German Chancellor’s Attack on Free Speech Reveals Europe’s Growing Fear of Dissent

Free speech isn’t just dying in Europe; it’s being ruthlessly strangled by an out-of-touch ruling class that’s desperate to snuff it out before they lose power.

And those elites are hardly hiding their contempt for what we here in America consider a foundational, God-given right.

On Tuesday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz made a public, frontal attack on free speech in the name of diversity and “protecting” people from “misinformation.”

“Please, nobody come to me with free speech. This has nothing more to do with free speech,” he said in a translation to a group of students while promoting the idea that anonymous online commentary should be curtailed or banned.

Merz further said that he doesn’t subscribe to “libertarian,” American arguments about speech.

That’s right, imagine the horrible things that might have happened to Germany if they had adopted those reckless American ideas. Good thing they had sober-minded censorship to bail them out and keep bad ideas at bay, right?

Finally, he said that more must be done to protect citizens “from false information, from personal putdowns, from discrimination.”

That’s an interesting list and lines up perfectly with the emerging cornerstone values of the EU’s ruling class.

What’s true and false will be determined by government bureaucracies, of course. Socially left-wing values and lifestyles will be celebrated and never questioned. That is, unless those values or any others run into those of the rising, mostly Muslim demographics that insist on various blasphemy laws lest they be offended and “discriminated” against.

Maintenance of this new borderless, multicultural European empire of tolerance will require the abandonment of old-fashioned ideas that were once considered essential to self-government. Free speech is just one of the casualties of Europe’s progressive, post-national future.

If you don’t think this future is for you, expect a government investigation, bigot.

That’s ultimately what Merz and other European elites are calling for. They want legitimate—but, in their view, existentially threatening—questions about the way forward to be snuffed out.

European leaders—even some who are more “conservative” leaning like Merz—increasingly demand tighter and tighter restrictions on social media as they lose control of their cherished political narratives.

In Europe, “Woke 1” didn’t die or even momentarily go quiet as it did following President Donald Trump’s election in 2024. Instead, it continues to metastasize.

Don’t you dare say that a man can’t become a woman or that you don’t want the cultural values of your country to resemble those of millions of unassimilated Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

To counter these allegedly hateful ideas, European regimes insist on adopting laws that look like ones typically seen in, well, the Middle East.

In the U.K., aggressive online censorship laws have led to numerous arrests. According to the Telegraph, more people are jailed every day for speech violations than for fraud.

Germany locks up its people for creating memes and has created numerous online portals for citizens to report each other for “illegal” commentary. In February, a man was investigated under Paragraph 188 of Germany’s criminal code for comparing Merz to Pinocchio.

That monster. What’s next, someone comparing the dear leader to Winnie the Pooh!

Fortunately, the investigation ended after public outcry and the Trump administration publicly called it out. Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers was spot on when she wrote on X that “vague, broad prohibitions on speech invariably produce edge-case abuses and chilling effects.”

You would think such incidents would create a moment of reflection in Europe as they adopt laws more totalitarian than those created by the most aggressively authoritarian despots of history.

Nope.

Instead, they are doubling down, looking to smother all dissent as internal discontent boils over. They welcome those chilling effects, the rotten fruit of tyranny.

What do you know, Merz’s commentary on the danger of online speech comes right after an election in which the right-wing AfD party received enormous support and nearly knocked the ruling coalition out of power.

The AfD has often been labeled as “extremist,” and in some cases that seems to be true.

But the current iteration of the party has grabbed hold of several issues that the once “mainstream” German parties consider verboten, particularly immigration.

By giving vent to a very reasonable discussion about the effects of mass immigration the AfD has clearly attracted voters who may feel they have no alternative.

And a “fringe” party standing by increasingly mainstream ideas won’t remain fringe for very long in a truly democratic system.

That’s ultimately why Merz and other European leaders won’t quit the idea of censorship, of stomping out both the internal debate and the technology that amplifies it.

However, this course can only end with jackboots or revolution.

If Germans and other Europeans really want to avoid repeating the mistakes of their past that led to violence and brutal authoritarianism, maybe they should stop sneering and occasionally listen to their American cousins who desperately want them to get this right.

Instead of protecting their people from “bad” ideas, they should protect them from the looming dread of a future without freedom, without any hope of setting things right.

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