Me in The Washington Post: Where ‘hate speech’ censorship is even worse than on U.S. campuses

Speech restrictions backed by government power in the E.U. and Britain are reaching ludicrous levels.

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What follows is an op-ed I published in The Washington Post yesterday, outlining the quite egregious and frightening free speech violations we’ve been seeing abroad — particularly with respect to so-called ‘hate speech’ restrictions. I hope we here in the States will take it as a warning: Things are bad on our campuses right now, but what’s happening in Europe is even worse. Let’s not follow suit.

— Greg

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Free-speech advocates have long warned Americans about the dangers of adopting “hate speech” codes. If they became widely enforced, the result wouldn’t be the kinder society intended by such censorship; it would be an intimidated, even frightened one. Either you engage in mass arrests, or you enforce the rules selectively — which means targeting some viewpoints above others.

For an indication of where this censorious impulse can lead even in a democratic society, look no further than European Union nations and Britain, where the experiment in speech control is running not on university campuses but on national scales, backed by the state’s monopoly on force. The results are so extreme that American readers might assume they’re exaggerated. They aren’t.

Start with Britain, where “grossly offensive” communications can be a police matter. In 2023, British police made more than 12,000 arrests under two communications statutes. For comparison, during America’s first Red Scare, from 1919 to 1920, one of the worst crackdowns on speech in the nation’s history, the United States averaged about 2,000 arrests per year, when the U.S. population was more than 50 percent bigger than Britain’s today.

Behind the numbers are stories like that of Elizabeth Kinney, a mother of four who was arrested for having called a man who assaulted her a homophobic slur — not to his face, but in a private message to a friend. After the two fell out, the now former friend sent the messages to law enforcement. Kinney’s attacker wasn’t punished, but she was, under the Malicious Communications Act. Told she potentially faced 10 years in prison, Kinney pleaded guilty. She was sentenced to the British equivalent of probation and community service, and fined the equivalent of nearly $500.

That case parallels one in Germany involving messages sent to a convicted rapist. A woman, furious at the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl in a Hamburg park, called one of the perpetrators a “disgraceful rapist pig” in a WhatsApp message. She was prosecuted for insult and defamation, and ordered to spend the weekend in jail — while the rapist, because of youth sentencing rules, served no time.

In February, an episode of CBS News’s “60 Minutes” interviewed German prosecutors who defended their speech prosecutions, which usually begin with raiding suspects’ homes and seizing their devices. That would ring true for American novelist and political satirist C.J. Hopkins, who lives in Berlin and for the past three years has been entangled in a legal nightmare, accused of disseminating alleged pro-Nazi material. Twice he has been investigated, he says, with officers once searching his home, interrogating him and confiscating his computer.

What Hopkins actually did was this: He wrote a book critical of Germany’s draconian pandemic policies. The book’s cover had a faint swastika image superimposed on a face mask — not the most tasteful choice, but it didn’t glorify Nazis, it accused others of acting like them — which he displayed on social media. He was acquitted once in court, but the decision is being appealed.

Meanwhile in Finland, Päivi Räsänen, a member of Parliament, faced criminal charges after she criticized her church’s support for gay pride events and posted online quoting Romans 1:24-27, a passage frequently cited as evidence that the Bible considers homosexuality sinful. She was acquitted twice. And yet prosecutors have made the process the punishment, appealing each loss. Finland’s Supreme Court heard her case in October. Even if Räsänen wins a third time, it will be after more than six years of fighting.

Last month in Switzerland, Emanuel Brünisholz began serving 10 days in prison after refusing to pay a fine for a 2022 online post noting that human skeletons are either male or female — a biological fact — and asserting that transgender claims are a form of mental illness.

If all of this feels distant, here’s the part Americans should take personally: Europe doesn’t always keep its speech norms inside Europe. By regulating websites and apps that are used globally, the E.U.’s 2022 Digital Services Act speech restrictions could end up limiting Americans’ speech.

The Trump administration recently made a show of blocking five Europeans from entering the U.S. over concerns about the E.U.’s digital censorship, but the administration itself lately has shown an interest in censoring “hate speech.”

After the murder of conservative advocate Charlie Kirk, Attorney General Pam Bondi drew fierce criticism for remarks suggesting the Justice Department would “absolutely target” people for “hate speech.” She later walked back the comments, toward the constitutional category of true threats and incitement. President Donald Trump, when asked about the controversy by an ABC News reporter, mocked her, suggesting Bondi might “go after you” because “you have a lot of hate in your heart.”

As for the public at large, a 2023 RealClear Opinion Research survey found that three out of four Democrats — and half of Republicans — believe the government has a responsibility to limit “hateful” social media posts.

It would be far better if Americans recognized the wisdom of the nation’s free speech culture and the First Amendment used to delineate it. For too long, too many in the U.S. have flirted with “censorship envy,” looking longingly at European speech regulations and the hypothetical tranquility they might bring.

There is no such tranquility. Europe is a free speech disaster, not to be emulated. Congress should pass new laws that protect Americans from foreign censorship, so international speech penalties and censorship demands don’t become backdoor restraints on Americans’ freedom of speech.

Rejecting European speech codes doesn’t leave Americans defenseless against the worst harms. Laws already exist against threats, stalking, harassment, discrimination and violence. A new category that turns moral disgust into police action is not needed. Disgust is a tribal instinct, and tribalism fuels the fire that reason is meant to extinguish.

SHOT FOR THE ROAD

It’s officially 2026, which means we’re steadily approaching America’s semiquincentennial (a word most people don’t know today but by this time next year they’ll be sick of hearing)!

To celebrate, FIRE is hosting a conference called Soapbox 2026 — Still Revolutionary! We’ll be celebrating America’s 250th from November 4-6, 2026 in Philadelphia with high-impact keynotes, timely panels, and unforgettable entertainment.

I’ll be a featured speaker — along with FIRE Senior Fellows Jacob Mchangama and Nadine Strossen, FIRE Advisor John McWhorter, and luminaries like Human Rights Watch co-founder and former ACLU executive director Aryeh Neier, Reason editor at large Nick Gillespie, musician, author, and renowned advocate for dialogue across divides Daryl Davis, award-winning journalist and author Matt Taibbi, National Coalition Against Censorship executive director Lee Rowland, and the list is growing!

Visit soapbox.fire.org to learn more and sign up for alerts the moment registration opens!