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ER Editor: It’s been clear to us for some time that the new Trump administration is publicly exposing woke-globalist-government tyranny in a variety of ways, but especially concerning free speech and the much more liberal, American notion of that. A cause we wholeheartedly support, and which is derived from the Anglo-Saxon tradition.
If you live on the continent of Europe as we do, you will quickly appreciate that there is no free speech here, not unless you are expressing an idea already within acceptable, defined limits. People are not supported by the legal defence of absolute truth when they open their mouths to speak. If you accuse somebody of something you know to be true, even casually, you’d better have solid video or documentary evidence to back it up or else shut up because you would risk legal charges in turn. It’s a very clear difference of culture and legal tradition, one which makes many French silent and fearful to speak up for themselves.
Liberation of X/Twitter under Elon Musk was clearly the starting point. Musk’s aggressive, public interventions in the tyranny of certain governments and their cabal-globalist policies has been pretty legendary, empowering ordinary people to have a voice. Nowhere was this more on display than when Musk stood up for average native Brits over their destructive immigration policies following the Southport stabbings in late July last year, for example. This LINK has a few noteworthy examples, including Musk’s defence of parties such as the German right-populist AfD. JD Vance has also been active in this regard.
It’s in this spirit that we publish the following story. While we may not have automatic sympathy for major tech platforms given their corporate nature, US social media is still a benchmark for the rest of us. The report below indicates who ‘the rest of us’ are.
We cannot be sovereign if we are frightened to open our mouths and say what we believe to be true.
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US to Deny Visas to Foreign Officials Who Try to Censor US Social Media Platforms
TOBY YOUNG for DAILY SCEPTIC
Since taking office, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has taken a series of actions to push back against growing foreign government demands to censor American citizens and American technology companies like Google, Meta, and X.
In April, Rubio shut down the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), which had funded censorship advocacy by the Global Disinformation Index, a UK-based NGO with ties to the Intelligence Community. Last week, Rubio said the administration was considering sanctions under the Magnitsky Act against Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes for his sweeping censorship edicts.
And on Monday, senior State Department officials traveled to France to raise their concerns about the lawfare against presidential front-runner, Marine Le Pen, and to Ireland to raise their concerns with the “Digital Services Act,” (DSA), the law that allows the EU to censor American citizens and American companies.
Now, the State Department has put in place a policy to deny visas to foreign nationals who are and were involved in the censorship of American citizens, companies, and foreigners in the United States, as well as to their immediate family members, under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
While a State Department official emphasized that this action only applies to a “target class” of visa applicants, and would not suggest any specific application of it, the new rules would allow it to deny a visa to Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Moraes, top DSA officials, their families, and hundreds if not thousands of other foreign officials worldwide.
Other media have reported that Rubio tapped Acting Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Darren Beattie, to play a key role in free speech diplomacy, which has included shutting down GEC, creating an internal transparency initiative, and developing the new sanctions.
“Obviously, we don’t love the idea of the Europeans censoring their own citizens,” Beattie told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, “but the principal concern is these spillover effects affecting content-moderation policies and a variety of free-speech concerns within the United States. And there’s various mechanisms within the DSA that are concerning in that regard.”
Through the DSA the European Union is trying to set standards for how Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, X and others censor content. The U.S. “is committed to shutting down the global censorship-industrial complex,” a State Department communication seen by the Journal said.
Worth reading in full.
Source
Featured image source: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/live-updates/trump-second-term?id=120087352&entryId=120107876
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