ACTION

Europe Is Trying to Censor Americans by Censoring American Companies

The House Judiciary Committee recently held a hearing on “Europe’s Threat to American Speech” (YouTube). Two of those who appeared are driving home the threat. Lorcan Price: What does European censorship look like, and why should Americans care? I answered that question before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee this week. The last time I testified before the Committee in September, I highlighted the censorship potential of the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which at the time still seemed theoretical. My message then was that this EU law controlling online speech was poised to censor lawful expression beyond Europe, including in the United States. Many were not convinced. But now we have moved from theory to practice. There can be no doubt now that the DSA is the tip of a massive censorship industrial complex with global implications…. Free speech is such a threat to European elites that they intend to either cripple X with fines and investigations or force them to bend the knee at the altar of censorship. I hope X stands strong because we need free speech in Europe more than ever (Daily Wire). Jeremy Tedesco: If you’re like most Americans, your idea of global censorship is that it’s bad, but it doesn’t feel like a real threat to you. The fact that 30 British subjects are arrested every day for speech crimes sounds dire but distant. The ongoing crusade to arrest and prosecute U.K. grandmothers and clergy members for tweets and peaceful protests is infuriating, but it is also far from our shores. The same goes for Päivi Räsänen. A medical doctor, grandmother of 12, and member of the Finnish parliament, Räsänen is now awaiting a verdict at her nation’s high court that stems from a 2019 Twitter post that cited a Bible verse…. We are long past the point where censorship is someone else’s problem. Europe has built itself the infrastructure to impose global speech controls, and the Europeans don’t plan to exempt Americans (The Hill).