By Norman Lewis, European Conservative.
Aspectre is haunting Europe, but it is not the spectre of disinformation or hate speech. It is the spectre of linguistic control and censorship to curb free speech. And it’s not coming from China or Russia but the heart of the EU itself: from the European Commission.
Since 2016, after the Brexit vote and the first election of Donald Trump as U.S. President, the EU Commission, spooked by these developments, has been on a crusade to control Europe’s political narrative. One form of this crusade has been the ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’ narrative, which the EU Commission has argued is a growing threat to social stability and democracy in Europe. Its content, however, is far from the benign act of responsible government the EU Commission would have us believe. Led by its flagship piece of legislation, the Digital Services Act (more accurately the Digital Surveillance Act), the Commission has been engaged in an authoritarian assault on free speech, and the European people, whom they consider lack the moral independence to think and act in their best interest.
This new report from MCC Brussels focuses on the much-neglected means through which the EU Commission realises its narrative objectives. Research has uncovered the staggering fact that the Commission has funded hundreds of unaccountable Non-Governmental Organisations and Universities to carry out 349 projects related to countering ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’ to the tune of almost €649 million. This is thirty-one per cent higher than the money allocated for transnational research and innovation projects addressing various cancer-related objectives (€494 million). The EU Commission regards stemming the cancer of free speech as more of a priority than the estimated 4.5 million new cancer cases and almost 2 million cancer deaths in Europe in 2022. Taxpayers’ money has been consciously used to fund an Orwellian disinformation complex to dictate and control the language of public debate as a result.
This report exposes the fact that taxpayers’ money is being used without any public accountability. This is important to expose. But this report is more important than that. It is an urgent act of democratic vigilance. Because when language is narrowed, softened, obfuscated or stripped of meaning, so is the possibility of resistance and the development of alternatives.