EU Europe is increasingly abandoning a civilized approach to dissenting opinions.
The raid on the Paris offices of Elon Musk’s company X appears to be just the tip of the iceberg. Today, those who resist are being attacked on multiple levels, while those who submit are largely spared. It is time to increase pressure on Brussels.
Elon Musk’s communications platform X has become caught between systemic fronts. On one side stands the American understanding of free speech, which has experienced a political revival under Donald Trump’s new presidency.
On the other, an increasingly repressive EU control regime is eroding the balance of power between state apparatus and citizen.
Given the openly visible economic decline of the European economic model and growing criticism of the long-derailed Ukraine engagement, open confrontations were foreseeable. Defeats and personal accountability are unknown concepts in the EU power circle.
Citizen sovereignty, anchored in the principle of free speech, inevitably triggers resistance among those whose influence rests on controlling public discourse and economic interests.
Against this backdrop, the allegations against X are easy to see through. Once again, they revolve around depictions of sexualized violence against children or image manipulation using artificial intelligence, specifically the integration of the platform application Grok.
To crown it all, the European Union, in this case via France as executor of Brussels’ interests, is even attempting to accuse Elon Musk of Holocaust denial.
This is explicitly not about relativizing the most reprehensible behavior. Prosecuting such crimes is the task of prosecutors, police investigations, and the application of existing criminal law.
But the Europeans’ vector of attack is different. It is clearly politically motivated. The detention of Telegram founder Pavel Durov in France last year points in the same direction. Free communication spaces are no longer to exist where European citizens can exchange ideas unchecked, coordinate opposition positions, and publicly organize against the Brussels central apparatus.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron, whose presidency is widely seen as bloodless and politically exhausted, throws up a smokescreen in this situation, attempting with the attack on X to kill two birds with one stone. The maneuver is transparent.
Double Standards
How openly European actors have positioned themselves against free speech was shown by the travel ban imposed last year by the Americans on former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton. Breton had publicly called for restrictions on communication freedom, seeing it as a risk to European elections.
In doing so, Breton naïvely described the tactics and background of Brussels’ repression policy and confirmed suspicions of manipulation of free elections in the EU.
He repeatedly invoked the now-worn argument of protection against disinformation, hate, and incitement—a long-exhausted and transparent maneuver. In this logic, disinformation ultimately includes anything that critically challenges Brussels’ centralist course.
It is noteworthy that X now faces multiple heavy fines from the EU Commission for these allegations, while comparable cases are treated with obvious inequality. The attacks are orchestrated on multiple levels, both financially and morally.
In the case of Mark Zuckerberg’s company Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, Brussels has been considerably more lenient, even though phenomena such as grooming for child sexual abuse and fraudulent advertising are clearly systemic.
Meta broadly aligns with European rules, as does LinkedIn. Accordingly, Brussels sometimes turns a blind eye when things get tricky.
The company has adapted to digital regulations, aligned its moderation, reporting, and risk management structures closely with EU requirements, works intensively with European supervisory authorities, proactively implements DSA obligations, and has repeatedly tightened its community standards in accordance with European regulation.
Here, the full hypocrisy of European authorities becomes apparent. Their aim is not the systematic prosecution of criminals on digital platforms. The goal is to cut off the peak of criticism of their own regime—essentially beheading the most prominent voices before a genuine opposition can form online.
The irony: European censorship policy must have seemed like a new form of colonialism to Americans. During President Joe Biden’s years in office, Washington submitted almost willingly. The result was that European censorship and compliance rules suddenly applied to American users as well.
The new leadership in Washington demonstrates independence from European influence and confronts the conflict with Brussels openly—no matter how unfairly it is conducted. From an American perspective, Macron’s defiance and Brussels’ frantic countermeasures increasingly appear grotesque.
European Power Politics
Psychologist J. W. Brehm called this marked defiance in individuals “reactance.” Given the EU’s geopolitical and economic inferiority, its representatives, including Ursula von der Leyen and Emmanuel Macron, act less rationally than instinctively.
At its core, it is about restoring an illusion of autonomy and preserving public dignity. This impulse intensifies the more the limits of their political actions are exposed.
The protagonists of the European control and censorship apparatus, often after hermetically closed political careers, are encountering open resistance for the first time.
Accordingly, they seize almost any opportunity to personalize this resistance in the figure of U.S. President Donald Trump and demonize him in the media.
The chronology of escalation can be traced clearly since U.S. Vice President J. D. Vance’s appearance last year at the Munich Security Conference.
Vance spoke unusually bluntly, accusing the EU of waging an open battle against the free speech of its citizens. Subsequently, the U.S. government imposed tariffs for the first time in an economic dispute with the EU.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio then activated diplomatic initiatives against what Washington considers European censorship policy. The confrontation culminated last fall in a trade deal perceived by Europeans as the maximum humiliation of an entirely incompetent political leadership.
Brussels has repeatedly responded with the described reactance pattern—in an attempt to assert itself before its own public, without realizing that a political system increasingly pressuring its own citizens loses trust and legitimacy in the long term.
On the side of resistance, Europe has grown conspicuously quiet. Even former champions of freedom are falling silent in the face of increasingly open repression, which in the UK can lead to politically inconvenient comments in online forums resulting in criminal charges or even arrests.
By embedding a deliberately vague gray zone under the labels of “hate and incitement,” censors have shown remarkable creativity. Under this interpretive framework, nearly anything can be subsumed that does not fit the rigged cards of Brussels and European capitals.
Against this backdrop, it seems logical that voices in the United States are calling for the open conflict with the EU—or with individual nation-states like France—over free speech issues to be met with an even harsher tariff regime. Learning through pain.
The citizens of the European Union pay a high price for a regime that suffocates dissent. Those insisting on free exchange encounter Brussels’ resistance—and must realize: in this game, it is no longer about protecting children, but about establishing a surveillance state.
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Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/Germany, is a graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.
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