US Sanctions EU Officials for Free Speech Suppression in Major Widening of US-European Rift

Yesterday for the first time the US announced sanctions against European officials associated with the EU’s Digital Services Act and UK’s Online Safety Act, and specifically for their overreach in attempting to censor Americans extraterritorially on US soil.

These censorial attempts were made via a dense web of NGOs which collaborated with various US institutions, including the Biden administration, in “flagging” American content as well as creating ‘black lists’ of American “offenders” earmarked for deplatformization and other forms of illegal free speech suppression.

US Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers:

Our targets are foreign, but you’ll notice that some collaborated with U.S. bureaucrats on Murthy-style speech suppression. Don’t worry: we’re pursuing transparency, truth, and reconciliation at the @StateDept, too.

While this is a big step, the US Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers specifically noted that these so-called “sanctions” are not of the high-octane Magnitsky Act variety—which seek to debank and financially ruin the targets—often levied on Russian interests, but rather merely visa restrictions—at least for now—which simply keep the sanctioned officials from being able to visit the US, or booting those already there.

The full list of sanctioned ex-officials. The most prominent amongst them is Thierry Breton—a bigwig EU commissioner under von der Leyen’s corrupt regime—and one of the “masterminds of the Digital Services Act” itself.

Another is Josephine Ballon of HateAid, a “hate speech” watchdog; here’s her succinctly “democratic” opinion on free speech (ER inserted tweet):

Naturally, all the top Eurocrats got their marching orders to begin organizing a desperate defense of the so-called ‘European values’:

But as per usual, the latest “assault on Europe” by the Trump administration has revealed or highlighted two key things.

First, the fact that the rift between US and Europe is growing, as the Trump administration appears to understand that the Deep State has retreated to more defensible positions in the EU, after being at least somewhat thwarted and beaten back in the US. And so now, Trump’s admin sees that it must be pursued and cut off at the root in Europe itself, at least according to Richard Werner’s plausible hypothesis:

This erupting dispute is bringing the ongoing war between Trump and the Deep State out into the open, at least in Europe: Having had to concede territory in the US, the American Deep State retreated to its biggest fortress: Germany and the EU, where it has been entrenched, drawing its legal powers from the 1945 Occupation Statutes in Germany and its control over the dictatorial EU Commission ever since the CIA created these EU institutions in the first place (with Jean Monnet, Schuman, Spaak etc & the European Movement all CIA assets).

In this case, specifically, we can refer to the ‘Censorship Industrial Complex’—as coined by Mike Benz—which is a loose overlap of many globalist NGOs and other ‘special interests’ which have fashioned a kind of international web capable of both influencing and operating in any Western nation.

The elites have expressed their shock at this development, being beside themselves at the fact that the US could possibly dare to form a schism between the different arms of the global Deep State:

But the second thing I mentioned which the latest developments have revealed is the utter hypocrisy of the performatively pearl-clutching Euro-elites. They shriek in outrage at the ‘assault’ on their so-called freedoms when the US dares to do the very thing these Euro-elites themselves have gleefully subjected many less-fortunate nations to, particularly Russia.

For instance, compare Kaja Kallas’s hand-wringing to her own earlier calls to ban travel for Russians:

In fact, the maudlin outrage in general over the Trump admin’s shifting stance on Europe is quite ‘rich’, when you think about it.

Take this recent headline which purports that only now, after desecrating the sacred “European garden” has the US finally crossed over into the ‘malign’ category:

Think of how offensive that is to the rest of the real world, which exists outside the neocolonialist barbican of Borrell’s Edenic ‘garden’. Decades of interference in global elections, invading dozens of third world—and particularly Middle Eastern—countries, destroying nations and millions of lives all in the name of some cooked-up ‘freedom’—all fine and acceptable: the US was the ‘shining beacon’ of Democracy.

But now that the unchained American dragon has set its fiery breath on sacred Europe, a sudden outbreak of teeth-gnashing and pearl-clutching amongst the panicked elites. How patently malign! You can see the blatant Eurocentric racism bleeding through in the desperate attempts to cushion that final and inviolable fortress of global elite privilege that is the European sacred ‘garden’ from the most harrowing and unthinkable of punishments: equal treatment.

Welcome to the Golden Age, dear Europeans: under Pontifex Maximus Trump, you too are become the Jungle.

Now prostrate yourselves and grovel for forgiveness.

A fitting valediction from one X user:

The vise is closing on the detached, self-absorbed EU ruling class.
Europe is simmering with rage as citizens watch their nations suffocate under corruption, censorship, mass immigration, ideological fanaticism, and institutional failure.
Brussels has become a sealed bunker of arrogance, deaf to reality and hostile to its own people.
By cutting itself off from the streets, from accountability, and from common sense, the EU has signed its own death warrant. What remains is a hollow, decaying construct staggering toward collapse.

Just remember, when times get bad, there’s only one thing the putrid Eurocrats know how to do, as always: double down.

The report is brief today to give you all a chance to enjoy Christmas without too much mental exhaustion. That said, one final item.

Merry Christmas all!

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