France has become a threat to free speech
Emmanuel Macron wants to impose unilateral speech controls on the internet
Just over one year ago, French President Emmanuel Macron came to the United States to import two potentially invasive species to Washington. One was a tree and the other was a crackdown on free speech. Ironically, soon after the tree was planted, officials dug it up to send it to quarantine. However, the more dangerous species was his acorn of speech controls, a proposal that resulted in rapturous applause from our clueless politicians.
While our politicians in the U. S. may applaud Mr. Macron like village idiots, most Americans are hardcore believers in free speech. It runs in our blood. Undeterred, however, Mr. Macron and others in Europe are moving to unilaterally impose speech controls on the internet with new legislation in France and Germany. If you believe this is a European issue, think again.
Mr. Macron and his government are attempting to unilaterally scrub out the internet of hateful thoughts. The French Parliament has moved toward a new law that would give internet companies like Facebook and Google just 24 hours to remove hateful speech from their sites or face fines of $ 1.4 million per violation. A final vote is expected next week. Germany passed a similar measure last year and imposed fines of $ 56 million.
The French and Germans have given up in trying to convince the
U. S. to surrender its free speech protections. They realized that they do not have to because by imposing crippling penalties, major companies will be forced into censoring speech under poorly defined standards. The result could be the curtailment of the greatest invention fostering free speech in the history of the world. It is all happening without a whimper of opposition from Congress or from most civil liberties organizations.
The move by the Europeans hits in the blind spot of the U. S. Constitution. The First Amendment does an excellent job of preventing government action against free speech, and most of the laws curtailing free speech in Europe would be unconstitutional in the U. S. However, although protected against Big Brother, we are left completely vulnerable to Little Brother, made up of the private companies that have wide discretion on curtailing and controlling speech around the world.
Indeed, Europeans are building on past success. Back in 2013, a group of Jewish students used French laws to sue Twitter to force it to hand over the identities of anonymous posters of comments deemed anti- Semitic. To its credit, Twitter fought to protect anonymity but the European courts ruled against the company and, ultimately, it caved. Anonymity is being rolled back as rapidly as free speech is being crushed in these countries.
Mr. Macron knows the European speech controls are likely to metastasize throughout the internet. They have already laid waste to free speech in Europe. These laws criminalize speech under vague standards referring to “inciting” or “intimidating” others based on race or religion. For example, the father of French conservative presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was fined because he had called people from the Roma minority “smelly.” A French mother was prosecuted because her son went to school with a shirt reading “I am a bomb.” Even German Justice Minister Heiko Maas was censored under his own laws for calling an author an “idiot” on Twitter.
The result of such poorly defined laws is predictable. A recent poll found only 18% of Germans feel they can speak freely in public. More than 31% did not even feel free to express themselves in private among their friends. Just 17% of Germans felt free to express themselves on the internet, and 35% said free speech is confined to small private circles. That is called a chilling effect, and it should be feared.
The sad irony of France leading efforts to curb free speech is powerful. Once the bastion of liberty, France has now become one of the greatest international threats to free speech. It even led a crackdown on the free press with criminal investigations. For years, we have simply watched from our side of the Atlantic and dismissed these trends as a European issue. With these new laws, however, it is a global issue. The invasive species of this acorn is about to be unleashed on the worldwide web.