The Highwire with Del Bigtree - MELTDOWN IN MUNICH JD VANCE VS CENSORSHIP

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

Germany has become a hotbed for censorship in recent months in a response to the rise of the far right party, by criminalizing such commonplace actions as insults and reposting false statements. Hear newly elected Vice President JD Vance’s remarks during the Munich Security Conference declaring censorship is one of the biggest threats to democracy in the EU, setting off a political firestorm, including here in the US where journalist Margaret Brennan of CBS implied that free speech is what led to the uprising of the Nazi party.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Last week I started to touch on this, but it's really broke to runaway speeds at this point. So there's a global fight right now. There's two factions forming for pro-speech and anti-speech, speech censorship or basically the ability for people to speak anything they want no matter what their government thinks. And right now in Germany, they are going to the opposite side of that coin. They are the country of censorship. and they are also heading out this kind of coalition with the UK, their Online Safety Act, also Australia, is in there fighting for speech.

But we have Germany, they have a political party, which is AFD. That's an alternative for Germany. And this political party is really surging in the polls. And on February 23rd will be the election. So this is the headline out of Politico. Germany's far right AFD is soaring. Can it ban stop it? So there's actually a legitimate conversation.

if this can be, if this party can be banned in Germany. But that's not all because the party talks about things that a lot of the government doesn't like there, like ending the Ukraine war or maybe slowing down immigration and basically things that are conversations in almost every country. And Germany also is as pushing these ideas towards X. This is a conversation that was put out by X, their community standards. It says, Germany submits the highest number of legal demands for user. data to X within the European Union with 87% of these requests targeting speech-related offenses.

And then it goes on to say that the X believes these are not legal demands. They will not do that. It's, you know, it is an overreach. But let's take a look at really on the ground what Germany is like. This is a 60 minutes. This is going around everywhere. It's went viral. This is a 60 minutes broadcast that was just aired out of Germany. Take a listen about how they talk about speech. Is it a crime to insult somebody in public? Yes, it is. And it's a crime to insult them online as well? Yes.

The fine could be even higher if you insult someone in the Internet. Why? Because in Internet, it stays there. If we are talking face-to-face, you insult me, I insult you, okay, finish. But in the Internet, if I insult you or a politician... That sticks around forever. Yeah. The prosecutors explain German law.

also prohibits the spread of malicious gossip, violent threats, and fake quotes. If somebody posts something that's not true, and then somebody else reposts it or likes it, are they committing a crime? In the case of reposting, it is a crime as well, because the reader can't distinguish whether you just invented this or just reposted it. That's the same for us. The irony that is Germany, I find incredible. celebration, sort of the joy in the, I believe this is an American reporter for 60 minutes,

like, oh, I love this idea. It's really, I mean, it's so shocking. It's breathtaking, really, that we are seeing such a juxtaposition in ideas here. Yeah, and Germany's violent crime rates have also been soaring. So just adding that to the conversation, and they're going after people for posting things. So when these lawyers are talking about these legal actions, what do they look like? like. Well, 60 minutes showed you. Take a look. Right. It's 601 on a Tuesday morning, and we were with state police as they raided this apartment

in northwest Germany. Inside, six armed officers searched a suspect's home, then seized his laptop and cell phone. Prosecutors say those electronics may have been used to commit a crime, the crime, posting a racist cartoon online. At the exact same time across Germany, more than 50 similar raids played out. Part of what prosecutors say is a coordinated effort to curb online hate speech in Germany. Can't help but think that that was America,

you know, had Kamala Harris won. I'm sorry, you know, we don't get political much on this show, you know, but when they were, when we had, had an administration promising more censorship and to stop online misinformation, as I pointed out, we pointed out so clearly all of the misinformation I know about came from our own government Rand. Paul has made that public. He sees it the same way. What do you do when your government is the one putting out the misinformation and it's illegal to point that out? And now they're kicking in your doors like the Gestapo. I mean, it's chilling, you know.

Yeah, there's very little self-reflection by the Biden administration and even Kamala Harris when she was running that it wasn't really on the top of her list to talk about in the debates with Donald Trump or in the final weeks there just to garner any type of the public support. But the irony is that 60 Minutes, a media organization that is supposed to really hold power to account and be a truthful organization and really be a champion of free speech, is there. literally on door kicking raids with armed police for memes. And so it's even worse. And not saying, look out. This could be us. We need to make sure this doesn't come to America. It's like, doesn't this look great? I mean, that's what's so shocking about it. Sure, I've seen reports on that through the years. Like, look what they're doing in Germany. This is why freedom in America is so important. No, it's like, don't you wish we had this too? No, we don't, you crazy people. And it's not sadly just one organization. Here's Face the Nation.

Listen to this. Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide. And he met with the head of a political party that has far-right views and some historic ties to extreme groups. The context of that was changing the tone of it. And you know that, that the censorship was specifically about the right. No, I have to disagree with you. Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal

because they hated Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those that they had a list of people they hated but primarily the Jews. There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were a sole and only party that governed that country. So that's not an accurate reflection of history. Good on Marco Rubio.

I have to say it must sometimes. because I do get interviewed every once in a while. A reviewer hits you with something so totally outrageous. Your brain can just go, does she just say that free speech was used by the Nazis to, you know, to commit this atrocity and eradicate Jewish people? I mean, we look at it as the biggest authoritarian state of all times. And for her to equate that free speech is how that is done.

So essentially you're talking about our right to free speech leads to Nazism. I mean, Jeffrey, what is going? I guess this is that equal and opposite reaction to all the joy we're feeling about President Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr. being in office. The media is just counterbalance that with essentially defamatory statements about freedom and our First Amendment rights. Absolutely. Zero historical reflection.

I mean, Germany had Joseph Goebbels. He was literally the ministry of propaganda, one of the most successful propagandists of all times, to propaganda as the German people and the world to allow what happened to happen. So none of that was brought up, obviously. But what she was talking about there was Vice President J.D. Vance, his visit to Germany to the Munich Security Conference. He actually spoke there. And he basically went right into the lines then and said this.

In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat. And in the interest of comedy, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation. misinformation. Misinformation like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leaked from a laboratory in China, our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth. I really do believe that allowing our citizens to speak their mind will make them stronger still, which of course brings us back to Munich, where the organizers of this very conference, have banned lawmakers representing populist parties on both the left and the right from participating in these conversations.

Now again, we don't have to agree with everything or anything that people say. But when people represent, when political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them. Now, the many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, 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. And I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions,

and the conscience that guide your very own people. Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making. If you're running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor for that matter, is there anything

that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump? Oh man, so good, honestly. Really so nice to be represented in, you know, the way that, you know, I learned about America when I was in first grade. Why we pledged allegiance. You know, why our, you know, all of our military and soldiers have fought for this nation so courageously that we could uphold the concept of free speech to actually have representation now for this country, standing for that against all else. Sure, there's unpleasant speech. There's lies, the deceit, there's misinformation, but we live in a nation that said, you'll survive all that. You have a brain.

We trust our people. Let them speak.