JD Vance by Gage Skidmore / Flickr
In what one legal analyst described as a “truly Churchillian” moment, Vice President JD Vance told European leaders at the Munich Security Conference Friday that the most fearful threat to European security is not an enemy nation, but, instead, “the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values – values shared with the United States of America.”
The vice president took to task America’s European allies for their embrace of censorship of divergent opinions – which they now claim is essential to further the cause of democracy.
“In Britain, and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” Vance said. “And in the interest of comity, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation – misinformation like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely … leaked from a laboratory in China. Our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth.”
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” wrote Monday that, in his address, Vance “found a transformative moment” that, “for the free speech community,” was “no less than the famous Iron Curtain speech in which Churchill dared the West to confront the existential dangers of communism.”
Like Churchill 80 years ago, Turley observed, the vice president “called our allies to account not for the growing threat from countries like Russia or China, but from themselves,” and then “pulled back the curtain on the censorship and anti-free-speech policies of the European Union and close allies ranging from the United Kingdom to Sweden.”
Vance, the legal scholar continued, “called out the hypocrisy of these nations asking for greater and greater military assistance ‘in the name of our shared democratic values’ even as they eviscerate free speech, the very right that once defined Western Civilization.”
“The point was crushing,” Turley noted, drawing attention to Vance’s “clearly shocked audience.”
The “shock” of Vance’s message to his listeners – many perhaps who have fully embraced the narrative that free speech must be denied in order for democracy to flourish – can be seen in a video clip of a former chairman of the Munich Security Conference, who broke down in tears after Vance’s confrontation.
German prosecutors also clearly appeared to be entirely invested in the notion that suppressing free speech improves society during an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes.” When the prosecutors were asked, “Is posting an insult a crime?” and “Is it a crime to repost a lie?” the Germans replied “Yes” to both questions.
In an assertive reply posted to X, however, Vance countered: “Insulting someone is not a crime, and criminalizing speech is going to put real strain on European-US relationships.”
“This is Orwellian, and everyone in Europe and the US must reject this lunacy,” he added.
CBS “Face the Nation” anchor Margaret Brennan was once again at the center of controversy two days after Vance’s speech when, during an interview with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, she wondered what the vice president had “accomplished” with his “lecture” to European leaders, “other than irritating our allies.”
Rubio quickly set Brennan straight. “Why would our allies or anybody be irritated by free speech and by someone giving their opinion?” he asked. “We are, after all, democracies. The Munich – Munich Security Conference – is largely a conference of democracies in which one of the things that we cherish and value is the ability to speak freely and provide your opinions.”
“And, so,” he said, “I think if anyone’s angry about his words, they don’t have to agree with him, but to be angry about it, I think actually makes his point.”
Brennan, however, continued her criticism of Vance, objecting to Rubio that the vice president was “standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide, and he met with the head of a political party that has far-right views and some historic ties to extreme groups – ”
“I have to disagree with you,” Rubio interjected. “Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews, and they hated minorities, and they hated those that they – they had a list of people they hated – but primarily the Jews.”
“There was no free speech in Nazi Germany,” Rubio continued. “There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany; they were a sole, and only, party that governed that country. So that’s not an accurate reflection of history.”
Turley also observed: “Not only did CBS’s Margaret Brennan suggest that free speech caused the holocaust, but Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) seemed to double down on that point. Moulton accused Vance of using ‘some of the same language that Hitler used to justify the Holocaust.’”
“From Margaret Brennan’s suggestion that free speech caused the holocaust to weeping diplomats defending censorship, the response only proved Vance’s point … Vance drew a bright line in Europe and we will all have to decide on which side to stand,” Turley concluded. “Some obviously have made the decision to stand with Europe. For the rest of us, we will stand with free speech.”
