The European Union recently announced the first recipients of its new European Order of Merit, the organization’s highest award. The headliner was Angela Merkel, former Federal Chancellor of Germany, who indeed personifies the European Union for both her fans and her critics. For many years, some of us have criticized Merkel as one of the leading forces behind European censorship efforts that have eviscerated the “Indispensable Right.” Not surprisingly, Merkel called for more censorship and attacks on free speech to a thrilled audience of EU bureaucrats and globalists.
In one of the most ironic moments, Merkel declared, “Europe was not handed to us. It was built treaty by treaty, crisis by crisis and by people who chose solidarity over division and cooperation over self-interest.” Indeed, it was not handed to them.
As I discuss in my new book, “Rage and the Republic, the EU was formed by design to incrementally get citizens in Europe to give up their national identities and rights:
The EEC worked to remove barriers to trade and coordinate national regulations to achieve greater uniformity. As nations conformed to such transnational standards, the final step toward transnational governance became less of a conceptual barrier for citizens, particularly younger citizens…
…The evolution of the EU is a cautionary tale. It began with assurances of marginal coordinating bodies and policies over areas like nuclear power and scientific research. Through this planned incrementalism, each insular move was defended on its narrow purpose while dismissing objections as nationalistic or conspiratorial. That planned incrementalism worked brilliantly in getting citizens to accept transnational governance.
Merkel was critical in that effort. She is blamed for opening the borders to a flood of undocumented immigrants that has caused rising violence and protests throughout Europe. However, her crowning jewel was the crackdown on free speech. She can honestly claim that Germans (and Europeans as a whole) have fewer rights after her public service. She increased the power of government, stripped away free speech rights, and reduced national identities without firing a shot.
Merkel consistently opposed free speech, building a censorship system that gave the government ever greater control over speech. Her decision to first apologize to authoritarian Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for a satirical poem and then approve the prosecution of the comedian is a shocking and chilling disgrace. Now, she is throwing her support behind a crackdown on “hate speech” on social media like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube — radically expanding the already broad scope of government regulation of speech.
Merkel declared, “I support efforts by Justice Minister Heiko Maas and Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere to address hate speech, hate commentaries, devastating things that are incompatible with human dignity, and to do everything to prohibit it because it contradicts our values.”
Merkel was a driving force in using such subjective standards as “compatibility with human dignity” as a foundation for government-imposed speech controls.
Merkel also threatened social media companies, warning they would face a government crackdown if they failed to get rid of “fake news.” Merkel insisted that such postings must be dealt with by the companies or the government will step in.
In her speech in May to the EU, Merkel doubled down on her attacks on free speech as a threat to the world order. She called for the prosecution of American companies for spreading “disinformation” and “hate” online. She denounced the “so-called social media” platforms as still not facing “accountability for lies.” She added, “I can only encourage you to continue regulating social media.”
I could think of no better recipient for the first European Order of Merit. No one better sums up EU values than Angela Merkel and her unrelenting campaign against free speech. For globalists who have called for “A New World Order with European Values,” Merkel is the perfect personification of a globalist dream of a world of regulated speech and transnational government.
It seems that Europe’s politicians are not much different from royalty and kings of the past, awarding each other titles and orders of chivalry for doing little more than having been born.
I suppose now it’s just a matter of being in high office and prominent in the news.
In the USA we all get participation trophies … I suppose now its just a matter of showing up to school.
ADA, average daily attendance=$
Monarchies were and are political systems. Political systems are organizing tools and naturally occurring. The US chose a republic as its useful tool. Power seekers have corrupted it and are currently erasing the American culture. Theocracies are worse? imo
Republics by themselves are no better than monarchs. Constitutions mean nothing. China, The USSR, Iran, Cuba and North Korea are all constitutional Republics. Now some Republics also have democracy too, but democracy must be limited with checks and balances.
As John Adams said, our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people, it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. We have elected Democrats that are immoral and agnostic. This is what Adam’s warned us about. This Republic is doomed.
Germany has never had our breadth and depth of individual rights. Peasants were not allowed to own guns till after the 48 revolution, for example.
And deNazification meant that my great-uncle, who had operated a mobile field kitchen on the Eastern Front, could not wear his medals in public, because they all featured swastikas.
Those medals… maybe because he was ID’d as Sonderkommado. BTW, I doubt you, or anyone, has a recollection of what a “great-uncle” did at anytime. I don’t by the nonsense.
Buy, retard.
Germany has always been weird with a nation psyche of followers who unquestionably follow their leaders.
In the early 1970s, when German carmakers were in their heyday, I used to accompany the US Army CID agents as they checked incoming passengers at the railway station in Munich. Each day, the Orient Express from Istanbul (by way of Paris or Strasbourg) would unload hundreds and hundreds of Turkish laborers invited to work in the car making industry. They arrived with barely anything besides a cord-wrapped newspaper bundle of earthly belongings.
The prize was a job at Mercedes, VW, Audi, Porsche, Opel, NSU, BMW or any of their suppliers. It was estimated that one-in-every-four-Germans-was-a-Turk. A joke at the time was that the Mercedes represented the finest in Turkish workmanship.
A half century has passed and today, most of those German carmakers make most of their wares in other countries, including the U.S. But what of those first and second generation Turk-Germans whose parents or grand parents worked in those fabled car factories? The influence of Turkey on Germany began more than a century ago when both were members of the “Central Powers,” Germany, Ottoman Empire (Turkey), Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria that waged what would become known as World War I on France, Russia, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, and the U.S.
The idea of free speech was, and remains, a revolutionary idea given birth in the U.S. some 250 years ago. Yes, it has some connections to 17th and 18th century thinkers in France and Great Britain but that’s about as far as it goes. The concept was never popular in the old Central Powers states. The progeny of the defeated warriors of that era are today in charge of much of Europe, so the rejection of free speech seems to be following the old Ghandi quote that “first, they ignore you, then they abuse you, then they crack down on you, and then you win!” The Orient Express may be long gone but some of the ideas it brought to Germany and the rest of Europe are still with us.
Turkey has been our military ally since 1945, and our NATO ally since 1952. It was Turkey’s willingness to let us station Jupiter missiles on their soil that set off the Cuban Missile Crisis, bc Khrushchev thought it was only fair to have nuclear missiles as close to the US as we had ours to them. Basically, Turks are our buddies.
Mike: Yes, they certainly were then but a lot has changed since the Cold War ended. Turkish fears of the USSR taking over the Dardanelles have vanished, as has the USSR. Turkey is a lot closer to its Arab neighbors than it is to the U.S., but it is smart enough to keep one foot planted firmly in each side. Article 26 of the Turkish Constitution affirms the right to express thoughts verbally, in writing, or through other media, but this is offset by rules restricting it for national security, public order, public morality, and the rights of others. Turkey is also a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees freedom of expression under Article 10. but it, too, has offsetting rules, such as the 2022 Disinformation Law that criminalizes the dissemination of “misleading information.” These rules look good on paper (like the old Soviet Constitution) but in practice, they are almost meaningless.
Free speech was given birth in the Democracy of ancient Athens in Greece. The Roman Republic had speech protections but not free speech.
https://www.history.com/articles/freedom-of-speech
Re: censorship, free speech and totalitarian governments…
Jay Bhattacharya
@DrJBhattacharya
My talented friend @MichaelPack_ has produced a great documentary about the lockdown dissidents & the silencing of science during the covid pandemic.
So much harm caused by the lockdowns, school closures, and mandates could have been avoided.
I’m working now to reform public health and science so nothing like that ever happens again.
7:06 PM · Jun 9, 2026
x.com/DrJBhattacharya/status/2064484421248364546
Correct. The US didn’t need the lockdowns. There should have been 2 or 3 million dead instead.
Anybody remember the cartoon of a camel with the question: What is this? A horse designed by a committee”. Ever since the Treaty of Rome and the EEC, Europe has wanted the output of our horse, the federal republic, without embracing the individual at the center of it, in the Bill of Rights. The output they are getting presents to their individuals something like a speech punch bowl with their added floaters. And the slogan “Drink”.
The problem with the TV comedian was German Penal Law 103, part of the original 1871 German Code, which forbade insulting foreign heads of state. It was archaic, obsolete, and Merkel’s Parliament repealed it as soon as they are could.
But while it existed, it could not be ignored.
The prosecution of the comedian was eventually dropped “for lack of evidence.”
Good luck getting a horse that can cross 300 miles of desert without a stop for food or drink and doesn’t sink to its knees in shifting sand.
I don’t know why we are surprised. 75+ years ago A certain Senator warned us of communist infiltration within our nation at all levels. The Left castigated him and the oh-so proper Right sniffed the air and said nothing. Post WWII, Europe was desperately looking for the utopian peace promised by progressive socialism and they swallowed that bait hook, line, and sinker. -We allowed the western world to coddle and fund the rise of several generations of numbskulls to mature under the tutelage of aggressive socialists/progressive/humanist ideologues across the western world and now we wonder why these immature little sheep wear Che t-shirts, or more lately, the flags of various pernicious minorities; and then vote for the likes of a mamdani and other progressive tools, and think of themselves as virtuous. The manifestation of this indoctrination took a century +, and it will take as long to breed this out of existence – if possible.
What a heap of shit old woman. And BTW, “progressive socialism” is not a new or recent concept in German history, it first appeared pre-Marx and Engels, known as working-class activism… job rights primarily, the pre-cursor to unions (Gewerkschaften).
You are definitely a prog/left tool. I have a degree in history since 1972. I know more about the evolution of ideologies than you ever would. Calling names is another thing that tags you as a liberal fool. If you understood mid-century US history you would be realizing the stupidity of your comments’
And just why should American taxpayers pay for the defense of Europe’s “New World Order with European Values” when those European values are in such conflict with American values? I say it’s far past time for Europeans to provide for their own defense. “European Values” have throughout history trended towards totalitarianism, and these attacks on free speech, a cherished American value, are a symptom of recurrent creeping European totalitarianism and are incompatible with Americanism. It’s time for Europeans to decide.
Re NATO: Twice within a quarter-century, we were dragged into one of Europe’s wars — wars we had no say in, and could no way have prevented. NATO gave us a seat at the bargaining table that could have, for example, prevented Chamberlain’s sellout, all the more important since our faithless ally, Stalin, put so many countries behind the Iron Curtain.
But the Iron Curtain came down, and Germany seems to have no desire to invade France.
Now the purpose of NATO seems to be to keep Russia from seizing ex-Soviet satellites.
Explain to me how Merkel is different from our Democrats and our RINOs.
The time is near to just write off Europe and let it go. We need our energy and resources to protect ourselves at home. No more foreign aid to ~any~ nation. Pull troops and equipment from Europe and deploy them to our borders here. No more stupid, corrupt NGO projects. An extreme deportation ramp up is required.
The American people need to respond with unstoppable anger to censorship before it is too late. We need to expose special interest propaganda wherever we find it. An America First mindset needs to spread to all citizens regardless of party.
Isn’t this how Hitler started? Hate speech become all speech and all speech becomes control.
Answer: No.
A european violating well established human rights.
They succumbed to the very facism they claimed to have long opposed and we cannot remain allies with these kinds of countries and certainly not bother to defend them. We should start a cold war with them as they are similar to all our enemies now.
Jawohl. The freedom loving Merkel knows the real threat to her version of democracy is independent thought that gets expressed for others to see! It must be crushed to ensure only the approved thoughts of democracy are kept for the low IQ masses.
Leninist labia personification (Mike Hunt’s sister-in-law for those lacking English language skills) continues to be exactly what she has always been. Not exactly a startling development…
Merkel should be in jail. She destroyed Germany. You can take the girl out of the GDR. But you can’t take the GDR out of the girl.
Oh boy. The ignorance brigade is on.
Turley is pushing conspiracy theory to imply something that’s not true. The EU is not looking to take away its members rights. Turley just doesn’t like the fact the EU is more strict with what it considers hate speech. He’s a free speech absolutist without openly saying he is. Not to mention that he’s also a hypocrite. Sigh. So sad.
george
what it considers hate speech.
—————————–
OK george.
Explain away, what IS hate speech.
Let’s try this: I dare X to describe hate speech.
“. . . what IS hate speech.”
The censors will let you know — after the fact.
Any speech that he doesn’t agree with
The EU garden spot ain’t what it used to be.
Merkel at least signed onto the Minsk agreements. Now, Merz wants to invade Russia .. . again!
Starmer and Macron have lower approval ratings than Trump . .. if such a thing is possible.
*If you did not watch the recent Meet The Press Trump interview you are uninformed .. . if you did watch it, you are misinformed.
Trump had every right to walk out.
The MSN repeats the same BS day after day. Just like the reflection pond. which looks great.
No argument from me on the decline @ Meet the Press.
Of course Trump had every right to walk out and call Kristen Welker crooked and/or stupid. Most the big wig media stars are. It just wasn’t very ‘presidential’ dusty. .. after all, Kristen had traveled all the way from Wisconsin to interview Trump, and begged him to stay!
* as far as I can tell, dusty, there is no need for the media to interview Trump about anything. .. I’m calling for a ‘Media Boycott’!
He loves to talk to the MSN way to much.. But times you just need to say no.
X-
EU has slowly taken away its members rights for 40+ years.
They continue to do so today. Claiming something is false does not make it false. Anyone with a functioning brain has watched it happen like a slow-motion train wreck.
Yet everyone who pointed this out was ridiculed as a conspiracy nut.
Just like you’re claiming now…
What’s your stance on free speech or are you remaining insincere?
X: Your argument contradicts itself. You say the EU is not taking away members’ rights, while at the same time, you say that they are just being “more strict.” Nice try. What do you think “being more strict” means?
What do you call “more strict” on any speech?
Censorship.
And in the EU, they consider anything critical of migrant crime, migrant grooming gangs, questioning immigration policies hate speech.
I would have to disagree with Ms. Merkel. Modern Europe was indeed handed to them by the USA, the UK, and Canada. The entirety of Europe was under the rule of Fascism except for Portugal. The armies of the USA, Canada and the Uk handed Western Europe back over to its citizens in 1945 and then financed its recovery under the Marshall plan. The USA stood strong and outlasted the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991 and the rest of Europe was freed. Europe was so grateful that their first association of states in 1951 erected tariffs on the US and except for NATO resisted any stronger assimilation of the 2 blocks . As soon as the Soviet threat withered and faded, Europe turned back to its authoritarian roots.
Merkel was born in West Germany but he parents took her to East Germany as an infant and she grew up there and was a member of the Communist Party youth group.
She pushed the German state to overwhelming immigration, closed the nuclear plants, embraced wind and solar energy and getting natural gas from Putin. Drove energy costs thru the roof and crippled the German Manufacturing base.
In effect she was a good example of what the US would have had with Hilary Clinton and almost got with Biden.
Now Merkel admits her energy and immigration policy was a mistake.
Amazing that you can get such an award after leaving such wreckage in your wake.
And then there is her hate for free speech.
Well stated
“The armies of the USA, Canada and the Uk handed Western Europe back over to its citizens in 1945 and then financed its recovery under the Marshall plan.”
Thus demonstrating the folly of good intentions (of the globalist variety) as a justification. We should have stayed out and let them struggle to their own solution. How many lives and how much treasure did we flush down the toilet in the futile effort to save these fools from themselves? An effort that, judging by the clear evidence of their current path to Hell, has proven, over the long term, to be entirely fruitless. Had we stuck to our own knitting and focused on defense of our nation, and invested in the prosperity of same, it is very probable that we would be the only formidable power remaining, and much wealthier to boot.
I agree with much of what you say, but Nordstream and the more general reliance by Germany on Russia as a source of cheap energy made perfect sense and was a long term policy, predating Merkel. It was the pressure to bring Ukraine into NATO that disrupted things. Merkel knew this would lead to war and initially stood up to Bush in 2008 but then quickly caved. And now Germany is experiencing significant industrial decline due in significant part to high energy costs.
The left are set on destroying the west! They are selected and backed by enemies of the west, to DESTROY the WEST!
Stop playing nice with people who basically are AT WAR with your Civilization! Reminder Merkel was raised in East Germany!
I used preface a statement like this with, ‘I’m sorry, but…’; I’m not sorry anymore. There is no tangible difference between the globalist left and fascist regimes of the past. Zero. From here, as then, there will only be escalation in their totalitarianism.
Western Europe is toast. So are our deep blue states, or any state that actively enables the DNC t to cheat. If the dems ever hold power again, it will be all 50. This is what they were attempting in 2020, and they had intended to solidify it in 2026. Fathom the fact that Trump won so sweepingly even WITH the machinations of 2020-24 in place.
Blue states send more tax dollars to the federal government than they get back from the federal government. Red states get more tax dollars from the federal government than they pay to the federal government.
Western Europe is toast? When was the last time you visited Western Europe? I was in Spain last month. The country is doing fine.
You call this fine?
Belfast Horror: African Migrant Tries To Saw Off Victim’s Head In Street Attack
https://modernity.news/2026/06/09/belfast-horror-african-migrant-tries-to-saw-off-victims-head-in-street-attack/
How about this?
The Murder Of Henry Nowak & The Poverty Of The ‘Far-Right’ Explanation
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/the-murder-of-henry-nowak-and-the-poverty-of-the-far-right-explanation-6043298?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge
Wally this is what folks are talking about.
Europe is significantly tightening its immigration and asylum policies by fast-tracking deportations and establishing offshore “return hubs” in non-EU countries. Facing political pressure and low historical enforcement rates for deportations, the European Union has greenlit stricter legislation that expands detention limits and streamlines the removal of rejected asylum seekers.
Earlier in June, the European Union appeared to finally react to concerns raised by President Donald Trump and many European voters over illegal immigration by introducing tougher border entry rules for the 27-nation bloc.
The EU agreed on new, stricter rules regarding migration and asylum. The laws are specifically designed to ensure that illegal/undocumented migrants who enter the bloc are processed and, where necessary, quickly sent to deportation centers in countries outside the EU.
Hey wally.
Speaking of blue states
California carries the highest total state government debt in the nation at roughly $497 billion. However, when adjusted for its massive population and economy, its per-capita burden is much more moderate, ranking closer to 10th-14th highest, though its households carry some of the highest personal debt-to-income ratios.
New York has one of the highest total state and local debt burdens in the country, carrying approximately $233 billion in total liabilities, trailing only California (nearly $497 billion). However, when normalized by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or per capita, its burden is more moderate relative to its large economic output
Chicago carries one of the most severe municipal debt burdens in the U.S. When comparing its obligations, Chicago’s unfunded public pension liabilities alone (over $48 billion) are larger than the pension debts of 44 individual states
The states don’t send money to the federal government; people and companies do.
But if we accept your childish words, prove them and define your terms.
“When was the last time you visited Western Europe? I was in Spain last month. The country is doing fine.”
Really? Unemplyment is the lowest its been in many years and is over 10%
S. Meyer,
That is just it. They call not failing as bad a success.
Interesting.
Some 25-30 years ago, Spain actually had a labor shortage, and was recruiting Spanish speakers from all over Latin America, to fill vacancies.
I wonder what happened.
Meyer
Spain is doing just fine economically. Their GDP growth is more than 2%, which 3 times higher than the EU as a whole, and far outpaces France, Italy and Germany, the main economies of Europe.
The official unemployment rate of 10% is not real.
Spain has arcane employment laws, and around 20% of the workforce works in an underground economy, off the books so to speak.
They are currently lead the EU in growth.
That is macroeconomics, but on the individual level, their wages are probably half of Germany’s
Angela Merkel said she is in favor of free speech, as long as it’s heavily controlled and regulated by the regime, just like Joseph Goebbels envisioned for Germany. She said Goebbels is her hero, in how he battled disinformation and misinformation, and often had the social media sites of his day, like anti-government print shops, raided and smashed to pieces for publishing unapproved stories about the government.
Merkel should be locked in a cell with her migrants.
One woman wrecked Germany.
No, she was just the tip of the sickle. Germany (and all or nearly all of Western Europe) wrecked itself. We should have left them to it.
Well, in case anyone needed more evidence for the European Union’s assault upon, um, European People.
This monster (let’s call her what she is) has probably done than anyone in memory to destroy Europe and Europeans. It’s pretty much Africans and Asians from here on in.
” probably done than anyone in memory to destroy Europe and Europeans.”…. Hitler comes to mind readily.
Rapidly approaching the point where the only difference between the modern left and the Nazis, is the current lack of brownsirts on their stormtroopers.