The defense of free speech by Vice President J.D. Vance in Munich, Germany, has led to open panic on the left in fighting to maintain European censorship and speech criminalization. The response of the American press and pundits was crushingly familiar. From CBS News to members of Congress, Vance (and anyone who supports his speech) was accused of using Nazi tactics. It is the demonization of dissent.
In one of the most bizarre examples, CBS anchor Margaret Brennan confronted Secretary of State Marco Rubio over Vance’s support for free speech given the fact that he was “standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.”
The suggestion that free speech cleared the way for the Holocaust left many scratching their heads, but it is an old saw used by the anti-free speech community, particularly in Germany.
When they came to power, the Nazis moved immediately to crack down on free speech and criminalize dissent. They knew that free speech was not only the “indispensable right” for a free people, but the greatest threat to authoritarian power.
Figures like Brennan appear to blame free speech for the rise of the Nazis because the Weimar Constitution protected the right of Germans, including Nazis, in their right to speak. However, the right to free speech was far more abridged than our own First Amendment. Indeed, it had many of the elements that the left has pushed in Europe and the United States, including allowing crackdowns on disinformation and fake news.
Article 118 of the Weimar Constitution, guaranteed free speech but added that it must be “within the limits of the general laws.” It did not protect statements deemed by the government as factually untrue and speech was actively regulated.
Indeed, Hitler was barred from speaking publicly. It was not free speech that the Nazis used to propel their movement, but the denial of free speech. They portrayed the government as so fearful and fragile that it could not allow opposing views to be stated publicly.
This ridiculous and ahistorical spin also ignores the fact that other countries like the United States had both fascist movements and free speech, but did not succumb to such extremism. Instead, free speech allowed critics to denounce brownshirts as hateful, dangerous individuals. To blame free speech for the rise of the Nazis is like blaming the crimes of Bernie Maddoff on the use of money.
Nevertheless, before the last election, the left was unrelenting in accusing those with opposing views as being Nazis or fascists. During the election, it seemed like a one-answer Rorschach test where Democrats saw a Nazi in every political inkblot.
While the narrative failed in spectacular fashion, the script has not changed. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) expressed sympathy for the “absolute shock, absolute shock of our European allies” to be confronted in this fashion. Rather than address the examples of systemic attacks on free speech, Moulton reached again for the favorite talking point: “if you listen, listen carefully it’s actually much deeper and darker. He was talking about the enemy within. This is some of the same language that Hitler used to justify the Holocaust.”
Like Brennan, Moulton is warning that free speech can be a path to genocide. However, his take is that anyone claiming to be the victim of censorship is taking a page out of the Nazi playbook. The logic is simple. The Nazis complained about censorship. You complained about censorship. Thus, ipso facto, you are a Nazi.
Others joined the mob in denouncing Vance and supporting the Europeans. CNN regular Bill Kristol called the speech “a humiliation for the US and a confirmation that this administration isn’t on the side of the democracies.”
By defending free speech, you are now viewed as anti-democratic. It is part of the Orwellian message of the anti-free-speech movement. Democracy demands censorship, and free speech invites fascism.
It is hardly a novel argument. It was the very rationale used in Germany after World War II to impose what is now one of the most extensive censorship systems in the world. It was initially justified as an anti-Nazi measure but then, as has occurred repeatedly in history, became an insatiable appetite for speech controls. Indeed, the country returned to the prosecution of anything deemed disinformation and fake news by the government.
The result has indeed silenced many, but not those neo-Nazis who are flourishing in Germany. Past polling of German citizens found that only 18% of Germans feel free to express their opinions in public. Only 17% felt free to express themselves on the internet. As under the Weimar Constitution, fascist groups are portraying themselves as victims while finding alternative ways to spread their message.
Yet, the American media continues to peddle the same disinformation on the value of censorship. After its anchor made the widely ridiculed claim about free speech leading to genocide, 60 Minutes ran an interview with German officials extolling the success of censorship.
CBS’ Sharyn Alfonsi compared how the United States allows “hate-filled or toxic” speech while Germany is “trying to bring some civility to the worldwide web by policing it in a way most Americans could never imagine.”
German prosecutors (Dr. Matthäus Fink, Svenja Meininghaus and Frank-Michael Laue) detailed how they regularly raid homes to crack down on prohibited views with the obvious approval of CBS.
They acknowledged that “the people are surprised that this is really illegal, to post these kind [sic] of words… They don’t think it was illegal. And they say, ‘No, that’s my free speech,’ And we say, ‘No, you have free speech as well, but it also has its limits.'”
Alfonsi explained that the law criminalizes anything the government considers inciteful “or deemed insulting.” She then asked “Is it a crime to insult somebody in public?” The prosecutors eagerly affirmed, but added that the punishment is even higher to insult someone on the Internet.
Meininghaus started to explain that “if you’re [on] the internet, if I insult you or a politician …” Alfonsi could not even wait for the end of the sentence and completed it for him: “It sticks around forever.”
As CBS was completing the sentences of speech regulators, many in Europe were celebrating the Vance speech as breathing new life into the embattled free speech community. What is most striking is how the press and the pundits could not help themselves. They are eagerly proving Vance’s point. This is an existential fight for the “indispensable right.”
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Bill Kristol is an embarrassment to the US
Bill Kristol is an [enemy of] the US
It is a binary ideological universe. There is good. And there is evil. There is freedom. And there is enslavement. There is republican democracy. And there is dictatorial communism. There is the Constitution of the United States of America. And there is the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx.
Nature and God gave man free will.
Each man must choose.
Once again: the modern left, all of them, *are part of a globalist and elitist regime, period*. Obama and all that came after were the worst thing to happen to us and to the West in nigh on 80 years. This is not opinion, hyperbole, or partisan bloviating (I have always been an Independent, I don’t fully side with *either* party, and I don’t have an ideology beyond human decency) – it is a FACT. I will not fault anyone for not noticing before now that this is the case; better late than never. but some of us have been saying this for a long time, indeed. Western Europe may very well be lost for the foreseeable future, until their people find their spines and decide that being called ‘far right’ culturally, even though they aren’t, for being a mere centimeter to the center, is less important than their freedom. We are seeing bills coming due for reticence, and as expected, it ain’t pretty.
“Obama and all that came after were the worst thing to happen to us and to the West in nigh on 80 years.”
– James
__________
“Crazy Abe” Lincoln, who came along well before Obama, was the worst thing to happen to America in 165 years.
Lincoln was the inflection point whereafter the principles of communism were incrementally implemented in the United States.
American constitutional freedom persisted for a mere 71 years.
The entire communist American welfare state is unconstitutional, enjoying no citable legal or constitutional basis.
There are members of the American Right who are also not fans of free speech. Elon Musk, who was such a free speech advocate a few years ago, has no problem suing people into submission now or calling for news organizations like CBS to be silenced. Border czar Tom Homan has asked the DOJ to investigate AOC for informing her constituents about their constitutional and legal rights. People on both the Left and Right need to understand that free speech is a 2 way street.
Evading law enforcement is not a right.
Get a grip if you want to be taken seriously.
–Nor is suing or calling for punishment of those who intentionally lie or promote falsehoods- a crime in and of itself.
Like what? Don’t be coy.
No one is calling for CBS to be silenced – Margaret Brennan’s misrepresentation of history is as good an object lesson as the manipulation of Kamala Harris’s interview. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was giving advice on how to continue to break the law. She should be censured.
Being an accomplice to a crime such as obstruction of justice and interference with law enforcement is a crime.
Adhering to enemies, giving them aid and comfort is treason.
AOC must be deported and exiled for sabotage and treason.
CBS is an anti-American, anti-Constitution, communist propaganda and indoctrination platform.
[QUOTE] Past polling of German citizens found that only 18% of Germans feel free to express their opinions in public. Only 17% felt free to express themselves on the internet. [/QUOTE]
Of course, the goal of speech restrictions is to reduce the security of people who wish to express themselves freely.
Looks like the German gvt has only to discourage another 18% of people from freely expressing themselves in public, and only another 17% of their population from expressing themselves freely on the internet before approaching North Korea’s level of speech control.
But that can’t possibly happen . . .
Just to show how bad it is getting in the US, I posted a comment on Yahoo referring to how we can all look up details of Government Waste now exposed on doge.gov!
My comment was instantly put on hold, then Rejected!
Why not just go to the DOGE website?
Sometimes one has to read European news reports like the UK Telegraph to balance the lies of the American MSM.
excerpt follows:
Margaret Brennan’s CBS humiliation exposed everything that’s wrong with the Left-wing media
Of course anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Nazi Germany knows that free speech did not figure among the Third Reich’s dictatorial principles. Rubio was patient enough to “disagree” with Brennan and politely remind her that “there was no free speech in Nazi Germany”, before she promptly ended the interview, citing a lack of time
Katherine Maher, the chief executive of National Public Radio (NPR), which controversially receives US government subsidies, is on the record calling the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech, “the number one challenge” in the fight against what she called “bad information”. Maher has added that “reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground”.
Things are not much better at the New York Times, once America’s paper of record, which has published recent opinion essays arguing that “the First Amendment is out of control”. In 2020, opinion editor James Bennet was pushed out after publishing an op-ed by a US Senator that offended some members of the Times’s editorial staff. Bennet was followed out the door by star opinion editor Bari Weiss, who decried the paper’s lack of respect for free speech and later started her own enterprise under the title The Free Press.
All this goes a long way toward explaining Americans’ seismic loss of confidence in the mainstream media or, as some Right-wing critics have called it, “regime media”.
To millions of Americans, Brennan would seem to encapsulate the industry’s unreconstructed biases. But she also exposes its utterly embarrassing lack of self-awareness, including about its own dismal future.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2025/02/18/margaret-brennans-cbs-humiliation-exposed-wrong-left-media/
Cracking down on dissent is the hallmark of any despot and tyrannical regime. How can we ignore the hypocrisy of the prog/left dems in promoting this most effective tool used by tyrants since the beginning of time. The fact that the prog/left either willfully refuses to acknowledge their hypocrisy or is willing to use censorship as a method of retaining power just illustrates the putrid nature of their ideology
Bravo Professor Turley, Bravo!
This 21st Century, the United States opened and operated an unconstitutional gulag off the coast of Cuba. It was created to subvert the laws and Constitution of the United States.
Today, per prisoner it’s the most expensive taxpayer financed prison on Earth. Domestic Supermax prisons would have worked at a small fraction of the cost but then the USA would have to follow laws.
Then the United States created a super unconstitutional system of blacklisting center called “Fusion Centers”. The intent was to subvert laws and Constitution.
Ronald Reagan’s torture treaty – under Article VI of the Constitution – is the supreme law of the United States. Reagan’s treaty outlaws torture and cruel treatment. The USA just ignored those laws.
All of these illegal programs were supported and funded by the U.S. Justice Department and Homeland Security. More than 20 years of lawlessness!
Hate to break it to you but 21st Century America is the Wild West – except we break more laws and have better lawbreaking technology! Maybe we should start with these facts first?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but there’s nothing “unconstitutional” about GITMO, or the detention facility established there.
The mainstream media remind us every day of their stupidity. And since the election it has seemed to have become unhinged. More and more when I see their comments I will say to myself “surely no one with a journalist card is that stupid” but they truly are. Their knowledge of the wider world, religions, ethics, history, science is so embarrassingly shallow as to be non existent. I had listened and watched people like Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Walter Cronkite, Edward R Murrow and others. I did not always agree with all they said but you needed to still listen because they had been there literally on the front lines and knew what they were talking about. The knew history and lived it and they researched their subjects. What we see in the media news now are pigmies by comparison in their lack of knowledge and ability to understand concept, critical thinking and pretty much everything else. No insult to pigmies intended.
Also remember there was a large amount of fascists throughout Europe prior to WW 2 in many countries and not just Germany, Sweden, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Spain , France and especially the upper class in the UK. And we had our own home brand which virtually disappeared when Hitler Declared war on the USA.
I still have trouble deciding if our media is outright fascist or they’re just incredibly stupid.
When someone acusses someone of being a Nazi or fascist, you can bet your bottom dollar they are a Communist.
When you can destroy a word, maybe that frees you to be that word? Like racism. Destroy the word, by calling people who eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, racist, or people who believe in being punctual, racists, and pretty soon, the word is meaningless. Then, you can claim black people are too stupid to get IDs, to vote, and guess what? Even if people did call you racist, what would it mean?
Same with fascism. It was a hard word to define from the onset, because it was a political party. Orwell wrung the mop down to being a bully. But now, the word is practically meaningless, from overuse. Now, you can stomp on Free Speech, and claim your opponents are fascists.
IIRC, Ayn Rand wrote something about that – destroying a concept. But I am old, and I could be wrong.
Maybe this is it:
“Anti-Concepts”
An anti-concept is an unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept. The use of anti-concepts gives the listeners a sense of approximate understanding. But in the realm of cognition, nothing is as bad as the approximate . . . .
One of today’s fashionable anti-concepts is “polarization.” Its meaning is not very clear, except that it is something bad—undesirable, socially destructive, evil—something that would split the country into irreconcilable camps and conflicts. It is used mainly in political issues and serves as a kind of “argument from intimidation”: it replaces a discussion of the merits (the truth or falsehood) of a given idea by the menacing accusation that such an idea would “polarize” the country—which is supposed to make one’s opponents retreat, protesting that they didn’t mean it. Mean—what? . . .
It is doubtful—even in the midst of today’s intellectual decadence—that one could get away with declaring explicitly: “Let us abolish all debate on fundamental principles!” (though some men have tried it). If, however, one declares; “Don’t let us polarize,” and suggests a vague image of warring camps ready to fight (with no mention of the fight’s object), one has a chance to silence the mentally weary. The use of “polarization” as a pejorative term means: the suppression of fundamental principles. Such is the pattern of the function of anti-concepts.
Observe the technique involved . . . . It consists of creating an artificial, unnecessary, and (rationally) unusable term, designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concepts—a term which sounds like a concept, but stands for a “package-deal” of disparate, incongruous, contradictory elements taken out of any logical conceptual order or context, a “package-deal” whose (approximately) defining characteristic is always a non-essential. This last is the essence of the trick.
Let me remind you that the purpose of a definition is to distinguish the things subsumed under a single concept from all other things in existence; and, therefore, their defining characteristic must always be that essential characteristic which distinguishes them from everything else.
So long as men use language, that is the way they will use it. There is no other way to communicate. And if a man accepts a term with a definition by non-essentials, his mind will substitute for it the essential characteristic of the objects he is trying to designate . . . . Thus the real meaning of the term will automatically replace the alleged meaning.
“‘Extremism,’ or The Art of Smearing,”
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 176
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/anti-concepts.html
#74. Floyd, are you asking – what is a woman? Really long winded of you.
Anonymous @ 4:37PM – You have failed Reading Comprehension with a grade of F-. Is that the result of substance abuse, poor public education, or are you merely a natural-born moron?
Today in the Marxist Calendar of Venerated Saints is St Margaret Brennan the Unflinching one
How Margaret Brennan Became MAGA’s Favorite Media Punching Bag
CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan has built a reputation as a sharp, unflinching interviewerwho holds powerful figures accountable. But since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January, she has also become a target of many MAGA supporters who see her as emblematic of everything they believe is wrong with the media landscape.Over the first month of the Trump presidency, Brennan, who currently serves the moderator of the venerated Sunday program “Face the Nation,” has found herself in a place few journalists wish to be: at the center of the conversation —criticized, dismissed, and, in some cases, outright mocked by the president’s loyalists.
https://www.newsweek.com/margaret-brennan-cbs-news-jd-vance-marco-rubio-media-2032401
Newsweek fails to mention in their histrionic piece how Margaret Brennan propagated misinformation regarding free speech and Nazi Germany.
Newsweek and similar MSN outlets have used inflammatory rhetoric for > 8 years to outright mock and incite violence against Trump and MAGA supporters. Trump took a bullet because of the MSM inflammatory rhetoric. Now Newseek and Brennan are crying mightily, sobbing, stepping off their venetrated platform to be held and comforted like Munich Security Conference Chairnan, Christoph Heusgen. So much for her / the MSM being a sharp unflinching interviewer on a venerated platform.
The issue reminded me of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. I’ll quote from his book [Scalia Speaks] page 158: “The constitutional scholar and political philosopher Walter Berns recently published a book entitled Tanking the Constitution Seriously, in which he makes the striking observation—striking to me, at least, because it is obviously true but I had never thought of it—that the word un-American has no equivalent in any other nation. It would mean nothing in French or German political debate to call a particular idea (let us say the abolition of the rights of free speech) “un-French” or “un-German.” Unlike any other nation in the world, we consider ourselves bound together, not by genealogy or residence but by belief in certain principles; and the most important of those principles are set forth in the Constitution of the United States.”
The illusions of those that wish to control speech is an assault of Natural Rights dressed in the fine-ist of deceit.
#74. Do you mean, assimilation? You’re correct.
Professor Turley is being charitable when he says that Margaret Brennan was talking about the ascension of Hitler to power at the end of the Weimar period. Her words were that free speech was weaponised “to conduct a genocide.” While anti-Jewish restrictions were imposed not that long after Hitler’s election and consolidation of power, the genocide did not really begin until the launch of war against the USSR in June 1941 and didn’t take on its systematic industrial scale until after the Wansee Conference in January 1942. By then, free speech had been eliminated for almost a decade.
Hitler was appointed Chancellor (by President Paul Von Hindenburg) on January 31, 1933. Dachau, the earliest Concentration Camp, was opened two months later (March 22, 1933) to detain Hitler’s political opponents. Early inmates were communists, social democrats (all mostly Christian) and other dissidents. “Krystalnacht,” a pogrom (massacure) by the Nazis against the Jewish population, was November 9-10, 1938.
We are calling the administration fascist because they are charging down that road. They have given up on even pretending they are following federal law. They have taken power from Congress, they have defied and lied to federal judges. They are demonizing groups (immigrants and civil servants) for political gain. They are threatening our democratic allies while cozying up with Putin. They are mixing religion and government. They are strong nationalists. They reject the notion of non-discrimination. They are authoritarian. They are banning words, books, and ideas they don’t like. They are removing vast amounts of previously public data from the internet. They are implementing Project 2025.
The Republican elites are pushing the US into fascism and their supporters are cheering them on. MAGAs don’t care what laws get broken as long as Musk and Trump hurt those the MAGAs don’t like.
What in the sam hill are you talking about? What federal laws are not being followed (except, apparently, the ones that only exist in the fever swamp of your imagination)? What power has been taken from Congress? What judges or rulings have been defied? No one is demonizing immigrants: criminal illegal aliens are being deported NOW, other illegal aliens are being warned to go home and come back legally. No one is demonizing civil servants – just like Clinton and Obama, the federal government work force is being downsized to reduce government expenditures. Telling our “allies” to pay their fair share and respect freedom of speech is not a threat – it’s speaking truth to other powers. Religion and government are not being mixed just because Trump established an office to fight religious bigotry. We should ALL be putting America first. Who is being discriminated against? What words, books, or ideas have been banned from the public square? What data has been removed from the internet?
As for Project 2025, the worst that can be said about it is that it is a traditional, conservative governing “strategy,” which you clearly have never read.
Nothing Trump has proposed or undertaken is authoritarian or fascist.
Get yourself some mental health care to help you deal with these delusions.
Boot licker.
Psycho
Frankie-you sound like Margaret Brennan.
Without the nice tits and ass
Wowsa, this one is gonzo
Again, it’s the elites versus the working man and woman. In Germany, the latter is jealous of us and they want their own Trump:
https://nypost.com/2025/02/17/opinion/what-i-heard-in-munich-germans-want-a-trump-of-their-own/
Note that in Germany, even mocking politicians is considered “hate speech”. Last year, police raided the house of a man in Bavaria because he had referred to the German minister of economics, Dr. Robert Habeck, as a “dimwit” (Schwachkopf) in a posting on X.
EVERY American needs to watch the most recent 60 Minutes, and feel the chill up their spine as German prosecutors BRAG about jailing people for insulting someone.
I was insulted by the Germans. Who can I complain to, and how do I press charges?
I say the same thing everyday. These people are fascists themselves. And the more fascist they become, the more they’re going to claim that you and others advocating for personal rights like free speech are the fascists.