At present, there is a pot-calling-the-kettle-black approach being taken by the European Union and the United States regarding the imposition of sanctions upon individuals deemed hostile to free speech. On December 23, the US State Department announced that it would bar five European citizens accused of spearheading efforts to pressure US tech giants to censor or suppress American opinions. This came after the European Union’s own tilt to sanctioning individuals accused of spreading Russian misinformation or disinformation, particularly about the Ukraine War.
Those caught in the State Department vice are former EU Commissioner for the internal market Thierry Breton, a key figure behind the Digital Services Act (DSA), Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg of the German legal aid organisation HateAid, British head of the US-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) Imran Ahmed, and Clare Melford, co-founder of the Global Disinformation Index (GDI).
Von Hodenberg and Ballon assisted Jewish college students sue the social network platform X over the dissemination of antisemitic content while Ahmed, in particular, has been praised for his work by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) and Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) on advancing social media hygiene. “He is a valuable partner in providing accurate and detailed information on how the social media algorithms have created a bent toward antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and he will remain a valuable partner,” insisted the JFNA’s head of government relations, Dennis Bernard. Given that many a policy decision by the Trump administration to withdraw from international institutions – the UN Human Rights Council comes to mind – has been based on thinly justified accusations of antisemitism, this was side splittingly comic.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was suitably bolshie in making the announcement, calling the barred individuals “leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex”. “For too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.”
Sarah Rogers, the US Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, had her share of stones to cast, lashing Breton for “ominously” reminding “[Elon] Musk of X’s legal obligations and ongoing ‘formal proceedings’ for alleged noncompliance with ‘illegal content’ and ‘disinformation’ requirements under the DSA.” Ahmed’s organisation was taken to task for its 2022 “Disinformation Dozen” report lacerating anti-vaccination advocates, among them the current US Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A spokesperson for GDI called the sanctions an “authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship.” The Trump administration had yet again used “the full weight of the federal government to intimidate, censor, and silence voices they disagree with.” The actions were “immoral, unlawful and un-American.” French President Emmanuel Macron saw matters in terms of autonomy, calling the decision intimidatory and coercive “aimed at undermining European digital sovereignty”.
The European Union can hardly claim to be saintly on the subject of protecting free speech either. When it comes to discussing Russian policies, tolerance for its exercise shrinks. (Consider, for instance, the imposition of EU sanctions on experts associated with the Russia-based international forum, the Valdai Club.) The recent, most troubling case of Jacques Baud, a retired Swiss colonel living in Brussels who finds himself the target of an executive sanctions listing, stands out. The listing was made as part of the Russia hybrid-threats framework adopted in October 2024 (Decision 2024/2643 and Regulation 2024/2642) covering such non-military actions as the dissemination of disinformation and propaganda, cyberattacks and interference in elections. Member States are directed to take measures against “natural persons” who are involved, for instance, in “planning, directing, engaging in, directly or indirectly, supporting or otherwise facilitating the use of coordinated information manipulation and interference” in favour of Russia.
Baud, according to the EU sanctions tracker, is described as “a former Swiss army colonel and strategic analyst [and] a regular guest on pro-Russian television and radio programmes. He acts as a mouthpiece for pro-Russian propaganda and makes conspiracy theories, for example, accusing Ukraine of orchestrating its own invasion in order to join NATO.” An odd curriculum vitae to warrant an executive listing that is punitive and lacking curial assessment.
For holding and promoting such views, an asset freeze has been placed upon him within the EU jurisdiction, along with an entry and transit ban across the EU. Stranger in this whole affair is the fact that Switzerland does not subscribe to this monochrome sanctions regime. A situation of the absurd has been created: a Swiss national residing in Brussels who is effectively incapable of returning to Switzerland for expressing views no good European should have.
Attacking a viewpoint deemed unsavoury and out of step with accepted, if not dictated opinion, is the very essence of censorship. The mood of the moment is that of a bouncy militarism in Europe, a reverie of warmongering committing Member States to ever increasing defence budgets against imaginary jackboots awaiting to make their way to Paris and Brussels. Those wishing to question the Ukraine narrative in terms of history and origin, or the need for the prolongation of war, have become targets.
These formulas deny debate, endorse a police version of history, and affirm fundamentalist scripts. Stick to the script, or else. It becomes chilling to then see various countries and political entities punish those with undesirable, even unsavoury opinions. This might be a good time for the EU to drop all pretence on the subject and admit that opinions are there to be policed by the stuffy mandarins of the day. And while there is much to be said that is problematic about such restrictive, babying instruments as the UK’s Online Safety Act and the EU’s DSA, preventing activists and researchers from travelling to a country where free speech is protected seems similarly perverse.
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