For the past few years, the world has been falling into what Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)’s Matthew Harwood calls a “free speech recession.”
It’s tempting for those of us who grew up in a robust culture of free speech to think that the problem is just limited to authoritarian regimes like China and Iran and Russia. But unfortunately the problem runs much deeper. Many developed countries, including countries that pride themselves on their democracy and international respectability, are deciding that they ought to have the power to imprison citizens who say anything that these countries’ leaders disagree with.
In the United Kingdom, for instance, police approached Gideon Falter, who was walking near a pro-Palestinian march dressed in a kippah, and told him that if he didn’t leave he would be arrested for breaching the peace. What was Falter’s crime? Police told him that he appeared “quite openly Jewish,” and as such his appearance might provoke the nearby protestors.
Last year (and also in the United Kingdom), Iraq war veteran Jamie Michael was arrested and spent 20 days in jail for a Facebook video. After seeing stories about the brutal murder of three children by a second-generation United Kingdom immigrant, Michael had argued in the video that his community was “under attack” by “scumbags” and “psychopaths.” He was promptly arrested for what police termed “dehumanizing language.”
It’s not just Falter and Michaels. In 2023 alone, the United Kingdom made over 12,000 arrests for online speech. Thousands of people have had to pay exorbitant fines or else languished in jail because they had the nerve to express an opinion that ran contrary to the will of police and elected officials.
It’s also not just the United Kingdom.
In Germany, American satirist CJ Hopkins was prosecuted for tweeting that the facemasks required by many governments during the COVID-19 pandemic were just “symbols of ideological conformity” (quote translated from German).
Also in Germany, after a 15-year-old girl was gang-raped by nine perpetrators, a woman in Hamburg sent one of the convicted rapists messages on WhatsApp calling him a “disgusting rapist pig.” The rapist complained, and the woman who messaged him was sentenced to a weekend in jail. She’s hardly the only one: Hamburg authorities investigated an astounding 140 suspects for insulting or threatening the rapists.
Many European countries have passed laws against so-called hate speech on the grounds that such laws are essential to protect the dignity of minority communities. Apparently that now includes tiptoeing around the feelings of convicted rapists.
Earlier this month, ten Parisians were found guilty of cyber-harassment of France’s first lady, Brigitte Macron. The perpetrators, eight men and two women, accused Macron of being transgender, and equated her age difference with her husband (Brigitte is 24 years younger than husband Immanuel) to “paedophilia.” For that, the ten Parisians were given fines and jail sentences ranging up to eight months.
I’m sure that being accused of being born male hurt the first lady. But do such online comments really warrant eight months in jail?
Unfortunately, the list goes on.
In Norway, lesbian filmmaker Tonje Gjevjon was prosecuted after she argued on Facebook that biological males cannot be lesbians. Gjevjon was never convicted, but as FIRE president Greg Lukianoff writes, “the process is the punishment.” Being dragged through the courts for making a common-sense statement threatened to chill the speech of Gjevjon and of anyone else who might challenge the prevailing orthodoxy.
In Finland, Päivi Räsänen criticized the Evangelical Lutheran church leadership because it supported Helsinki Pride, and posted a photo of Romans 1:24-27 (which condemns homosexual relations). Police charged her with “agitation against a minority group.” They even charged the Lutheran Bishop who co-published a pamphlet she wrote arguing that gay marriage is sinful.
In Switzerland, Emanuel Brünisholz posted on Facebook that, “If you dig up LGBTQI people after 200 years, you’ll only find men and women based on their skeletons. Everything else is a mental illness promoted through the curriculum.” For this allegedly hateful comment, he was forced to pay a fine of 500 Swiss francs. Brünisholz refused to pay on principle, and instead will serve 10 days in jail.
Such censorship is even making its way to the United States.
On January 12 of this year, Raquel Pacheco received a visit from police over a Facebook comment she made criticizing Miami Mayor Steven Meiner. After Meiner posted that, “Miami Beach is a safe haven for everyone. We will always stand firm against any discrimination,” Pacheco replied with, “‘We will stand firm against any discrimination’ — unless you’re Palestinian, or Muslim or you think those people have a right to live” and “Careful your racism is showing.”
Public officials ought to have thick enough skins to brush off the occasional rude comment. But instead, Pacheco found herself investigated and intimidated; as one policeman told her, “I would think to refrain from posting things like that, because that can get something incited.”
Meiner’s response is even more chilling. In a statement following the police visit, he wrote that “In this situation, our police department believed that inflammatory language that is false and without any factual basis was justification for follow-up to assess the level of threat and to protect the safety of all involved.”
Meiner’s statement displays a shocking disregard for the First Amendment. While true threats are not protected speech, Pacheco’s fiery comment falls far short of that standard. And there is no First Amendment exception for speech that a public official claims is false.
It’s not just Meiner who’s willfully ignoring the freedoms our forefathers fought and died for.
In response to widespread ICE raids, a new app called ICEBlock enables users to report sightings of ICE officers. The app serves a clear democratic purpose in a country in which citizens often film interactions between law enforcement and ordinary people, and even explicitly warns its users not to use it “for the purposes of inciting violence or interfering with law enforcement.”
Nonetheless, the Trump administration threw a fit at the mere existence of the app. The administration claims that the app puts ICE agents in danger, and threatened to prosecute the app’s developer. Even more chilling, the administration is actively trying to prosecute CNN for writing about the app. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced that her agency is “working with the Department of Justice” to see if they could prosecute the news network.
Prosecuting a news network for writing about an app might be a new low, but it’s far from the only time the Trump administration has blatantly disregarded the First Amendment. Last year, when Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez published flyers and a webinar reminding people of their constitutional rights when it came to interactions with ICE, border czar Tom Homan asked the Department of Justice to investigate her for “impeding our law enforcement efforts.” Given that a Congresswoman reminding constituents of their rights is hardly illegal, it’s tough not to see this as naked political persecution.
Supporters of hate speech laws often couch their support in terms of wanting to protect the dignity of marginalized communities from hateful comments. That’s a worthy goal, but again and again, we see that it doesn’t work out that way in practice. Instead, governments wield the powers granted to them by hate speech laws in order to punish dissent, shut down conversation, and prosecute political opponents.
If we really care about the rights of marginalized people, perhaps it’s time to stand up for the free speech rights of the ordinary citizens who dare to make statements that politicians and law enforcement don’t agree with.
