Laws in other countries generally should not be felt in the United States, but Americans can’t ignore the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act, a 2023 measure that regulates internet speech, or the similar European Union Digital Services Act.
“It may have been designed … with the best of intentions, but it has turned out to be a sledgehammer that misses the nut. It does not protect and it is damaging,” U.K. Member of Parliament Nigel Farage testified Wednesday in a congressional hearing lasting over three hours, titled “Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation,” hosted by the House Judiciary Committee.
The hearing came on the heels of the outrageous arrest of Irish comedian Graham Linehan at Heathrow Airport. Linehan was arrested for social media posts he made on X months ago, while he was in the U.S.
“He’s not even a British citizen. He’s an Irish citizen. This could happen to any American man or woman that goes to Heathrow that has said things online that the British government and British police don’t like,” Farage said. “I’ve come today … to say to you, don’t allow piece by piece this to happen here in America.”
Barrister and Legal Counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom International Lorcán Price also testified and provided examples of shocking censorship in EU countries. Päivi Räsänen, former Finnish minister of the interior, is still in court after she was charged with “agitation against a minority group” in 2021— a charge under the Finnish criminal code titled “war crimes and crimes against humanity” — for posting a Bible verse on X in response to her church sponsoring a gay pride parade.
In Scotland, Rose Docherty, a then-74-year-old grandmother, silently held a sign on the sidewalk near a hospital where abortions are performed. The sign offered to talk with anyone who wished. She was arrested in February, but the prosecutor dropped the case in August.
In England, Adam Smith-Connor was found guilty of breaching the buffer zone of an abortion business while praying silently in 2022.
“German pensioners are having their homes raided and are being prosecuted for insulting politicians,” Price testified. “Indeed, one member of the Green Party in Germany has over 700 criminal complaints outstanding, for insult.”
Price called EU censorship policies a retreat from free speech and a sign that the “European political elite has lost control of the narrative, and the Digital Services Act is the response to that increasingly desperate attempt to suppress growing public discontent.”
“When the European Union is now negotiating trade deals, including with your neighbors to the north in Canada, they insist that the Digital Services Act is part of that. Very clearly a global intent. It means that the European Union will set the global standard when it comes to speech,” Price continued.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, shared an August 12, 2024 letter sent to Elon Musk from Thierry Breton, who was the commissioner in charge of enforcement of the Digital Services Act. The letter was sent in advance of the video discussion between Musk and then-candidate Donald Trump that was broadcast on X. Breton tells Musk, “measures need to be taken to combat disinformation,” and “We’re concerned about any illegal content you may have,” and, Jordan continues to quote from the letter, “He ends his letter by saying, ‘My services and I … will be extremely vigilant [for]any evidence that points to breaches of the Digital Services Act, and will not hesitate to make full use of our toolbox.”
Jordan noted that last Congress this same committee investigated censorship by the U.S. government during the Biden administration.
“Big government, Big Tech, big media, big academia, all working together to censor Americans,” Jordan said. “The Biden administration had established a disinformation governance board. That’s right, bunch of bureaucrats are going to get together and tell you what you can say, what you can tweet, what you can post, what you can read, what’s misinformation, what’s disinformation, and the new term they come up with, what’s mal-information?” The board has since been dismantled.
None of the Democrats on the committee took any warnings from their guests seriously. Predictably, they turned real evidence of censorship inside out and tried to malign Trump, saying he is the real threat to free speech.
Several Democrats hurled insults at Farage, including Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, D- Md., who called Farage, “a Putin-loving free speech imposter and Trump sycophant.”
His tone dripping with venom, Raskin seethed, “For a man who fashions himself kind of a free speech martyr, Mr. Farage seems most at home with the autocrats and dictators of the world who are crushing freedom on Earth.”
Later, when Farage had a chance to respond, he smiled at Raskin and thanked him for the “charming” and “delightful” testimony, which disarmed the room with laughs all around. He threw up his arms and used Raskin’s rudeness to make a point. “But hey, that’s fine. You can say what you like. I don’t care, because that’s what free speech is, isn’t it? This has all been going wrong now for a couple of decades. We’ve kind of forgotten the Voltairean principles that we’ll fight and defend to the death your right to say something that we fundamentally disagree with. That is the absolute foundation — if you think about it — of free speech, of democracy, of living in freedom. It’s kind of why we fought two world wars at massive, massive cost, to defend that very principle for ourselves and the many, many others around the country.”