Yes, we are being censored
Europe, under the guise of combating disinformation and hate speech, has increasingly tightened its grip on online discourse.
This is the first in a new series: censorship and free speech. We kick things off with a hot topic: modern-day censorship in Europe.
The murder of a German politician
Lohfelden, a small town near Kassel in central Germany, became the centre of controversy in 2015 when a new shelter for 800 asylum seekers was announced. The local official responsible for overseeing the project, Walter Lübcke, went to explain the decision to the townspeople. The atmosphere was tense. Many residents protested.
Lübcke, a mild-mannered but otherwise unremarkable 62-year-old career politician from Angela Merkel’s CDU, firmly believed that welcoming asylum seekers was a humanitarian duty. But on that day, he was struggling — his voice hoarse, his mood off. He found himself heckled by an angry crowd. Frustrated, he snapped:
“You have to stand up for values. Anyone who doesn’t support these values is free to leave this country at any time. If you don’t like it, that’s the freedom every German has.”
The statement quickly made its way to YouTube, where it sparked outrage. Opponents of asylum policies saw it as an insult. In their reading, Lübcke was telling native Germans who disagreed with immigration policies to pack their bags and leave. The video spread like wildfire through far-right circles, fuelling a campaign of hatred against him. To them, he became the face of the so-called “traitor elite.” Death threats followed. His name appeared on kill lists circulating in neo-Nazi networks.
Fast forward four years. It’s a warm summer night in 2019, and Lübcke is sitting outside his white villa, enjoying a quiet cigarette. Not far away, the village of Istha is buzzing with a local festival, the Weizenkirmes. Suddenly, a single gunshot rings out. Lübcke slumps forward, dead.
The police didn’t have to look far. The killer was Stephan Ernst, a 46-year-old German with a history of far-right violence. The motive? Political revenge. That fateful comment from four years earlier had sealed Lübcke’s fate. Ernst was sentenced to life in prison.
The minister isn’t an idiot
Fast forward to 2024. In the Bavarian town of Burgpreppach, police raided the home of Stefan Niehoff, a 64-year-old former army sergeant. Policemen seized his tablet under a warrant for hate speech and defamation of a public official. That official? Robert Habeck, leader of Germany’s Green Party and Vice Chancellor.
Like many politicians, Habeck is bombarded with online abuse daily. German social media, much like elsewhere, is hardly known for polite discourse. But Habeck had had enough. He decided to press charges — against hundreds of people. Among them was Niehoff, whose crime included posting a meme mocking Habeck. The image, styled like a Schwarzkopf shampoo ad, played on the brand name to label Habeck a Schwachkopf, a dimwit.
The case relied on a law introduced just three years earlier. Insulting someone has long been a punishable offence in Germany, but in 2021, the government added a special clause: insulting a public official now carries a harsher penalty. And the justification for the law? The assassination of Walter Lübcke.
An American bull in the European china shop
In February 2025, freshly sworn-in U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance took the stage at an international conference in Munich. What followed was a blistering critique of values that Europe’s political establishment largely takes for granted: state-driven censorship, judicial interference in politics, and the exclusion of vast swathes of voters.
The audience was stunned. A German minister dismissed the speech as unacceptable. Commentators across European media tripped over each other to condemn Vance’s remarks, though most of the rebuttals amounted to little more than whataboutism.
For now, let’s set aside his points on judicial interference and voter suppression. This series focuses on free speech and censorship. But did Vance have a point? Is Europe stifling dissenting voices more than it cares to admit?
This question touches on many themes we’ll explore in this series: the role of social media, the fight against hate speech, the effectiveness of censorship, and the deepening divide in public debate.
In the following paragraphs, we’ll dive into modern censorship in Europe. Starting with Germany’s criminal penalties for insulting politicians, before moving on to Brussels’ efforts to shield citizens from illegal content and disinformation, particularly through the Digital Services Act. What drives lawmakers to regulate public discourse? And what are the concerns?
What is censorship?
Let’s start with a bit about censorship itself. Traditionally, censorship meant you could only publish something with prior approval. That system was usually introduced in the 16th century, when the printing press became a means for protestant propaganda. In the early 19th century, most countries in Europe switched tactics: you no longer needed pre-approval to publish. But if you put out something objectionable, you were risking punishment. In the words famously attributed to Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (ca. 1925–2003):
“There is freedom of speech, but I can’t guarantee freedom after speech.”
Surprisingly, post-publication censorship turned out to be quite effective; perhaps even more so than the old pre-publication system. Once you had the go-ahead, you were largely free to publish. Publishers could bargain with the censors, carefully testing the boundaries of what was (just barely) acceptable. With post-publication censorship, though, you never really know where you stand. You’re left waiting to see if you’ve crossed an invisible line. The risks of pre-approval were minor: if they said no, well, you just couldn’t publish. But the risks of being sanctioned afterwards were much higher: confiscation, fines, or even jail time. To avoid such penalties, authors, filmmakers, and publishers often resort to self-censorship. In a bid to stay on the safe side, they impose more restrictions on themselves than necessary, a phenomenon known as the chilling effect.
Enter the internet. In our digital age, the difference between pre- and post-publication censorship has largely vanished; the barrier to publishing is almost non-existent. Thanks to clever algorithms, offensive online posts can be spotted in an instant, and their reach can be instantly suppressed. You can say whatever you like, but it’s the algorithms that decide who ever gets to see it. Modern social media platforms now abide by the motto:
“Freedom of speech, not freedom of reach.”
Speak your mind, sure. But we get to decide how large your audience will be. Wou’ll read in this article how authorities take advantage of this power, leaving the direct act of censorship to the platforms themselves. But let’s first take a closer look at the German legislation.
The cost of a tender heart
In the first paragraphs, we looked at Germany’s law that heavily penalises insults against politicians. The justice system has been kept busy enforcing it.
Officially, the law aims to combat hate crimes, right-wing extremism, threats, and hate speech — all in the name of preserving social harmony. With an increasingly toxic political climate, lawmakers hope it will bring a measure of civility back to political debate. The rise of social media, they argue, has made it easier to spread hatred, leaving politicians particularly vulnerable and hindering their ability to govern. The law assumes that insulting politicians can quickly escalate into dehumanisation, radicalisation, and hate speech, which in turn could spiral into violence, death threats, and even political assassinations — like that of Walter Lübcke. Germany wants to nip that danger in the bud before it gets out of hand.
But this reasoning raises some serious questions. Let’s explore a few.
Isn’t an insult just an opinion?
Where do we draw the line between an insult and expressing an opinion? Sure, calling a politician an idiot isn’t exactly a profound political statement. And technically, it’s not true. Habeck, for instance, has a PhD in philosophy, has written several novels, and spent a decade as a minister. Whatever you think of his policies, he’s hardly a fool.
But in a democracy, every adult has the right to vote, even those who express their disagreements in crude or simplistic terms. Not everyone has the intellectual nuance of a Habermas. When Stefan Niehoff called Habeck a dimwit, he was clumsily expressing his frustration with Habeck’s ideals or his political decisions. In his own way, he was participating in political discourse. You don’t have to agree with him to recognise that his ability to express that opinion should be protected.
Besides, does criminalising insults actually serve a useful purpose? Take, for example, a 2024 case where a Dutch woman was convicted of group defamation for posting a very nasty tweet:
“Another white man beaten up on the street by a group of negro primates. How many more defenceless whites must fall victim? Plenty, no doubt — the open-borders elite is importing them by the boatload, and this is the result.”
Vile? Absolutely. Racist? Undeniably. But she was also making a political point about immigration policy. Should offensive speech be met with criminal punishment when it can be countered through public condemnation, debate, and social pushback instead?
Insults are subjective. If someone calls you a pedant, you’d probably shrug it off. But a man in The Netherlands who once called a police officer a pedant (mierenneuker in Dutch, literally “ant-fucker”) when his can of beer was taken away from him, was convicted, all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Insult laws are mostly found in authoritarian regimes, where they’re used to silence critical journalists. Most European countries no longer bother enforcing them. Libel and slander laws still exist, as they should: spreading lies about someone can seriously damage their reputation. But criminalising insults? That feels outdated.
Politics isn’t a bubble — and insults come with the job
Politicians hold power. Their decisions can upend people’s lives, financially, legally, and personally. Yet in representative democracies, they can remain largely insulated from the public once elected. Their daily interactions are mostly with other politicians, civil servants, journalists, and lobbyists. They operate in plush offices, with good coffee, comfortable chairs, and polite conversations. The real-world impact of their decisions remains an abstraction. Their chances of re-election are measured by opinion polls. If they choose, they can go multiple years while hardly encountering an ordinary voter, protected by press officers, assistants, and security details.
But the internet and social media have changed that. Now, politicians can’t avoid public feedback. Every day, they face a barrage of unfiltered criticism from angry citizens. That’s unpleasant. The rough language of the street, the raw frustration of the electorate, is suddenly in their face. Welcome to the real world.
Some politicians lament that this will deter people from entering politics. But let’s be honest: it’s unlikely. Public office has always attracted ambitious, thick-skinned individuals. The sensitive, soft-spoken types might find it uncomfortable, but history shows that politics rarely suffers from a shortage of eager contenders.
Does insulting politicians really lead to violence?
Germany’s law assumes a direct link between insults and political violence. But is that really the case? Sure, if people are circulating death threats online, that’s a serious issue. Lübcke’s murder proved that. And if speech openly encourages violence or dehumanises individuals, authorities need to be on guard. But there’s no solid evidence that simple insults lead to political assassinations. Political violence stems from radicalisation. Punishing insults as a way to prevent violence is like calling an ambulance for a mild flu.
That doesn’t mean public anger can’t escalate into something dangerous, just as a flu can turn into pneumonia. But insults, however crude, are usually just a way for people to vent frustration. In a later article, I’ll dig deeper into the connection between insults, radicalisation, and hate speech, exploring the right moment for intervention.
A matter of dignity?
German and French legal scholars often justify insult laws with the concept of human dignity. Regular readers know how sceptical I am of that term. It’s a vague, moralistic catch-all, a grand-sounding but ultimately empty justification used by midwit jurists. Why should such an ambiguous concept be a barrier to free speech? In fact, you could argue the opposite.
Let’s try a thought experiment. Imagine the most corrupt, deceitful, morally bankrupt politician possible: a pathological liar, a ruthless manipulator, someone who exploits others for personal gain. Yet, through trickery and populism, they keep getting re-elected. One day, you call them a scoundrel in public. They sue. You’ve violated their dignity. The case goes to court. Your defence? The word scoundrel is perfectly accurate. It’s not you behaving disgracefully: it’s the politician. Should a judge really be in the business of deciding whether that politician deserves dignity?
Some argue that it’s not about protecting individuals, but the office they hold. That argument, I’ll admit, has some merit. But why should it apply only to politicians? Shouldn’t judges, clergy, or doctors be protected as well? And if doctors, why not nurses? Should we start ranking professions by how much respect they deserve?
Politicians aren’t the only ones at risk
Why does German law give politicians special protection, when opinion leaders also face threats? Think of German student activist Rudi Dutschke, assassinated by the far-right. Or Theo van Gogh and the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, murdered for criticising Islam. Or Salman Rushdie, who narrowly survived an attack. Public intellectuals arguably shape debate more than the average backbencher. So why do politicians get special treatment?
Left-wing vs right-wing violence — does it matter?
The law specifically cites right-wing extremism as the problem. But is that fair? Germany’s recent history includes just as much left-wing violence. The Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorised the country for decades, carrying out kidnappings, bombings, and assassinations. In the 1990s, they were still murdering magistrates and business leaders. Does the law apply the same standard to all political violence? Or is it selectively enforced?
Jupiter and the ox
(Warning: strong language ahead.)
Why can politicians say almost anything, but when the public responds in kind, they risk prosecution? Take Habeck’s own party colleague, who once called the parliamentary speaker a arsehole during a session. No consequences. Or former French president Sarkozy, who snapped at a heckler: “Casse-toi alors, pauv’ con” (fuck off then, you miserable cunt).
Months later, a left-wing activist held up a sign quoting Sarkozy’s words verbatim. He was arrested. Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi — what is permissible for Jupiter is not permissible for an ox.
And these are just some of the issues with Germany’s insult law. In a next article, I’ll weigh the broader pros and cons of censorship. Because, believe it or not, censorship does have its uses. More on that soon.
Europe tightens its grip
It’s not just Germany cracking down on speech. Germany’s harsh penalties for insulting politicians are just one piece of the puzzle. Brussels is getting in on the act too.
In 2023, the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) came into force. Under this law, major social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and X are required to purge illegal content and fight disinformation.
Illegal content covers a wide range: violence, promotion of illegal goods like drugs, explicit images (including of children), animal cruelty, privacy violations, copyright breaches, fraud, terrorism.
But the most sensitive categories involve hate speech, public safety threats, insults, and interference in democratic processes. And that’s where things get murky: where the risk of outright censorship looms large. Illegal content, according to the DSA, is non-negotiable. And because national laws define what’s illegal, that includes, for instance, insults against German politicians.
Who decides what gets censored?
Governments rarely police online content themselves. Instead, they delegate the job to non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which usually, conveniently, run on government funding. This arrangement keeps up the illusion that the state isn’t involved, reduces the apparent size of the public sector, and shields officials from accountability if something goes awry. But make no mistake — the funding tap is firmly in government hands.
A select group of trusted flaggers working for these NGO’s holds enormous responsibility. Their reports must be prioritised by platforms. In theory, a flagger simply reports content, and it’s up to the platform to decide what to do. In reality, platforms are overwhelmed, receiving hundreds of thousands of reports each year. German and French organisations like REspect! and e-Enfance lead the charge, flooding social media companies with takedown requests. If illegal content appears too often, the platform is in trouble. If it fails to act, it faces fines running into the billions.
Perverse incentives
There are several reasons to be wary of this system:
Platforms have little incentive to push back. Technically, they make the final decision on content removal. But realistically, they lack the time or willpower to scrutinise every flagged post. Instead, they rely on quick algorithmic filtering —especially at companies like Meta and X. One more deleted post means little to them. Only in sensitive cases, or when outrage erupts, do they start reviewing cases manually. If a user complains about a wrongful removal, platforms aren’t really affected. But if they fail to remove too many flagged posts, then they risk serious consequences. To stay safe, they’re likely over-censoring. This is censorship by proxy: social media firms erring on the side of caution, silencing more speech than necessary just to avoid trouble.
Flaggers are funded by governments. That means content a government dislikes is at greater risk of being flagged, even if it’s not actually illegal. The system creates an incentive to police speech beyond legal boundaries.
The boundaries of free speech are incredibly complex. Even top-tier lawyers struggle to navigate the fine line between free speech and illegal speech. Courts have overturned numerous prosecutions for controversial statements. Yet now, this delicate judgment call is being handed to NGO flaggers, who have little legal training. Worse, there’s a real risk they’re driven by activism. After all, why would someone take this job if they weren’t idealistically driven?
The process is opaque. While we see overall statistics on flagged content, we can’t see the individual reports. We have no way to verify whether takedown requests are legitimate. Given that these flaggers operate with public funds, there should be full transparency. The public should be able to review every flagged post. But, of course, that’s not how the system works.
Fact-checking or political gatekeeping?
To lead the fight against disinformation, the EU established the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO). This organisation enlists fact-checkers to monitor and assess misleading content on social media.
EDMO currently focuses on detecting misinformation in key areas: climate change, the war in Ukraine, Israel and the Arab world, the European Union, immigration, COVID-19, and LGBTQ+ and gender issues. These are, unsurprisingly, the main battlegrounds in the culture wars between left and right. From personal observation, most of the flagged disinformation tends to come from right-wing sources. That’s not necessarily surprising. Left-wing and mainstream narratives are more institutionalised and controlled, while right-wing content is often more scattered and chaotic. But the way misinformation is handled suggests that Brussels is picking sides.
This impression is reinforced by EDMO’s mistakes. For example, the Dutch public broadcast Pointer, funded by EDMO to track misinformation, falsely accused several podcasts of spreading medical falsehoods. The accusations turned out to be unfounded, the result of amateurish fact-checking.
The war on disinformation
Under the DSA, posts flagged as disinformation must be labelled with warnings, have their visibility restricted, or be removed entirely. Platforms are responsible for deciding their own approach, but they are also expected to crack down on certain narratives.
But what is disinformation, exactly? Politicians often point to foreign adversaries targeting Europe’s open societies. It’s true that such propaganda outlets exist, and some foreign actors attempt to manipulate public opinion. But blatant foreign meddling is usually so obvious that hardly anyone falls for it. And much of the so-called troll factory content barely made any meaningful impact.
The public doesn’t seem as gullible as Brussels assumes, according to media scientists. Most people ignore sensationalist fake news. Everyone knows you should take social media claims with a pinch of salt. As long as citizens know where to find credible news sources, the threat of misinformation should not be exaggerated, these scientists say. What’s more crucial is ensuring there are trusted media outlets — free from manipulation, independently verified, and neutral.
A bigger problem is that the concept of disinformation is open to abuse by European governments themselves. Unpopular opinions or inconvenient news can easily be reframed as false information, fake news, propaganda, or foreign interference.
Consider the recent Romanian election, where allegations of foreign meddling led to a judicial review of the results, with only flimsy evidence.
Fighting misinformation or political censorship?
The way Brussels sees it, misinformation includes election interference, falsehoods about climate change, and messages that promote xenophobia. Under the guise of misinformation, opinions are being censored that don’t align with the official narrative.
For example, this is the official EU policy on climate disinformation:
Anyone who therefore dares to be sceptical about the origins or the impact of climate change can — and eventually will — be censored under EU law.
The volatility of truth
If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it’s how far authorities will go in silencing dissent and suppressing what they deem to be disinformation. During the pandemic, social media platforms — under pressure from governments — actively censored users. Views that challenged official narratives were algorithmically suppressed or outright removed. Many accounts were even deactivated.
This led to serious blunders. Well into 2021, if you suggested on social media that vaccinated people could still spread the virus, or that natural infection might provide comparable or even superior immunity, your post was bound to be flagged as misinformation. Yet, as time went on, authorities were forced to admit that these claims were, in fact, correct. Even doctors and scientists who had been telling the truth were silenced. Simply because their statements didn’t align with the official line at the time.
No reasonable person supports disinformation. But where do you draw the line? What one person sees as healthy climate scepticism, another sees as a threat to humanity. What one person considers a rational critique of mass migration from Islamic countries, another views as racism and hate speech. These are debates worth having. But when certain opinions are declared off-limits and suppressed outright, we hinder the process of truth-seeking itself.
What is “false” today might be true tomorrow. Progress in knowledge often comes from dissenting voices. Censorship can — and will — be applied based on incorrect information. Trusting governments with power over speech is dangerously naïve.
The DSA as a political tool
It’s becoming increasingly clear that Brussels wants to use the DSA as a political tool. In August 2024, Thierry Breton, the EU Commissioner responsible for the DSA, publicly warned Elon Musk, who wanted to record a live broadcast with Donald Trump, that he was being “monitored.” Breton reminded Musk to watch out for hate speech, unrest, incitement to violence, and disinformation. It was hard not to interpret this as an attempt to intimidate Musk and interfere in the U.S. elections.
The pattern repeated in January 2025. In the lead-up to the German elections, Musk announced a live-streamed conversation with the leader of the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. Again, Breton issued a thinly veiled threat. The message was clear: Brussels will not hesitate to crack down on conservative, libertarian, anti-migration, or anti-globalist voices. You don’t have to be a supporter of these voices to see the issue here.
Russian media banned from view
But it isn’t just the DSA. Since the invasion of Ukraine, we can no longer hear the Russian side of the story. Six Russian media channels (including Russia Today) have been outright blocked in the EU. We simply don’t have access to them anymore.
Let’s be clear: these channels do peddle shameless lies and propaganda. That’s not up for debate. But Brussels has decided that we need protection from them. That we shouldn’t even be allowed to watch and make up our own minds.
The message is unmistakable: we’re being treated like naive infants, incapable of critical thinking. Like fools who need Brussels to shield us from dangerous narratives.
Call it what you like. I call it censorship, plain and simple.
Brussels won’t stop
And it’s not slowing down. As a former European Commission president Juncker once quipped:
We decide on something, leave it lying around, and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don’t understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back.
In May 2024, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen delivered a speech making it clear that she wanted to double down. Not only should the Digital Services Act be enforced more aggressively, she also hinted at a new frontier: prebunking, to protect Europeans from harmful disinformation. With prebunking, media users are taught to recognise manipulation, but prebunking itself can also end up in manipulation.
And who is Brussels most concerned about? The political right. Right-wing views are usually framed as far-right, excluded from mainstream debate, and pushed to the margins. If this only applied to a fringe of radical extremists, it might not be cause for major concern. But when 20% of the electorate — people often with legitimate concerns and well-argued positions — are effectively shut out of discussion, the system is broken. This isn’t democracy; it’s Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. A world where the bureaucracy dictates what the citizen is allowed to believe.
The final takeaway
Censorship is most effective when you don’t notice it. It creates a carefully curated reality, one that feels comprehensive and unshakable. The average citizen believes they are well-informed because they consume news from multiple sources. And anything contradicting their worldview? That must be false. After all, if it were true, they would have heard about it before. Just look at the reaction to Vice President Vance’s speech: denial, outrage, and the usual cries of “look who’s talking.” Few cared to address his concerns.
Brussels’ approach to censorship has been astonishingly successful. Most people don’t even realise that it exists. This article aimed to challenge that assumption. Because, whether by design or by well-intentioned paternalism, the EU is quietly and increasingly shaping the flow of information. And Mrs. Von der Leyen isn’t satisfied yet. The net must be pulled even tighter. Her motivations? Hard to say.
What is visible is increasing polarisation, hardened opinions, and escalating culture wars. But do you solve that with prebunking — with preemptive ideological filtering? If anything, I’d argue the opposite. Anti-establishment movements are gaining ground everywhere. Not everyone supports the globalist agenda, generous asylum policies, or radical climate action. And if you muzzle dissent and dismiss opponents as far-right, you only fuel more division and resentment.
Surely, that’s not the goal… or is it?
For further reading
George Orwell, Nineteen eighty-four (1949)
Paul Coleman, Censored. How European “hate speech” laws are threatening freedom of speech (2012/2016)
Alexander Heinze, Böhmermann, FC Bayern und eine Strafgesetzgebung auf Zuruf, Legal Tribune Online (2019)
Christian Rühs, Gegen Personen des politischen Lebens gerichtete Beleidigung, üble Nachrede und Verleumdung: Welches Rechtsgut wird durch § 188 StGB geschützt?, Zeitschrift für Internationale Strafrechtswissenschaft (2022)
Science Media Center Germany, Die Verbreitung von Desinformation (2022)
Bart Collard, Het recht op misinformatie (2023)
Bart Collard, Het is niet fatsoenlijk om mensen te beledigen, maar waarom is het strafbaar?, Wynia’s Week (2024)
Lukas de Koster, Beleidigung als Gefährdung des politischen Wirkens?, Legal Tribune Online (2024)
Josef Franz Lindner, Trusted Flagger als Gefahr für die Meinungsfreiheit, Verfassungsblog (2024)
This was the first episode in a new series, on censorship and freedom of speech. The next episode will be published in a few weeks, and will be about the history of censorship in Europe.
Previously, I announced the final episode in the series on liberty and coercion, but that will take a while longer.