Free speech is not a virus

Ursula von der Leyen’s defence of censorship is a new low for the EU.

‘I believe in freedom of speech, but…’ is perhaps the most common phrase you’ll hear from those who don’t, in fact, believe in freedom of speech. One wishes that they would simply admit the truth, but unfortunately most people who find the principle of free speech inherently rebarbative will rarely say so openly. Instead, they resort to obfuscation, misdirection and word games so they might restrict freedom while claiming to uphold it.

Phrases such as ‘hate speech is not free speech’ and ‘you can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theatre’ are eagerly deployed by free speech sceptics. The favoured terms of the moment are ‘misinformation’ (unintentional misrepresentation) and ‘disinformation’ (intentional deception). Former Secretary of State John Kerry recently argued that when it comes to ‘disinformation’, the ‘First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence’. Chilling stuff.

Ursula von der Leyen has taken this a step further. In her speech this week at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit, she has announced that she intends to create a ‘European Democracy Shield’ to protect EU citizens from foreign online ‘disinformation’. Being the unelected president of the European Commission - the executive branch of an international trading bloc that forces member states to re-run elections if they don’t approve of the outcome, and responsible for proposing and implementing new laws that can run roughshod over national sovereignty - we should assume that von der Leyen is using the term ‘Democracy’ in much the same vein as the ‘Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’.

One would have thought that she had Philip K. Dick as a speechwriter. Her phrase ‘pre-bunking’ is a valid addition to the autocrat’s lexicon, every bit as sinister as ‘pre-crime’, ‘thoughtcrime’ or ‘public safety’. This is what she had to say:

‘As technology evolves we need to build up societal immunity around information manipulation. Because research has shown that pre-bunking is much more successful than debunking. Pre-bunking is basically the opposite of debunking. In short, prevention is preferable to cure. Perhaps if you think of information manipulation as a virus. Instead of treating an infection, once it has taken hold, that is debunking. It is much better to vaccinate so that the body is inoculated. Pre-bunking is the same approach.’

According to Von der Leyen’s analogy, certain forms of speech are akin to a virus, which require the inoculation of truth by figures of authority. But there is one unanswerable retort to her argument for censorship of ‘disinformation’…