US bars five Europeans over alleged efforts to ‘censor American viewpoints’

Five Europeans have been subject to visa bans by the US, including a former European Union commissioner, for allegedly pressuring tech companies to censor and suppress “American viewpoints” they oppose.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio referred to the individuals as “radical activists” who engaged in “advanced censorship crackdowns” against “American speakers and businesses” in a statement released on Tuesday.

Ideologues in Europe have been spearheading coordinated efforts for far too long to impose American views on platforms they oppose, he said on X.

He continued, “The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious extraterritorial censorship.”

Thierry Breton, who served as the internal market’s European commissioner from 2019 to 2019, was the most notable target.

The French businessman is referred to as the “mastermind” behind the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a landmark law designed to combat hateful speech, misinformation, and disinformation on online platforms, by Sarah Rogers, the undersecretary for public diplomacy.

Prior to an interview Musk conducted with Trump during the last year’s presidential campaign, Rogers claimed Breton had threatened Elon Musk, the owner of X and close ally of US President Donald Trump.

“Witch hunt”

In a post on X, Breton criticized the visa ban, calling it a “witch hunt” and drawing comparisons to the McCarthy era, in which officials were allegedly forced out of the government due to ties to communism.

Censorship, he said, “isn’t where you think it is,” to our American friends.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate’s CEO Imran Ahmed, Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, German organization leaders, and Global Disinformation Index (GDI) director Clare Melford, are also named by Rogers.

Jean-Noel Barrot, the French minister for Europe and foreign affairs, “strongly” condemned the visa restrictions, claiming that the EU “cannot allow the rules governing their digital space to be imposed on them by others.” He emphasized that the DSA “has no extraterritorial reach and in any way affects the United States” and that it was “democratically adopted in Europe.”

The visa bans were cited by HateAid’s Ballon and von Holdenberg as an attempt to impede US companies operating in Europe from enforcing European law.

A government that uses censorship allegations to silence those who fight for human rights and freedom of expression, they said in a statement.

The GDI’s spokesperson added that the US action was “an authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship,” as well as “immoral, unlawful, and un-American.”

The Trump administration published a National Security Strategy that accused European leaders of censoring free speech and repressing opposition to immigration policies, accusing them of risking “civilizational erasure” for the continent.

The DSA has become a hot button in US-EU relations in particular, with US conservatives calling it a tool of censorship of right-wing ideas in Europe and elsewhere, a claim Brussels refutes.

Major platforms are required by the legislation to explain content-moderation decisions, provide transparency for users, and grant researchers access to study subjects like children’s exposure to dangerous content.

After the EU fined Musk’s X for breaking DSA guidelines for transparency in advertising and its methods to ensure users were verified and real people, tensions grew even more this month.

Washington last week made the case that important European companies, including Accenture, DHL, Mistral, Siemens, and Spotify, might be targeted in response.

The US has also criticised the UK’s Online Safety Act, which mandates similar content management standards for major social media platforms.

The UK’s tech cooperation agreement was terminated last week by the White House because it stifled its implementation.

Source: Aljazeera