Russia has staged assassinations on European soil using radioactive and chemical weapons. They've sabotaged civilian and military infrastructure (both digitally and physically), plotted to bomb civilian cargo flights, etc. How much farther should Russia and it's agents be allowed to go before they're considered security risks?
Try to find matches for the XX placeholders!
What’s concerning here isn’t “wrong opinions being criticized,” it’s administrative punishment without criminal process: loss of banking access, travel bans, and professional exclusion imposed by executive designation, justified after the fact as “they must be criminals anyway.” That logic works for any XX, and that’s exactly the problem.
This doesn’t make the EU “totalitarian,” but it does point to an illiberal drift where due process is treated as optional if the target is politically unsympathetic. The precedent matters more than the headcount. Once viewpoint + security assessment is enough to trigger real penalties, the boundary between law enforcement and political enforcement starts to blur, regardless of which XX you plug in.
My original intent was to show up a paradoxon: A group of 5 European NGO activists has been put under a travel ban by the US yesterday. Two of them are german members of an organisation called "HateAid", which provides psychological and legal support for victims of hate speech. They are blamed for supporting Internet censorship (= terrorism in US perception) and are therefore denied entry to the US.
Or, in other words: "We (US) censor them (EU) for supporting censorship."
BTW: I did some research about EU journalists or citizens losing bank access or being put under travel restrictions by administration. I couldn't find an example. Would be great if you could provide some background!
Yeah sure """journalists""", the list of individuals under sanction in the EU is small and usually there's a good reason they are in that list.
You should ask yourself the opposite, why people supporting Russian views in the EU often are from a criminal background?
For now excuse me but I won't cry for the poor money laundrers of the Russian mafia and their yachts.
This list is public as well, feel free to consult it.
The EU is hypocritical, and the restrictions on freedom you see in Russia are actually way less extreme versions of the exact same laws in the books in Europe. Europe did it first and Russia is way more reasonable about it.
I swear you’re not even very far from repeating a Steve Rosenberg Vladimir Putin exchange verbatim.
It would be kind of hilarious how gullible the tech libertarian bro demographic is to Russian propaganda if it wasn’t so sad and dangerous.
It sounds like you're talking about Red Media, which I had to look up on my own because of how vague your argument was to begin with.
The organization claims it has been targeted for the content of its reporting, although the German government says that it Red Media operates under the Turkish AFA Medya umbrella that has close ties to RT and Russian funding.
I think the obvious way to see which side deserves more grains of salt is to see if any other journalistic outlets have been sanctioned that report in similar ways. It seems like Germany has only sanctioned this specific media company that has obvious ties to Russia, not every outlet that has done Palestine-sympathetic or Israel-skeptical reporting.
https://perspektive-online.net/2025/05/nach-politischem-und-...
He did the same with African Stream under the same allegations.
https://westafricaweekly.com/meta-suspends-african-stream-ac...
It seems like the fact remains that Red Media is the only media outlet that has been hit by these direct government sanctions. If these sanctions were based on content and speech, there would be dozens of publications under these sanctions. There are even mainstream US publications that have published journalism critical of Israel’s role in the war.
For example, in many countries it's illegal to say that WWII concentration camps didn't exist.
In Belgium, a media can't make a publication that mocks the King.
"1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. [...]
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary."
To me it reads as "you have the right to free speech without interference by public authorities, except in all cases where public authorities want to interfere in whatever form and for whatever reason".
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2023/01/07/belgians-to-skip-jai...
Belgians are allowed to criticize the monarchy and the only protections the king has are the same defamation protections that every citizen has.
As far as being disallowed from denying the holocaust, there are very obvious good reasons for that law in Germany. I’d love for you to attempt to explain how it’s a bad thing without looking pro-fascist.
Remember the tolerance paradox. Tolerating intolerance is not something that promotes personal liberty and freedom.
> I’d love for you to attempt to explain how it’s a bad thing
I'm not here for that, I was just stating facts. Each country/culture/civilization has their own characterization of good and bad.
Some goes as far as saying that tolerance for everything is "good" and that if you don't tolerate everything you're "bad".
You were clearly trying to make an argument to say that the EU is being unfairly restrictive of speech. So back up your argument!
In my opinion, you are refusing to back it up because your statements were weak to begin with.
You're making a shortcut, maybe based on the fact that usually some people use this arguments to complain about EU.
> In my opinion, you are refusing to back it up because your statements were weak to begin with.
No, you're wrong from the beginning. I think it's an excellent thing that there are restrictions on public freedom of speech and what I wrote is merely a stating of facts.
You find my arguments weak because they only exist in your imagination.
This social media shit obviously needs to be based in the country it operates, that's the only way these international moderation policy issues can ever be resolved.