I have previously written about the European Union’s (EU) effort to use its infamous Digital Services Act (DSA) to force companies like X to censor Americans, including on postings related to our presidential election. This is a direct assault on our free speech values, and yet the Biden-Harris Administration has not raised a peep of objection. Now, the EU is threatening to set these confiscatory fines with reference to revenue from companies other than X, including Space X.
The EU has warned Musk that it is allowed to hit online platforms with fines of as much as 6% of their yearly global revenue for refusing to censor content, including “disinformation.” The inclusion of companies like Space X is ridiculous but perfectly consistent with the effort of the EU to use the DSA to regulate speech in the United States and around the world.
The EU is arguing that as a “provider” Musk’s entire business portfolio can be included in the fine calculation.
It is ridiculous and chilling. Musk’s other companies have nothing to do with the platform policies of X. It is simply an unhinged coercive measure designed to break Musk.
X has objected:
“X Holdings Corp. submits that the combined market value of the Musk Group does not accurately reflect X’s monetization potential in the Union or its financial capacity, In particular, it argues that X and SpaceX provide entirely different services to entirely different users, so that there is no gateway effect, and that the undertakings controlled by Mr. Elon Musk ‘do not form one financial front, as the DMA presumes.'”
However, the abusive calculation is precisely the point. The EU censors are making an example of Musk. If they break, no company or executive could hope to defy them.
They are being cheered on in this effort by an anti-free speech movement that includes America politicians and pundits.
One of the lowest moments came after Elon Musk bought Twitter on a pledge to restore free speech protections, Clinton called upon European officials to force Elon Musk to censor American citizens under the DSA. This is a former democratic presidential nominee calling upon Europeans to force the censorship of Americans.
She was joined recently by another former democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry, who called for government crackdowns on free speech.
In my new book on free speech and various columns, I write about the DSA as one of the greatest assaults on free speech in history. As I wrote in the book:
“Under the DSA, users are ’empowered to report illegal content online and online platforms will have to act quickly.’ This includes speech that is viewed not only as ‘disinformation’ but also ‘incitement.’ European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager has been one of the most prominent voices seeking international censorship. At the passage of the DSA, Vestager was ecstatic in declaring that it is ‘not a slogan anymore, that what is illegal offline should also be seen and dealt with as illegal online. Now it is a real thing. Democracy’s back.’”
The pressure on Musk’s other companies has also been ramping up in the United States. Recently, the California Coastal Commission rejected a request from the Air Force for additional launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base. It is not because the military agency did not need the launches. It was not because the nation and the community would not benefit from them. Rather, it was reportedly because, according to one commissioner, Musk has “aggressively injected himself into the presidential race.”
It is all part of Musk mania and the need for the anti-free speech movement to break the only executive who has defied the pressure from this alliance of media, academic, corporate, and government officials.
As I have discussed previously, there is a crushing irony in all of this. The left has made “foreign interference” with elections a mantra of claiming to be defending democracy. Yet, it applauds EU censors threatening companies that carry an interview with a targeted American politician. It also supports importing such censorship and blacklisting systems to the United States. When you agree with the censorship, it is not viewed as interference, but an intervention.
Anti-free speech advocates like Clinton are now going old school. After trying to convince Americans to embrace censorship and blacklisting, they are now praising governments like Brazil and the EU for directly imposed speech regulations on American citizens.
The question is where is the Biden-Harris Administration and Congress. You have a foreign government forcing the censorship of speech of American citizens. We routinely impose reciprocal trade barriers on countries for interfering with our markets. Yet, when a government seeks to curtail political speech in the United States, our leaders are silent.
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Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”