The EU Commission obviously sees itself as the “Supreme Truth Authority”. And as an institution that can decide what is right and what is wrong, true and untrue. It thus goes far beyond the Pope – who is officially infallible only in matters of faith.
The Commission has now exposed this megalomania through its action against U.S. billionaire Elon Musk and his platform “X,” formerly Twitter. Because the belligerent entrepreneur, who demonstratively opposes the “Wokeness religion,” doesn’t man up to Brussels like the other platforms when it comes to censorship, he has long been a thorn in the side of the Eurocrats.
“Elon Musk: EU Commission demands control of X content in accordance with EU law,” now writes the“Frankfurter Allgemeine” (FAZ), which need have no fear of the chief censors in Brussels due to its tightly in line reporting. “Misinformation about the war in Israel is spreading on platform X – and the owner recommends questionable content himself,” the paper writes.
Clearly, neither the EU apparatchiks nor the newspaper bureaucrats in Frankfurt have grasped the essence of freedom of expression: This implicitly means that everyone is allowed to express an opinion, even a wrong one. Because there is no final authority on earth that can distinguish truth from untruth. And because all too often supposed truths later turned out to be nonsense. And vice versa.
A freedom of expression that includes only opinions officially recognized as true is a caricature of itself. That this truism is so difficult to convey to politicians, bureaucrats and journalists today is dismaying.
We are light years away from wisdom attributed – probably erroneously – to Voltaire: “My lord, I do not share your opinion, but I would stake my life that you should be allowed to express it.”
With us, it’s more like, “If I don’t share your opinion, I’ll do everything I can to make sure you don’t express it.”
The EU’s specific accusation against Musk, according to FAZ: “He suggested two accounts to his nearly 160 million followers as “good” sources of information from the war. Both have a history of spreading misinformation.”
In other words: According to the EU and journalists, anyone who has ever said anything wrong should no longer be recommended. That would be most of the government and almost all of the media.
“After a few hours, Musk deleted his recommendation, but by then it had been viewed 11 million times,” the paper writes: “Around the escalation in Israel, however, X users have been presented with masses of misinformation and propaganda in recent days. For example, alleged videos of attacks spread that were actually from completely different parts of the world or even just from a video game. Some of the untruths came from fake accounts posing as reputable media.”
All of this, if true, is unfortunate.
But it is not a reason for censorship.
And that is exactly what is intended. “Musk is now getting pressure from the EU Commission,” writes the FAZ: “Digital Commissioner Thierry Breton sent the X owner a letter on Tuesday evening setting a deadline of 24 hours to put an end to the spread of illegal content and disinformation. He pointed to reports from reliable sources about such content that continued to circulate despite clear indications of it from the relevant authorities.”
Hard to beat
This is an audacity beyond compare. A throwback to the days of official censorship. And German journalists spread it with obvious sympathy.
Breton, according to FAZ, called on Musk to “bring controls on content distributed on X in line with the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) and liaise with Europol and other relevant law enforcement agencies.”
Literally, the Censor-in-Chief wrote, “I urge you to respond accurately and fully to this request within the next 24 hours.” Musk’s response would be included in the record of X’s compliance with DSA requirements.
It’s just a shame for the Brussels-based enemy of freedom of speech: “Breton has no direct means of exerting pressure on Musk if he ignores the 24-hour deadline,” as the FAZ writes.
But Musk can’t be completely carefree about it. Breton’s letter warns of penalties under the DSA law. These can amount to as much as six percent of a company’s annual global sales.
However, Breton cannot impose these penalties as he sees fit. “Proceedings would have to be opened against X first. Musk was initially unimpressed by the letter and asked Breton to publicly name the alleged violations on X, to which he succinctly wrote: ‘Merci beaucoup,'” as FAZ elaborates.
Berlin, which has always run ahead of the respective locomotive in terms of political radicalism (regardless of whether it is painted brown, red or green), has already drawn consequences, according to the FAZ: The Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency was the first state institution to announce that it would be leaving X. Accordingly, Ferda Ataman, the “independent” (what a joke) federal anti-discrimination commissioner according to FAZ, said X was “no longer a sustainable environment for a public body,” referring among other things to the “enormous increase” in racism and anti-Semitism. New German a euphemism for government criticism. And Ataman, of all people, for whom Germans are “potatoes,” should not throw stones from her government glass house.
Call for muzzle
But it does so loudly. She also called on “other ministries and state agencies to reconsider their stay on a platform ‘that has become a disinformation network and whose owner spreads anti-Semitic, racist and populist content,'” the Red-Green ideologue said.
Of all people, an FDP man, Digital Minister Volker Wissing, wrote directly to Musk on X demanding censorship: “Stop these accounts!”
The call for censorship in Germany, of all places, with its two dictatorships, makes one shudder.
The only consolation is that the only danger Musk faces from the loud shouts from Berlin is that he will laugh himself to death.
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