Europe used to promote itself as world leader in freedom of expression. No more.
The United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act puts state control on what people can say online. It pressures platforms to censor before a court even sees the case. It applies to anything deemed harmful. Harmful can mean political. Harmful can mean unpopular. Harmful can mean a joke that falls flat.
This isn’t a hypothetical problem. It is happening now.
British police interrogated and arrested people for online jokes. Police questioned a Scottish comedian named Mark Meechan after he trained a pug to lift its paw as a Nazi salute. It was satire. The authorities criminally convicted him for offense. Officers arrested a 51-year-old man for sharing a meme of a burning Pride flag. They arrested a 19-year-old after he reposted a rap lyric. They detained a woman named Kate Scottow for “misgendering” someone online and confiscated her phone and computer. London police even issued a warning to one man, telling him that liking a tweet will be logged as a “non-crime hate incident.”
This will only increase with the new law.
The European Union’s Digital Services Act sets up similar forces. It forces platforms to take down speech the government disapproves of. It institutes crushing fines for failure to comply. The EU’s regulators fined Elon Musk and X $140 million after the company refused to censor in time with the EU’s demands. Officials couched it as a transparency dispute. The message was obvious: If you don’t police the state’s speech rules, you will be punished.
EU officials claim this is to protect users from harm. Yet they have also opened investigations into political speech. They threaten platforms with penalties if they host opinions that Brussels deems misinformation. They give orders to take posts down within hours. Platforms comply because the alternative is financial ruin.
This is leading to the weaponization of cancel culture at the state level. It is no longer social media mobs punishing comedians and journalists. It is now the police and regulators who have the legal power and handcuffs.
European leaders claim they are upholding democratic values. But they are using the exact same tactics as the regimes they vilify.
Joseph Goebbels had total control over newspapers, cinema and radio. He banned opposing voices. He demanded complete loyalty to the ruling party. Control the media. Control opinion. Silence dissent. That is not a new formula. It has just been updated for the digital age.
Elon Musk, Donald Trump and conservatives who want to allow debate are accused by modern leaders of authoritarian politics. They brand them enemies of democracy. They say free speech empowers extremists. They weaponize the word “safety” into an excuse. They use it to silence political opposition under the guise of protection.
The question to ask is simple. Who is acting like a tyrant?
People who live under dictatorships understand where this is going. Communist governments in the Soviet Union and China arrested writers for satire. They censored jokes. They exerted control over what people read and said. Millions died under systems that criminalized independent thought.
Western governments are not killing dissidents. But they are embracing the early stages of the same logic. They start with censorship of ideas, not crimes. They criminalize speech instead of actions.
This is the line that should never be crossed. Once it is, history shows how quickly things spiral out of control.
Journalists should be alarmed. Comedians should be alarmed. Teachers, students, parents and every citizen who cares about the right to free speech should pay attention. You do not protect a society from harm by banning ideas. You create fear. You make people lose trust in institutions. You empower those who have the power to decide whose voices are allowed to exist.
Europe owes its citizens more than curated speech pre-approved by bureaucrats.
A free society needs tolerance of disagreement. It needs space for offensive humor. It needs the right to question leaders without fear. It needs platforms where the audience decides what to believe, not the government.
The slogans are “safety.” The policies are “silence.”
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