by the “right” do not remotely rise to the level of what we have witnessed over the past 4 years. The whole slope is very slippery and I’m not optimistic about the future.
I find this free speech absolutism in the face of proven malign activity by foreign adversaries to be the epitome of head-in-the-sand, whistling-past-the-graveyard "optimism." Some of the examples provided are assuredly overreach, but to deny they are being taken in a decidedly hostile and adversarial environment is specious. Yes, let's address the overreach, but not while neglecting the elephant in the corner: democracies are under attack from hostile foreign powers seeking to divide them externally and undermine them internally. This is likely attacking a cancer victim for not sitting up straight. We've tried to have private actors act as guardians, only to see them crumble in the face of diminishing clicks. Government censorship is unwelcome, but what is the alternative--pretending the attacks aren't happening? And is a government committed to the welfare of its citizens really expected to do nothing when hack cures and worse are pushed by those whose major bugaboo is the "deep state" and whose notion of freedom care nothing for responsibility to others? I'd rather see governments and private citizens seeking for a middle way rather than remove the guardrails altogether in the name of an ideal that ignores what's happening in plain sight.