[Quotes from J.D. Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference, on 14 Feb 2025, a perfect Orwellian achievement in newspeak!]
“It looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion, or, God forbid, vote a different way, or, even worse, win an election”
“…when we see European courts cancelling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. (…) If your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with”
“There is no room for firewalls [against the far-right AfD] People dismissing voters’ concerns, shutting down their media, protects nothing. It is the most surefire way to destroy democracy.”
“I look to Brussels, where E.U. Commission commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they judge to be ‘hateful content,’ or to [Germany], where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of ‘combating misogyny.’”
“in Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat (…) the United Kingdom backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs”
“The Scottish government has begun distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. The government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe.”
Mathias Drton from TUM pointed out this opening in his department:
