The Multinational Offensive Against Free Speech Online

Free Speech is Currently Enduring a Multi-Pronged Attack

Online censorship, which tends to rank among my three main beats, is a subject I haven’t touched on in a while, but has predictably become more relevant as we draw closer to November 5th.

The focus of late has naturally been on an election year brimming with many whimsical happenings, from Trump narrowly avoiding the mass trauma of having his brains blown out in front of thousands of onlookers in Butler Pa., to the anointing of Kamala Harris as the democrat party’s heir apparent, to the escalations in both the Middle East and Ukraine.

Despite the obvious importance of these issues, I truly believe the most pressing concern facing the Western world is the multifaceted attack on free expression, particularly in the digital realm.

We’ve all probably heard the idiom that “Freedom of Speech is the First Amendment because it’s the most important”.

I never fully appreciated this sentiment, but in the past eight years—after being de-platformed and demonetized on several occasions—I've learned the hard way how truly accurate that statement is.

There are several reasons why I believe the First Amendment is the most important:

1. It’s the Foundation of Democracy: Freedom of speech is essential for the functioning of a democratic society. It allows for the free exchange of ideas, which is crucial for an informed electorate. Without it, citizens cannot effectively participate in the democratic process, challenge those in power, or influence public policy.

2. It Preserves Individual Autonomy and Dignity: This right is fundamental to individual autonomy, allowing people to express their thoughts, beliefs, and opinions. It's tied to personal dignity, as it enables individuals to define and express their identity, beliefs, and values.

3. Check on Government Power: Freedom of speech acts as a safeguard against tyranny and corruption by allowing criticism of government actions. It enables the press to report on abuses of power, which is vital for transparency and accountability.

4. Promotes Social Progress and Innovation: The free flow of information and ideas fosters innovation, scientific advancement, and social change. History shows that many societal improvements have come from individuals or groups challenging the status quo through speech.

5. Cultural Diversity and Exchange: It promotes cultural diversity by allowing different voices, cultures, and viewpoints to be heard. This diversity enriches society, preventing cultural stagnation and promoting mutual understanding.

6. Protection of Other Rights: Many other rights depend on the ability to speak freely. For instance, the right to protest, to practice religion, or to engage in political activity all hinges on the ability to express oneself without fear of reprisal.

7. Error Correction: In the marketplace of ideas, freedom of speech allows for the correction of errors. False or harmful ideas can be openly debated and refuted, leading to a more accurate understanding of truth.

8. Personal Development: Engaging with diverse viewpoints through speech can lead to personal growth, empathy, and a broader perspective on life, which is essential for individual development and societal harmony.

9. Legal and Philosophical Justifications: Philosophically, many argue that freedom of speech is intrinsic to human nature. Legally, it's often seen as a negative right (the right to be free from interference), which means the burden of justification falls on those who would restrict it, not on those who exercise it.

10. Historical Lessons: History is replete with examples where suppression of speech led to authoritarianism, misinformation, and societal harm. The lessons learned underscore the importance of protecting this right to prevent such outcomes.

Free speech is the ultimate indicator of how healthy a society and its government are, and by that metric, the entire Western world appears terminally ill.

The ability to express one’s opinions, especially those that run counter to establishment orthodoxy, is of vital importance to be able to participate in this greater information war. If the international power players have their way, they’ll remove the public’s ability to put up any meaningful opposition.

The current offensive is being facilitated on multiple fronts by a variety of governments and NGOs working in concert.

In an article that I published last year titled The War on Dissent: Western Governments are Creating Legal Frameworks to Attack Alternative Media, I outlined the various active prongs to this multinational censorship campaign.

These included Canada’s C-11, or “Online Streaming Act,” the UK’s Online Safety Bill (OSB), and the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA).

The Digital Services Act is the legal framework that’s been used by EU official Thierry Breton to target Elon Musk and X this past year.

The DSA contains some very aggressive clauses. For example, Section 10 details the crimes of transmitting “harmful, false and threatening communications,” and then refuses to clearly define what will be considered “harmful” and what the criteria will be to determine whether or not something is “false.”

Additionally, the bill makes it a crime to “send a message” containing false information in clause 156.

Then, in the next breath, it grants immunity to every newspaper, television channel, and streaming service in clause 157.

In essence, only information and opinions deemed appropriate by the International Corpo-Government amalgam will be allowed to see the light of day. It’s right there in print for anyone willing to put in a modicum of effort to understand what the EU is foisting upon them.

Since this time last year, the censorship offensive has ramped up considerably. Instead of targeting the little guys (YouTube channels, streamers, online publications, etc.) who were wiped out when the “ban hammer” came down in 2018 and 2020.

This time, they are targeting the most consequential platforms themselves, namely Twitter (X), Rumble, and Telegram.

Pavel Durov and Telegram

Most of you by now are aware that Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested on August 24th at Le Bourget Airport in France. Durov's arrest was based on a warrant issued by the French judicial police as part of a preliminary investigation “in relation to 12 suspected violations regarding crime on the Telegram platform.”

The first thing that came to mind for me was how odd it was that Durov would travel to France considering how active a role the French Government has taken in this multi-pronged attack on free speech. Telegram has become a bastion for many of the most effective voices in the alternative and independent media space to communicate with their audiences and even with each other. I can speak from experience that much of the alt-media networking takes place on Telegram, so it’s little wonder that the platform would be targeted.

As the story goes, French President Emmanuel Macron allegedly invited Durov to dinner on the evening that he was arrested, which caused many to believe that Macron led Durov into France under false pretenses. Macron has, predictably, denied these allegations, but many remain skeptical.

Telegram Founder Pavel Durov. (Photo: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

In the immediate wake of his arrest, there was a lot of speculation about what the actual charges were. There was a vague press release by the prosecutors that didn’t make anything explicitly clear, but in the days following, the charges were released, and they were quite shocking.

This is the document released by the French prosecutor today. Just to give you a sense of how sweeping and deliberately dangerous these charges are, here’s the prosecutor of the Republic, and this is her statement:

The charges against Pavel Durov stem from a theory that the operator of the social media platform can be criminally liable for the criminal acts of anybody who uses his platform. As investigative Journalist Glenn Greenwald put it, arresting Durov was “akin to arresting AT&T executives and charging them with the crimes of allowing people who use the telephone to commit and plan criminal acts.”

If these complicity charges stick, what’s stopping them from doing the same to, say, Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg?

There’s an additional charge included here that is also quite alarming: “Providing cryptology services, aiming to ensure confidentiality without certified declaration.” So basically, anyone who provides an encryption service, meaning any platform that makes it harder for the government’s digital panopticon to record your private messages, could be held criminally liable.

The indictment continues, “providing a cryptology tool, not solely ensuring authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration,” meaning any kind of encryption that doesn't allow the government to have a backdoor to have full access to is now a criminal offense that can subject the heads of these technology companies to prison.

The implication of this indictment is essentially the end of internet freedom as we know it, which has long been an objective of the ruling class. This is an effort going (at least) back to the Clinton administration in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, where they tried to say, ‘Look, there are these dangerous domestic elements that we cannot allow to use the internet using encryption and hiding behind encryption; we need to monitor what they're saying and so, we have to have a backdoor into the internet.’

The playbook is always the same: Ordo ab Chao.

So, how is the corporate media reporting on this?

Below is a headline that ran in the New York Times just after the arrest:

Pavel Durov, the entrepreneur who founded the online communications tool Telegram, was charged on Wednesday in France with a wide range of crimes related to illicit activity on the app and barred from leaving the country.

It was a rare move by legal authorities to hold a top technology executive personally liable for the behavior of users on a major messaging platform, escalating the debate over the role of technology companies in online speech and the limits of their responsibility.

Mr. Durov, 39, who was detained by French authorities on Saturday, was placed under formal investigation on a range of charges, including complicity in managing an online platform to enable illegal transactions; complicity in crimes such as enabling the distribution of child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking and fraud; and a refusal to cooperate with law enforcement.

Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor, said in a statement that Mr. Durov had been ordered to pay bail of 5 million euros, or about $5.5 million, and was released but must check in at a police station twice a week.

If Mr. Durov was eventually convicted, he could face up to 10 years in prison, Ms. Beccuau said. — The New York Times, August 28, 2024

They want to hit Durov with up to ten years in prison even though he hasn’t committed a single crime. The only thing he is guilty of is providing the public with a social media platform designed to prioritize privacy in an age of rampant government surveillance.

An article in the European arm of Politico added further details:

French authorities on Wednesday indicted Telegram CEO Pavel Durov with six charges related to illicit activity on the app. The charges include complicity in managing an online platform “in order to enable an illegal transaction in organized group,” and refusal to cooperate with law enforcement authorities, the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a press release.

“The only statement I’d wish to make is that Telegram is in conformity with every aspect of European norms on digital matters. It is absurd to think that the head of a social network is being charged,” Durov’s lawyer David-Olivier Kaminski said after the announcement. — Politico EU, August 28, 2024

Do you see how dangerous of a precedent this is? You shouldn’t have to bend your mind too much to see how destructive this is for internet freedom.

As an example, If the EU concludes that some of the views that, say, Elon Musk allows to be expressed on X constitute criminal disinformation, as EU officials or Brussels bureaucrats decide, then Musk and X itself can be criminally liable for allowing a platform to be used to spread or express political opinions that the EU government doesn’t want to proliferate. That's the purpose of this indictment, to create a precedent where exactly that can happen.

Chris Pavlovski, the CEO and founder of Rumble [the premier free speech alternative to YouTube!] happened to be in Europe when Durov was arrested and immediately “departed” upon hearing the news, presumably out of a reasonable fear that he could also be detained.

This is what it means to be in charge of a platform that prioritizes the rights of the people over the whims of the political class. Not only are your platforms flooded with anonymous hate bots to make their users appear as cartoonish caricatures of evil incarnate, but they are inventing new legal frameworks overnight to seek and destroy anyone who offers a haven for dissent.

Brazilian Judge Targets Elon Musk’s “X”

Brazil is a very consequential nation, it is of vital geostrategic importance, is the second-largest country in the hemisphere, and is a part of what they somewhat misleadingly call the “democratic world.” But it is also important because it is the testing ground for a very aggressive new approach to censorship.

There is a Brazillian Supreme Court Judge who looks like a Sith Lord and has essentially anointed himself Brazil’s foremost authority on objective reality. His name is Alexandre de Moraes, and he is quite possibly one of the most overtly authoritarian Judges in this so-called “democratic world.”

JUSTICE Alexandre de Moraes (Photo: Eraldo Peres Associated Press)

When it comes to censorship, Brazil tends to take things a little further than most Western governments, but is watched very closely by the United States and its European allies. It is a sort of stress test to see what they can and cannot get away with.

In August, Justice Moraes issued censorship orders to Elon Musk’s X, saying in a nutshell that if they did not comply with the demands, Brazilian X Executives would be arrested. Elon, who had already been in a Twitter spat with this repressive Judge, concluded that since they could not guarantee the safety of X’s Brazilian executives, they would close down all of their offices in the country.

Over the course of the last six weeks, a very consequential drama unfolded between X and Brazil: Justice Moraes was able to get four of his fellow Supreme Court Justices to vote with him and successfully banned X from existing in Brazil, with no regard for the Brazilian citizens. In fact, they would go so far as to criminalize the use of the platform, charging citizens who used VPNs to access the site fines of $8,900 dollars per day, a price that exceeds the average median annual income for a majority of the Brazilian population.

As I mentioned, Brazil has the 2nd largest population in the Southern Hemisphere and is the 6th largest nation worldwide; that is a huge user base and a serious blow to a platform that has been experiencing significant losses since Elon took over.

Naturally, Elon was livid with this Judge, making a series of very public criticisms and even suggesting that Moraes deserved prison time:

Elon’s free speech stance and his quarrel with Moraes prompted a massive and important debate in Brazil around free speech, censorship, and limits to online discourse. Musk stood his ground for roughly two to three weeks after the ban before the financial necessity of operating in Brazil forced his hand.

As mentioned, Brazil has a very large population, it is a very young population and a very online population. Considering how many advertisers fled the platform—out of fear of the ADL and similar organizations that have been targeting X—Brazil is a very important market for X to remain in.

The lesser-known details of Musk’s acquisition of Twitter will come into play here shortly.

Elon Musk acquired X for $44 billion, utilizing major banks and financial institutions to secure the necessary credit rather than solely relying on personal funds. Currently, the valuation of X has significantly diminished, likely by 50% or more, partly due to his commendable commitment to free speech, which has resulted in the exodus of numerous corporate advertisers and users.

The loss of Brazil, one of the most critical financial markets for X, is a significant setback. In addition, the Supreme Court ordered X to eliminate its physical presence in Brazil. The Supreme Court stated that it would arrest the executives and officials of X in Brazil, as well as its lawyers if they failed to censor their content or comply with its requests.

To safeguard those individuals, Elon terminated or relocated employees who were in Brazil and entirely removed all of his assets and properties from the country. Moraes countered Elon by imposing millions of dollars in fines on X and went so far as to freeze the bank accounts of StarLink. This is significant because Starlink exists under Space X, a completely separate entity from X. It is true that Musk is the major shareholder for both, but they have completely different shareholders and are incorporated differently.

It is worth noting that Starlink is beloved by many in Brazil, as it provides a lot of free services to the people of Brazil, free Internet services to people in the Amazon, and other places that previously had no access to the Internet.

Musk has received awards and homage for what many see as a genuinely beneficial philanthropic endeavor, yet, despite that, this fanatical Judge started taking assets; we’re talking seizing millions of dollars from the bank account of StarLink and putting it into the Brazilian coffers.

You can only imagine the pressure that Musk is under. Not only from the institutional investors who permitted him to acquire the company for $44 billion, and who now own a stake in a company that is infinitely less valuable—and would be further impacted by the loss of access to Brazil—but also from his investors in Space X, who were unwilling to risk their assets and have their bank accounts seized to fund this political cause that Musk has with a completely different company that they’ve never invested in.

Now, over the last few weeks, we’ve seen Elon slowly capitulating to this Judge, leaping like a trained dog through every hoop to see that X is restored in Brazil. They’ve complied with all of the requirements they once denounced, censoring every account that this judge had previously ordered banned, including elected officials.

Regardless of how anyone may feel about Elon or X, the platform is an indispensable tool where the bulk of online debate, activism, and journalism take place.

The reason we cover online censorship in places like Brazil, or any other country for that matter, is because once a country has some success, you’ll see the same thing start to happen everywhere.

Three days before Brazil ordered X banned, France arrested Pavel Durov, and what did Durov do? He issued a public statement saying that Telegram would be radically changing all of its rules, bolstering content moderation, and complying with all government orders.

Now we have Musk capitulating as well, which will undoubtedly embolden the international censorship regime to encroach even further. This is exactly what is now happening in other countries. 

From Reuters:

Turkey's Information Technologies and Communication Authority published the access ban decision on its website.

Transport and infrastructure minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said the nature of the Discord platform made it difficult for authorities to monitor and intervene when illegal or criminal content is shared.

"Security personnel cannot go through the content. We can only intervene when users complain to us about content shared there," he told reporters in parliament.

"Since Discord refuses to share its own information, including IP addresses and content, with our security units, we were forced to block access." — Reuters, October 9, 2024

It wasn’t only Turkey; Russia would move to ban Discord as well. And the bastion of democracy and righteousness that is Ukraine has since moved to limit Telegram’s use in the country.

This is a dangerous trend.

Governments have grown tired of pressuring social media platforms to censor; they now rely on force.

I believe Pavel Durov's arrest in France was the most significant escalation yet, an escalation that also serves as a signal to all other countries, namely Brazil, that ‘if France can do it, so can you.’

What We Can Learn From Tim Walz and Democrats

How does this recent push against free speech factor into the 2024 U.S. election?

One of the reasons I started my own SubStack—the Post-Liberal—was because I’ve observed over the last two decades a steady inching toward overt totalitarianism in both the Democrat party’s policies and in the rhetoric of modern Liberals.

Over the past eight years, there has been a significant increase in real-life censorship, particularly in areas such as speaking engagements, school boards, campus protests, etc. Liberals are not the only ones who are guilty of attempting to stamp out ideas they disagree with, as many Conservatives are just as guilty (TikTok Ban, Antisemitism Awareness Act, campus crackdowns, etc.) but no one has pursued censorship as voraciously as the modern Democrat party.

One of their primary efforts over the last 8 years has been to continuously invent new legal theories and means to justify political censorship. Among the various default expressions modern democrats use to justify this pursuit is the ever-imminent ‘threat to democracy,’ and that same tired gambit was used in the recent Vice Presidential debate by Tim Walz.

Below is a clip of J.D. Vance’s rebuttal to the claim, followed by Tim Walz's immediate deployment of another tired trope.

First of all, the ‘yelling fire in a crowded theatre’ trope has nothing to do with political expression. There are some limits on speech, particularly speech that facilitates fraud or defamation, and the specific instance of yelling fire in a crowded theatre is not necessarily illegal, though there is the possibility you could be charged with disorderly conduct.

The decision from which that idiotic phrase originated is considered ‘bad law,’ as it is an outdated statute that is no longer applicable, as a result of a comprehensive corpus of First Amendment law. The phrase originated from an attempt by the U.S. government to prosecute people for circulating leaflets opposing the use of the draft under Woodrow Wilson to enter World War One. So the only reason this tired phrase even existed in the first place was the exact same reason it’s being deployed by Walz today; the Government wants to control speech and root out dissent.

Additionally, there is no first amendment exception for “hate speech,” and there is no universally agreed upon protocol for determining what qualifies as hate speech. What is and isn’t considered hate speech is subjective, and in the case of the Federal Government, it will be used to stamp out dissent from the political establishment.

That’s what this has always been about.

The same government that knowingly allows carcinogens and toxins into our food supply is not concerned about how words make you feel; they simply see an opportunity to expand their already rampant powers over the public.

This is not the first time Tim Walz has expressed his desire to place limits on speech.

Here he is on the highly prestigious MSNBC show hosted by intellectual juggernaut Joy Reid:

Tim Walz: I think we need to push back on this. There's no guarantee of free speech on misinformation or hate speech and especially around our democracy. 

Tim Walz statement here is completely false. Can you imagine if it were true? If hate speech or misinformation were made illegal?

Think about how many times the mis or disinformation of yesterday has become the accepted fact of today.

The reporters who actually decided to report on the Hunter Biden laptop fiasco back in 2020 would have been criminally charged, as would anyone who questioned the logic of social distancing or the safety of masking up their children all day, and especially anyone who suggested that the virus originated in a lab in Wuhan and not the wet market. These examples were all at one time considered misinformation, but are now acceptable, so do you see the danger of what Walz is implying here?

Tim Walz is not alone.

Kamala Harris mentioned something quite similar during the last election cycle in a speech to the NAACP:

The political establishment's ultimate vulnerability is the truth; they fear the light of revelation and the power of public scrutiny, which is why the battle for free expression online will be a perpetual struggle.

Every American has as a primary duty – or at least should have – the obligation to defend the First Amendment and the guarantee of free speech.

The real “threat to our democracy” is this ongoing, sustained, systemic idea that the solution to ideas that challenge the decrees of the ruling class is to censor and punish those who are expressing them. 

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