Latest news with #SamuelSamson
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
US state department told to end nearly all its overseas pro-democracy programs
The US state department has been advised to terminate grants to nearly all remaining programs awarded under the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), which would effectively end the department's role in funding pro-democracy programming in some of the world's most hostile totalitarian nations. The review could affect nearly $1.3bn in grants, three state department officials told the Guardian, citing briefings on the results of a Foreign Assistance Review produced by the office of management and budget (OMB). Of 391 active grants, only two were not recommended to be cut, the officials said. They concerned one program in China and one in Yemen. The recommendations would 'terminate about 80% of all US government foreign assistance at the state department', said a state department official briefed on the findings of the review. Related: State department ramps up Trump anti-immigration agenda with new 'remigration' office In a separate incident this week, a new senior adviser to DRL recommended that the bureau's leadership use funds earmarked by Congress for foreign assistance to cover pet projects for the administration including the resettlement of Afrikaners to the United States and to support the legal defense of the rightwing French politician Marine Le Pen. According to the state department officials, Samuel Samson, a recent college graduate appointed as senior adviser to the bureau under the new administration, made the recommendations on a DRL white paper being drafted to program hundreds of millions of dollars in congressional funding before they expire later this year. Samson, one of a number of young conservatives to rise under the Trump administration, reflects the White House's changing priorities for foreign assistance. He recently wrote a controversial post on the state department's Substack page titled The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe in which he also criticised the labeling of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party as an 'extremist' organisation, saying that this 'environment also restricts Europe's elections'. It is not clear whether his recommendations were adopted by DRL's leadership in the white paper. Samson led a state department delegation that met with senior officials from Le Pen's party National Rally in late May, but the US offer to publicly support Le Pen was rebuffed by her allies, Reuters reported. Samson did not meet with Le Pen personally, the agency reported. Most of DRL programs facing termination are not listed publicly because they support vulnerable individuals or minorities in nations with authoritarian governments that could retaliate against recipients of US aid. But the secretary of state, Marco Rubio – along with staffers from the so-called 'department of government efficiency' – named some programs cut in previous reviews of foreign assistance, an act that state department officials have said could put the recipients of that aid at risk. Some of the programs targeted under the OMB review would include a rapid response team meant to support pro-democracy activists abroad who may require urgent relocation or other protection if their lives are deemed to be in danger. The programs 'provide a lifeline to organizers and civil society doing the work to try to bring democratic values to these countries', one source said, adding that they referred to places like Cuba and Venezuela. Other programs focus on internet censorship, media literacy, human rights and atrocity prevention programs, election assistance programs, and efforts to combat transnational repression by countries such as China. In response to a request for comment, a senior state department official said: 'The provision of any foreign assistance, including for democracy programming, will be guided by whether it makes America safer, stronger, and more prosperous.' Termination orders for the grants recommended to be cut by the OMB could be sent imminently, but may be delayed if contested by Rubio. Rubio in the past was a passionate defender of foreign assistance but has helped cut the bureau's programming since joining the Trump administration. The sources said that DRL's leadership and the state department's office of foreign assistance, informally called 'F', were in 'shock' over the results of the OMB review. The fight reflects the divisions within the Trump administration between foreign policy hawks like Rubio, who have tailored their views on foreign assistance to the new administration, and hardline conservatives like the OMB director, Russell Vought, who have sought to use the 'power of the purse' to rein in and slash government spending. 'It's a fight between Rubio and Vought,' one person said. The results of the review were delivered to DRL only after Vought gave testimony before a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday, during which he claimed that the state department grants for foreign assistance remained active. The results of the OMB foreign assistance review arrived just days before the state department is set to lay off as many as 3,400 employees and eliminate or consolidate about 300 offices under a major reorganisation ordered by Rubio that he said would bring the department into line with Donald Trump's 'America First' agenda. Under the reorganization, DRL is expected to be gutted. The sources said that eliminating the aid programs could make it easier to process layoffs (called reductions in force, or RIFs) for DRL employees by relieving them of budgets for the programs that they administer. 'If you cut all the programs in DRL, then, why would you need to keep the staff if they're not doing any work,' one person said. It would also make it difficult for the bureau to appeal terminated awards because the employees responsible for that would have been laid off and no longer have access to their state department emails. Ten Democratic senators earlier this month called on Rubio to preserve the state department's human rights bureau. They criticised Rubio for proposing the reorganization that would shutter most offices in DRL and for abandoning his past support for pro-democracy programming around the world. 'The proposed reorganization would result in a structural and substantive demotion of human rights promotion that runs counter to the spirit of the law and your personal legacy working on these issues,' they wrote. 'As you stated in the subcommittee hearing previously mentioned, 'millions of people around the world who live in societies dominated by fear and oppression look to the United States of America to champion their cause to fully exercise their God-given rights,'' they wrote. 'There are no greater champions more capable of advancing this noble cause than the dedicated staff in DRL.'
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The fascinating backstory behind a bizarre State Department Substack post
Last week, the State Department published a strikingly radical screed on its official Substack. Titled 'The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe,' the piece accused Europe's governments of waging 'an aggressive campaign against Western civilization itself.' These Western nations, according to author Samuel Samson, have turned on their own heritage: abandoning democracy in favor of a repressive liberalism that threatens to snuff out the heart of their own civilization. 'The global liberal project is not enabling the flourishing of democracy. Rather, it is trampling democracy, and Western heritage along with it, in the name of a decadent governing class afraid of its own people,' Samson writes. Samson asserts that German and French criminal investigations into far-right factions are politically motivated repression, but provides no evidence to support this extraordinary claim about the internal politics of key allies. He inflates the (real) problems with free speech law in Britain, while whitewashing the only authoritarian state in the European Union (right-wing Hungary). He presents a bizarre intellectual history of the Declaration of Independence, replacing Jefferson's chief influences (Enlightenment liberals) with Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas. The essay isn't just poorly argued: It has policy implications. Samson both insults and threatens allied governments, implying there will be some kind of US punishment if European states do not change their policies on free speech, election administration, and (for some reason) migration. 'Secretary Rubio has made clear that the State Department will always act in America's national interest. Europe's democratic backsliding not only impacts European citizens but increasingly affects American security and economic ties, along with the free speech rights of American citizens and companies,' he writes. 'We will not always agree on scope and tactics, but tangible actions by European governments to guarantee protection for political and religious speech, secure borders, and fair elections would serve as welcome steps forward.' Samuel Samson's title is 'Senior Advisor for the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor,' but he is not an experienced diplomat. In fact, he is a 2021 college graduate with no background in European affairs or foreign policy. His last job was 'Director of Strategic Partnerships' (a fundraising position) for American Moment, a right-wing organization dedicated to identifying Trump-aligned young people for junior staff jobs. But while Samson's path to shaping US-European relations is unconventional, it is hardly unintended. His own publicly available writing suggests that it is the result of a deliberate strategy — an effort to seed the US government with radical opponents of philosophical liberalism who aim to replace it with a form of illiberal Christian government. Samson described this strategy, in a 2021 essay, as 'the infiltration of liberalism's powerful institutions by right-wing post-liberal agents.' He said the strategy was worth pursuing, and that American Moment was an organization dedicated to turning the basic idea into 'tangible action.' (Neither State nor American Moment responded to requests for comment.) His ascent in the State Department is concrete evidence that this radical right strategy of 'entryism' — a small group trying to join another organization with the attempt of changing it from within — is yielding dividends. So when the State Department published Samson's piece on its Substack, it sent an unmistakable message not just to Europe but to likeminded right-wing radicals: They could begin more openly planting their flag atop conquered territory. About a decade ago, Harvard Law School professor Adrian Vermeule became famous for advocating an idea called 'integralism:' basically, a right-wing Catholic doctrine that calls for the abolition of the barrier between church and state. He viewed liberalism, in the philosophical sense, as an abomination, its obsession with rights and freedoms fundamentally corrosive of the 'traditional' moral values that Vermeule believes are essential for human flourishing. The only solution was to infuse the state with religious values — specifically, conservative Catholic ones. But how could you possibly get to such a society in the United States, where 20 percent of the population is Catholic — most of whom are themselves not Vermeule disciples? His answer, which he calls either 'ralliement' or 'integration from within,' is an entryist campaign targeting the bureaucracy. You get a few key people into positions of power, and then they quietly nudge the citizenry toward a place where they will accept some kind of 'postliberal' state. 'The vast bureaucracy created by liberalism in pursuit of a mirage of depoliticized governance may, by the invisible hand of Providence, be turned to new ends, becoming the great instrument with which to restore a substantive politics of the good,' Vermeule wrote in a 2018 essay. These arguments helped make Vermeuele a leading voice in the so-called postliberal movement: a loose group of right-wing religious conservatives who shared his radical critique of our current political institutions (if not his integralist solution). Postliberal ideas became particularly popular among young conservatives, who felt that the pre-Trump conservative consensus was exhausted and out of date. Samuel Samson was one of them. After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin in 2021, he took a one-year junior fellowship at the Thomistic Institute — a Catholic think tank in Washington, DC, associated with the Dominican order of monks. During that fellowship, he penned a piece for the American Spectator in which he endorsed Vermeule's strategy for taking liberalism down. Calling Vermeuele's ideas 'the popular blueprint for America's burgeoning post-liberal right,' Samson wrote that 'I believe the offensive strategy is…worth our effort.' His concern, however, is that the strategy risks corruption: that young bureaucrats and Hill staffers residing in Washington will be corrupted by living in a place defined by liberal values. 'The strategy's offensive nature requires its agents to dwell for extended periods, even lifetimes, within the nucleus of American liberalism,' he writes. 'As such, the strategy brings agents into full contact with the temptations of liberalism — sirens singing alluring songs of pleasure, sexual license, material gain, power, prestige, and social inclusion — beckoning the agent to direct the project to new, less-wholesome ends.' It is a sign that a truly radical ideological movement has begun successfully executing on its stated strategy for entering the political mainstream. Samson's solution to this danger is for radical entryists to engage in study. 'Read great books of the Western, Christian, and Classical traditions — as well as those that oppose them,' he writes. 'Yes, the practical skills of networking, legislating, and orating are important too, but detached from speculative truth, they are all functionally worthless.' Somewhat ironically, Samson's next move was to become a fundraiser. But the organization he would work for, American Moment, was one that Samson believed furthered the Vermeule mission. Founded in 2021 by three young conservatives — Saurabh Sharma, Nick Solheim, and Jake Mercier — American Moment was inspired by an essay written in 2020 by now-Vice President JD Vance. Vance argued that the conservative movement was trapped by its own donors: that the entire professional infrastructure of the right was forced, by power of money, into organizations who supported the open approach to trade and migration that the Trump movement opposed. 'Real change,' Vance wrote, would require that we come to grips with the fact that so much of Conservatism, Inc. depends on the status quo.' Sharma, Solheim, and Mercier built American Moment to try and end that dependence: to build a cadre of populist junior staffers. With Vance on their board, they created a database of like-minded young people to hire for early career positions, a fellowship program to bring young right-wing populists to DC, and even hosted social events to create a more robust right-wing youth culture in the capital. Their efforts have been reasonably successful. American Moment worked on Project 2025, and Sharma is currently serving as a special adviser to the Presidential Policy Office (which supervises hiring of executive branch political appointees). American Moment is not exactly as Samson described it before he worked there. While his 2021 essay claimed it was built to implement Vermeule's integralist ideas, its leaders took a more ecumenical approach. They elevated conservatives from all sorts of different right-wing subcultures, not just Catholic postliberals, so long as they had the right Trump-friendly policy views. 'The basic approach of, 'Well, we're going to do our -ism and do politics that way' falls apart,' Sharma told Politico's Ian Ward in 2023. 'You're basically signing yourself up to be a loud but ultimately defeated minority.' Yet the fact that an integralist like Samson was able to succeed there, and then use it as a jumping-off point to a senior position in the Trump administration, suggests it facilitated the success of Vermeule-inspired righties. Attempts to build a more Trump-friendly set of conservative cadres would invariably create opportunities for radical young right-wingers, especially if they were already thinking about entryist strategies for politics. That elements of the top leadership were sympathetic — most notably Vance, a self-described 'postliberal' deeply influenced by Vermeuele's ideological allies — surely helped things along. The State Department op-ed, in short, is not a one-off. It is a sign that a truly radical ideological movement has begun successfully executing on its stated strategy for entering the political mainstream. This story was adapted for the On the Right newsletter. New editions drop every Wednesday. Sign up here.
Vox
04-06-2025
- Business
- Vox
The fascinating backstory behind a bizarre State Department Substack post
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers ideology and challenges to democracy, both at home and abroad. His book on democracy,, was published 0n July 16. You can purchase it here. 'The global liberal project is not enabling the flourishing of democracy. Rather, it is trampling democracy,' a State Department employee wrote on Substack. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images Last week, the State Department published a strikingly radical screed on its official Substack. Titled 'The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe,' the piece accused Europe's governments of waging 'an aggressive campaign against Western civilization itself.' These Western nations, according to author Samuel Samson, have turned on their own heritage: abandoning democracy in favor of a repressive liberalism that threatens to snuff out the heart of their own civilization. 'The global liberal project is not enabling the flourishing of democracy. Rather, it is trampling democracy, and Western heritage along with it, in the name of a decadent governing class afraid of its own people,' Samson writes. Samson asserts that German and French criminal investigations into far-right factions are politically motivated repression, but provides no evidence to support this extraordinary claim about the internal politics of key allies. He inflates the (real) problems with free speech law in Britain, while whitewashing the only authoritarian state in the European Union (right-wing Hungary). He presents a bizarre intellectual history of the Declaration of Independence, replacing Jefferson's chief influences (Enlightenment liberals) with Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas. The essay isn't just poorly argued: It has policy implications. Samson both insults and threatens allied governments, implying there will be some kind of US punishment if European states do not change their policies on free speech, election administration, and (for some reason) migration. 'Secretary Rubio has made clear that the State Department will always act in America's national interest. Europe's democratic backsliding not only impacts European citizens but increasingly affects American security and economic ties, along with the free speech rights of American citizens and companies,' he writes. 'We will not always agree on scope and tactics, but tangible actions by European governments to guarantee protection for political and religious speech, secure borders, and fair elections would serve as welcome steps forward.' Samuel Samson's title is 'Senior Advisor for the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor,' but he is not an experienced diplomat. In fact, he is a 2021 college graduate with no background in European affairs or foreign policy. His last job was 'Director of Strategic Partnerships' (a fundraising position) for American Moment, a right-wing organization dedicated to identifying Trump-aligned young people for junior staff jobs. But while Samson's path to shaping US-European relations is unconventional, it is hardly unintended. His own publicly available writing suggests that it is the result of a deliberate strategy — an effort to seed the US government with radical opponents of philosophical liberalism who aim to replace it with a form of illiberal Christian government. Samson described this strategy, in a 2021 essay, as 'the infiltration of liberalism's powerful institutions by right-wing post-liberal agents.' He said the strategy was worth pursuing, and that American Moment was an organization dedicated to turning the basic idea into 'tangible action.' (Neither State nor American Moment responded to requests for comment.) His ascent in the State Department is concrete evidence that this radical right strategy of 'entryism' — a small group trying to join another organization with the attempt of changing it from within — is yielding dividends. So when the State Department published Samson's piece on its Substack, it sent an unmistakable message not just to Europe but to likeminded right-wing radicals: They could begin more openly planting their flag atop conquered territory. The far-right's successful entryism About a decade ago, Harvard Law School professor Adrian Vermeule became famous for advocating an idea called 'integralism:' basically, a right-wing Catholic doctrine that calls for the abolition of the barrier between church and state. He viewed liberalism, in the philosophical sense, as an abomination, its obsession with rights and freedoms fundamentally corrosive of the 'traditional' moral values that Vermeule believes are essential for human flourishing. The only solution was to infuse the state with religious values — specifically, conservative Catholic ones. But how could you possibly get to such a society in the United States, where 20 percent of the population is Catholic — most of whom are themselves not Vermeule disciples? His answer, which he calls either 'ralliement' or 'integration from within,' is an entryist campaign targeting the bureaucracy. You get a few key people into positions of power, and then they quietly nudge the citizenry toward a place where they will accept some kind of 'postliberal' state. On the Right The ideas and trends driving the conservative movement, from senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. 'The vast bureaucracy created by liberalism in pursuit of a mirage of depoliticized governance may, by the invisible hand of Providence, be turned to new ends, becoming the great instrument with which to restore a substantive politics of the good,' Vermeule wrote in a 2018 essay. These arguments helped make Vermeuele a leading voice in the so-called postliberal movement: a loose group of right-wing religious conservatives who shared his radical critique of our current political institutions (if not his integralist solution). Postliberal ideas became particularly popular among young conservatives, who felt that the pre-Trump conservative consensus was exhausted and out of date. Samuel Samson was one of them. After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin in 2021, he took a one-year junior fellowship at the Thomistic Institute — a Catholic think tank in Washington, DC, associated with the Dominican order of monks. During that fellowship, he penned a piece for the American Spectator in which he endorsed Vermeule's strategy for taking liberalism down. Calling Vermeuele's ideas 'the popular blueprint for America's burgeoning post-liberal right,' Samson wrote that 'I believe the offensive strategy is…worth our effort.' His concern, however, is that the strategy risks corruption: that young bureaucrats and Hill staffers residing in Washington will be corrupted by living in a place defined by liberal values. 'The strategy's offensive nature requires its agents to dwell for extended periods, even lifetimes, within the nucleus of American liberalism,' he writes. 'As such, the strategy brings agents into full contact with the temptations of liberalism — sirens singing alluring songs of pleasure, sexual license, material gain, power, prestige, and social inclusion — beckoning the agent to direct the project to new, less-wholesome ends.' It is a sign that a truly radical ideological movement has begun successfully executing on its stated strategy for entering the political mainstream. Samson's solution to this danger is for radical entryists to engage in study. 'Read great books of the Western, Christian, and Classical traditions — as well as those that oppose them,' he writes. 'Yes, the practical skills of networking, legislating, and orating are important too, but detached from speculative truth, they are all functionally worthless.' Somewhat ironically, Samson's next move was to become a fundraiser. But the organization he would work for, American Moment, was one that Samson believed furthered the Vermeule mission. Founded in 2021 by three young conservatives — Saurabh Sharma, Nick Solheim, and Jake Mercier — American Moment was inspired by an essay written in 2020 by now-Vice President JD Vance. Vance argued that the conservative movement was trapped by its own donors: that the entire professional infrastructure of the right was forced, by power of money, into organizations who supported the open approach to trade and migration that the Trump movement opposed. 'Real change,' Vance wrote, would require that we come to grips with the fact that so much of Conservatism, Inc. depends on the status quo.' Sharma, Solheim, and Mercier built American Moment to try and end that dependence: to build a cadre of populist junior staffers. With Vance on their board, they created a database of like-minded young people to hire for early career positions, a fellowship program to bring young right-wing populists to DC, and even hosted social events to create a more robust right-wing youth culture in the capital. Their efforts have been reasonably successful. American Moment worked on Project 2025, and Sharma is currently serving as a special adviser to the Presidential Policy Office (which supervises hiring of executive branch political appointees). American Moment is not exactly as Samson described it before he worked there. While his 2021 essay claimed it was built to implement Vermeule's integralist ideas, its leaders took a more ecumenical approach. They elevated conservatives from all sorts of different right-wing subcultures, not just Catholic postliberals, so long as they had the right Trump-friendly policy views. 'The basic approach of, 'Well, we're going to do our -ism and do politics that way' falls apart,' Sharma told Politico's Ian Ward in 2023. 'You're basically signing yourself up to be a loud but ultimately defeated minority.' Yet the fact that an integralist like Samson was able to succeed there, and then use it as a jumping-off point to a senior position in the Trump administration, suggests it facilitated the success of Vermeule-inspired righties. Attempts to build a more Trump-friendly set of conservative cadres would invariably create opportunities for radical young right-wingers, especially if they were already thinking about entryist strategies for politics. That elements of the top leadership were sympathetic — most notably Vance, a self-described 'postliberal' deeply influenced by Vermeuele's ideological allies — surely helped things along. The State Department op-ed, in short, is not a one-off. It is a sign that a truly radical ideological movement has begun successfully executing on its stated strategy for entering the political mainstream.
Japan Times
02-06-2025
- General
- Japan Times
European kindness is threatening the foundations of free speech
Britain and Europe have become "a hotbed of digital censorship, mass migration, restrictions on religious freedom,' according to Samuel Samson, a senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. His punchy boss further threatens to bar European visitors to the U.S. for "censoring' Americans online. Vice President JD Vance also condemned European "backsliding' on basic democratic values in a speech that outraged his audience at the Munich Security Conference last autumn. It used to be liberal progressives and radicals who denounced the state for infringing freedom of speech. Now it's the turn of the populist right to rage against "woke' censorship. U.S. President Donald Trump's own respect for the democratic process is questionable and administration officials, contemptuous of academic and artistic freedoms at home, make unlikely ambassadors for human rights abroad. But what if these populists have a point? Alas, the U.K. and Europe should look hard at their protections of the rights of individuals to say whatever they please. Some governments who would regard themselves as liberal minded are in danger of stifling, if not killing, free speech, albeit out of kindness. That's where the muddle begins. In theory, all states, even totalitarian ones like North Korea and dictatorships like Russia, which murder truth-telling journalists, subscribe to Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights that states "everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference.' In practice, all states also have restrictions on freedom of speech, and rightly so. Shout "fire' in a crowded cinema out of mischief and you'll be held responsible for those trampled in the rush for the exit; incite a crowd to lynch a victim and you'll spend many years behind bars. Individuals also have the right to protection against libel, slander and harassment. This is the stuff of a thousand philosophy seminars. But balancing individual rights with social responsibility is harder than it looks. The U.S. Supreme Court has made a better fist of it than most by extending First Amendment protections for free speech in recent decades, ruling that the authorities may only prosecute inflammatory speech that's "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.' Several European governments, however, have now tilted in the wrong direction — toward censorship and overreach. Germany goes to absurd lengths to protect its political class from personal abuse, for instance. France and Italy have similar laws. In the U.K., however, the desire to promote social harmony and protect minorities has taken precedence over free speech. So, a retired police officer was arrested in his Kent home by a posse of former colleagues for a wry tweet about pro-Palestinian demonstrators. As his home was ransacked, the police commented on his suspiciously Brexit-y reading material. In another notorious incident that made the front pages, a couple were held for eight hours at a police station for writing WhatApp messages and posting salty criticism of their daughter's primary school. Unfortunately, these aren't isolated incidents of overzealous authorities. Another cause celebre of the populist right on both sides of the Atlantic is the case of Lucy Connolly, the wife of a Conservative councilor who was jailed for 31 months for a public order offense. Yet she's no free speech martyr. After three children were murdered in a knife attack in Southport last year, Connolly wrongly assumed the assailant was an immigrant — he was the son of refugees from Rwanda — and tweeted on X calling for mass deportations and inciting people to set fire to hotels housing immigrants. The post was viewed more than 300,000 times on a day when racist thugs attacked mosques and migrant hostels. Judges are the ultimate guardians of the rule of law, the fertile ground out of which both British and American democracy grew. The courts therefore come down hard on those who threaten public order. Connolly's sentence was intended to be exemplary, but it was at the extreme range of censure — and should have been reduced on appeal. Confused thinking and badly drafted legislation lies behind the U.K.'s recent illiberal tilt. Hate crime is now defined by law as "any criminal offense perceived by the victim or any person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic.' Such vague, subjective criteria should have no place on the statute book. As Jonathan Sumption, a former supreme court justice puts it: "Words may now be criminal if they are abusive or even insulting, even if they are not threatening and put no one in danger.' At the root of much of this is poorly written legislation. The concept of "noncrime hate,' introduced after the racist murder of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence 30 years ago, also obliges the police to record incidents of so-called offensive speech that have no criminal penalty. The evidence, such as it is, can stay on file and be used in criminal record checks seen by potential employers. The College of Policing's Kafkaesque guidance states "the victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception' — a charter for aggrieved individuals to pursue private vendettas. Ten of thousands of police hours are devoted to noncrime hate; 13,200 incidents were recorded by police in the year to June 2024. It's easy to collect the evidence because most of it is posted online — far easier than tracking down violent criminals, burglars and fraudsters. So while police chiefs went public in the media this week with demands for more money from the Treasury, the government should be asking whether officers are making best use of their existing budgets. Unfortunately, things look likely to get worse before they get better. The Labour government's new employment bill includes provisions to require employers to take "all reasonable' steps to prevent harassment of staff at work by clients and customers, including "overheard conversations' — a boggy territory which strips out context and relies heavily on subjective impressions about what was heard. How will free speech in bars and pubs be monitored in practice? Prime Minister Keir Starmer made his reputation as a lawyer by taking on corporations trying to stifle free speech. He needs to be alert to the wider context in which this legislation is being proposed, ideally calling for a review that would halt the pernicious drift toward limiting freedom of speech for fear of causing minor offense. Martin Ivens is the editor of the Times Literary Supplement. Previously, he was editor of the Sunday Times of London and its chief political commentator.
Mint
31-05-2025
- Politics
- Mint
European Kindness Is Threatening Freedom of Speech
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Britain and Europe have become 'a hotbed of digital censorship, mass migration, restrictions on religious freedom,' according to Samuel Samson, a senior adviser to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. His punchy boss further threatens to bar European visitors to the US for 'censoring' Americans online. Vice President JD Vance also condemned European 'backsliding' on basic democratic values in a speech that outraged his audience at the Munich Security Conference last autumn. It used to be liberal progressives and radicals who denounced the state for infringing freedom of speech. Now it's the turn of the populist right to rage against 'woke' censorship. President Donald Trump's own respect for the democratic process is questionable, and administration officials, contemptuous of academic and artistic freedoms at home, make unlikely ambassadors for human rights abroad. But what if these populists have a point? Alas, the UK and Europe should look hard at their protections of the rights of individuals to say whatever they please. Some governments who would regard themselves as liberal minded are in danger of stifling, if not killing, free speech, albeit out of kindness. That's where the muddle begins. In theory, all states, even totalitarian ones like North Korea and dictatorships like Russia which murder truth-telling journalists, subscribe to Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights that states 'everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference.' In practice, all states also have restrictions on freedom of speech, and rightly so. Shout 'fire' in a crowded cinema out of mischief and you'll be held responsible for those trampled in the rush for the exit; incite a crowd to lynch a victim and you'll spend many years behind bars. Individuals also have the right to protection against libel, slander and harassment. This is the stuff of a thousand philosophy seminars. But balancing individual rights with social responsibility is harder than it looks. The US Supreme Court has made a better fist of it than most by extending First Amendment protections for free speech in recent decades, ruling that the authorities may only prosecute inflammatory speech that's 'directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and is likely to incite or produce such action.' Several European governments, however, have now tilted in the wrong direction — toward censorship and overreach. Germany goes to absurd lengths to protect its political class from personal abuse, for instance. France and Italy have similar laws. In the UK, however, the desire to promote social harmony and protect minorities has taken precedence over free speech. So, a retired police officer was arrested in his Kent home by a posse of former colleagues for a wry tweet about pro-Palestinian demonstrators. As his home was ransacked, the police commented on his suspiciously Brexit-y reading material. In another notorious incident that made the front pages, a couple were held for eight hours at a police station for writing WhatApp messages and posting salty criticism of their daughter's primary school. Unfortunately, these aren't isolated incidents of overzealous authorities. Another cause celebre of the populist right on both sides of the Atlantic is the case of Lucy Connolly, the wife of a Conservative councillor who was jailed for 31 months for a public order offence. Yet she's no free speech martyr. After three children were murdered in a knife attack in Southport last year, Connolly wrongly assumed the assailant was an immigrant — he was the son of refugees from Rwanda — and tweeted on X calling for mass deportations and inciting people to set fire to hotels housing immigrants. The post was viewed more than 300,000 times on a day when racist thugs attacked mosques and migrant hostels. Judges are the ultimate guardians of the rule of law, the fertile ground out of which both British and American democracy grew. The courts therefore come down hard on those who threaten public order. Connolly's sentence was intended to be exemplary, but it was at the extreme range of censure - and should have been reduced on appeal. Confused thinking and badly drafted legislation lies behind the UK's recent illiberal tilt. Hate crime is now defined by law as 'any criminal offence perceived by the victim or any person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic.' Such vague, subjective criteria should have no place on the statute book. As Jonathan Sumption, a former supreme court justice puts it: 'Words may now be criminal if they are abusive or even insulting, even if they are not threatening and put no one in danger.' At the root of much of this is poorly written legislation. The concept of 'non-crime hate,' introduced after the racist murder of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence 30 years ago, also obliges the police to record incidents of so-called offensive speech that have no criminal penalty. The evidence, such as it is, can stay on file and be used in criminal record checks seen by potential employers. The College of Policing's Kafkaesque guidance states 'the victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception' — a charter for aggrieved individuals to pursue private vendettas. Ten of thousands of police hours are devoted to non-crime hate; 13,200 incidents were recorded by police in the year to June 2024. It's easy to collect the evidence because most of it is posted online — far easier than tracking down violent criminals, burglars and fraudsters. So while police chiefs went public in the media this week with demands for more money from the Treasury, the government should be asking whether officers are making best use of their existing budgets. Unfortunately, things look likely to get worse before they get better. The Labour government's new employment bill includes provisions to require employers to take 'all reasonable' steps to prevent harassment of staff at work by clients and customers, including 'overheard conversations' - a boggy territory which strips out context and relies heavily on subjective impressions about what was heard. How will free speech in bars and pubs be monitored in practice? Prime Minister Keir Starmer made his reputation as a lawyer by taking on corporations trying to stifle free speech. He needs to be alert to the wider context in which this legislation is being proposed, ideally calling for a review that would halt the pernicious drift toward limiting freedom of speech for fear of causing minor offence. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Martin Ivens is the editor of the Times Literary Supplement. Previously, he was editor of the Sunday Times of London and its chief political commentator. More stories like this are available on
