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.”
When Turley jumps straight to how the Nazis crushed free speech AFTER they came to power, his apparent ignorance of HOW the Nazis came to power in the first place is glaringly obvious. And I don’t believe he is actually ignorant of this, I think it is an example of a truly bald-faced bad-faith argument.
You can argue that there should be fewer restrictions on free speech, but you sure cannot argue that the Nazis weren’t full throated supporters of unlimited free speech until they suddenly weren’t. The utterly shamed German people saw what had happened, and erected policies of never again. Surprise, surprise, it is a grey area in the topic of free speech.
Ain’t it funny how Vance isn’t here in the US arguing for free speech re DEI, but is over in Germany lecturing people who learned by absolutely horrible experience some of the dangers that may cause concerns about wild-west style free speech?
The Censorship-Industrial Complex and How It has the Internet in its Grip
“Since the American government was hamstrung by the First Amendment, NGOs and fronts were enlisted for “doing the dirty work.” ”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/06/the_censorship_industrial_complex_and_how_it_has_the_internet_in_its_grip.html
So what are they gearing up for? Censorship in Nazi Germany was firmly in place by the time the war started I’ve read. People should be researching their history right now and figure out why this is happening and how to stop it.
In america we havent done much better – we just used govt agencies to make proclamations and then usaid sponsored fact checkers to support the govt position – which the allowed the govt to pressure social media, etc.to censor all sorts of posts.
It hasnt really stopped or gotten better
This equating the Bill of Rights and particularly the First Amendment with Naziism is perhaps the most disgusting and despicable thing the Democrats and their talking head lapdogs have ever done. Their promotion of hate, fear and divisiveness has reached new heights. It would be giving them the benefit of the doubt to write it off to ignorance and stupidity. This is much more sinister and pure evil.
ML
Double dip: the modern left are basically at best, Soviet era communists, at worst, 1930’s era fascists. None of their rhetoric is at all a surprise in 2025, in light of the past 16 years (those would be ‘the Obama years’). They can go to hell. We are a free country, and their behavior only more strongly makes the case that no, our Constitution does not need to be ‘updated’ to appease leftists. We all have a right to exist, and they can go blow. We appear to be making that happen; let us continue into the future, indefinitely, because we will have to. Novemeber was just the beginning Let’s make it to the midterms, because they will not relent. We do not get to rest. But we will persevere.
We know about the Leftists/Democrats. Let’s keep a sharp eye on the RINOs and their reelection chances, as long as we have GREAT primary candidates to run against them. Oh, how I’d love to see the back of Murkowski, for example.
The ignorance–willful and otherwise–is shocking. And the Left will use this to their advantage. Even the BBC, one of the UK government’s champions of censorship, has information about Goebbels and the role of his propaganda/censorship machine in keeping Germans in check.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zn8sgk7/revision/3
Needless to say, wasn’t the excuse by Germans for not countering Hitler’s racial laws and murders that they didn’t know about it? It was censored according to them. Regardless of whether you believe that garbage excuse or not, it was censorship not free speech that made the Holocaust possible.
Its really difficult listening to CBS and Brennan and these people literally lying directly into the camera trying to brainwash and dupe viewers into believing that suddenly “free speech” was how the Nazi party came to power.
Its insane, but its also downright evil. Its evil to call good evil and evil good. Freedom of speech is and always has been a good thing. Free speech allows all voices to be heard, allowing people to discern truth from lie by hearing both.
So the irony here of course is its the very free speech these government spokespersons masquerading as news personnel are poo pooing, that is allowing them to spread these inane and easily disproven lies on camera.
They can say these things because we allow free speech. They’re too damn stupid and dishonest to realize that, but its true. They can say it only because we allow free speech. So here is CBS rewriting not only history, but reality.
The notion that the Germans leveraged free speech to take over Germany is a joke. In reality Hitler and the Brown Shirts began employing forced censorship long before they came to power in ’33.
As early as the 1920s the SA along with Hitler and Drexler were out assaulting social democrat and conservative speakers on street corners, in beer halls, etc. Literally if a social democrat was speaking in a beer hall, the browshirts (SA) would pull up in a truck full of men, they’d pile out with sticks, clubs and fists and literally beat, pummel and drag the speaker out to the street where they’d beat him some more and send him on his way.
THATS how Nazi Germany got started. That’s why Hitler and the SA was the only voice the people heard, its because they beat the snot out of anyone else who spoke.
Now think about that for a second, and then correlate that to the liberal universities and campuses where the liberals now literally try to assault conservative speakers. Think about Riley Gaines and how the police had to rush her from the building because these liberal thugs were trying to BEAT her into silence.
See the similarity? Its identical to what the Nazis did. So its so frustrating to hear these news media lemmings trying to tell an educated audience that the basic tenets of history are the exact opposite of what they were, literally claiming the Nazis who relied solely on forced censorship to spread their message by silencing all others via physical violence, …. were actually harbingers of free speech. Its the most bald faced lie possible. And no decent person would push it.
And why isn’t YouTube warning viewers like they do when a piece of “Covid misinformation” is published? Why isn’t YouTube warning that the Nazis used censorship and not free speech, …correcting that “misinformation” from CBS evening news which is broadcast on YouTube?
Not that I want YouTube to censor or “add context”, …I don’t. But the point is they do with things the liberals embrace, like silencing any talk of Vaccine injuries. But when it comes to the liberal media spreading BLATANT MISINFORMATION, … like this lie that the Nazis leveraged free speech, … they should not be giving that a pass if they penalize on the other.
Every news organization in the world should be out denouncing Brennan and CBS for this nonsense. And so should the Jewish groups who suffered under Nazi censorship. They should be shining a bright spotlight on this form of seedy, govt\media attempts to rewrite basic history and misrepresenting tenets of fascism as being tenets of democracy.
This is serious. The evening news told us that “free speech” enabled the rise of the Nazi party, and that is a complete lie. Why are they not walking this back? Why isn’t CBS news coming out with a retraction for such an abhorrent and corrupt lie sold to the public?
Free speech. That’s why. To bad the irony is lost on them.
I think its worse. She genuinely is ignorant. Stop giving her the benefit of the doubt that she “knew” but purposely tried to dupe anyone.
Any US citizen who believes the First Amendment to the US Constitution to be offensive for any reason, should be encouraged to emigrate forthwith to a nation that has the censorship regime that he or she likes best. As much as I want to see the Federal debt and deficit erased, I would even support a government subsidy of transportation costs up to $10,000 per individual to support that, under one condition. The recipient must sign an agreement to never return. Sort of like Trump’s Fedgov employee buy-out, on steroids. The only downside I can envision would be the prospect of retaliatory actions by the nations receiving these clowns, when those countries realize what universally useless fools they are getting.
“[F]ree speech invites fascism.”
That argument in a nutshell:
To protect you from a future government usurping your rights (e.g., free speech), this government is usurping your rights (to free speech).
That is obviously a contradiction. But first Germany in the 19th century, and then the rest of the West, was taught long ago to embrace contradictions. Holding and promoting contradictions is the essence of Hegel’s “dialectic.”
The FCC has the power, as does the POTUS in an ’emergency’, to take CBS off the airwaves —- at what point will it be deemed a national necessity to outlaw the current version of the democrat party?
During the past year, I have observed that Margaret Brennan has begun using a standard CNN technique of bringing up a major news issue by diverting it into an indirect question regarding something trivial or even trite.
But I was very surprised when she questioned Vance’s belief in free speech by trying to link it the rise of antisemitism during the 3d Reich. She’s not a stupid person, but her tone of slight exasperation suggested that she had been required to ask that question that specific way.
” her tone of slight exasperation suggested that she had been required to ask that question that specific way.”
Don’t make excuses for that st’unt. If your employer requires you to do something that is morally or ethically repugnant, you have two options only: quit, or own it. Brennan didn’t quit, did she?
Also, its quite condescending to state that the girl didn’t have any choice but to say what her bosses told her to say. I seriously doubt it. That WAS her all in.
Ok, so she’s “not a stupid person” who continuously says stupid things?
The Left tends to call all its opponents Nazis, which is a throwback to the NeoMarxist/Communist experience of WW II Germany, which was a battle between the Communist Left on the one hand, and the Nazi fascist right on the other. Ergo, if you are opposing the NeoMarxist Left, you must be a Nazi fascist.
That Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) describes the “absolute shock of our European allies” in reaction to Vance’s defense of freedom of speech is the geopolitical equivalent of leftist complaints over ‘microaggressions’ over ‘politically incorrect’ speech on campus.
The attack on freedom of speech by the Left is a betrayal of the legacy of the Western intellectual Enlightenent. It is the attempt to impose an intellectual iron curtain over critical discourse, the very raison d’etre of the western intellectual project. It is the Left attempting to impose its ideological ‘totalizing metanarrative’ on society, in the worst tradition of Soviet and Maoist totalitarianism.
The ‘existential fight’ for freedom of speech is a fight between the Conservative/Libertarian coalition on the one hand, and the anti-free speech forces of the radical NeoMarxist Left on the other. Not all NeoMarxists are anti-free speech. Jurgen Habermas, who headed his generation’s Frankfurt School, advocated ‘communicative rationality’, i.e. rational debate, as the dynamo shaping social change steered by government. That today’s NeoMarxists are betraying that intellectual tradition is the ideological battleground of our time. We defenders of free speech must take to the barricades in defense of freedom, liberty and justice. As they say in the Great State of New Hampshire: Live free, or die!
#74. Don’t forget manipulation. It’s concerning. Equal protection is kept in mind .
There are things like diamonds. The very best diamonds are touched only by whom?
It’s concerning.
I would like to add to Professor Turley’s historical remarks by pointing out that the Weimar government was originally dominated by the center left.
Not surprisingly, the Weimar Republic was very decadent and badly damaged German families with unprecedented inflation. These were factors in the fall of Weimar. That might sound painfully familiar to Americans today.
What is different is that the German right was militarist and suspicious of democracy in that era while the American right now is predominantly constitutionalist. That is an all-important distinction the American left is still trying to obfuscate.
Jonathan
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The next time you speak with Elon, would you ask him to have one of his whiz kids to calculate the odds of that, unless they are all the same troll?
Crybaby idiot ^^^
⚠️ Detected Onion over VPN Detected ⚠️
What JD Vance has illustrated is the new American exceptionalism. In the 19 hundreds, American exceptionalism was largely based on the US being a republic operating on democratic principles compared with almost all the world’s countries operating on authoritarian principles. Now with more countries adopting, in some form or another, a republic form of government the focus of American exceptionalism has changed a bit. It seems that few countries, if any, allow their citizens the freedom to exercise a very wide degree of free speech. Free speech is America’s not-so-secret sauce.
The modern left is indefensible, and other than the modern technology with which they sow their lies, there is zero difference from the regimes of 80 years ago. One is forced to conclude they never went away, just lay dormant, and we are now dealing with a different version of precisely the same threat as then. These are the forces of darkness, and they must not win this time, either.
The most addictive thing in the world is not drugs, money or sex. Its having power over others. When those in power see they are going to lose it, they will always take extreme measures to retain it. That is what you see happening here.
“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.”
True, but Weimar Germany was harder hit by the Great Depression than any other country on Earth. They were radicalized to a greater extent than anyone else, and Hitler had the Versailles Treaty to blame. There are many factors that brought Hitler to power, and Hitler took full advantage of all of them.
Good point, andrew