The EU Fired Their Censor. Ours Kept His Job

from the a-tale-of-two-censors dept

The Trump administration has spent months shrieking about EU “censorship” while actively censoring people themselves. While I’ve long been a critic of parts of the DSA, Americans—particularly MAGA officials—keep crying wolf over the DSA’s non-censorial aspects, then turn around and abuse their own power to silence speech they dislike. They seem to get a thrill out of the hypocrisy.

Want to see how differently the US and EU actually handle government overreach on speech? Look at what happened to two would-be censors: Thierry Breton and Brendan Carr.

If you don’t recall, Thierry Breton is the former EU Commissioner for the Internal Market, which made him the lead enforcer of the DSA, a role he took to gleefully, regularly threatening tech companies if their actions didn’t comply with what Breton wanted them to do.

He got so drunk on his own power that he demanded Elon Musk not platform Donald Trump. Clear attack on basic free speech principles, exactly the kind of censorial overreach that validates MAGA complaints about the DSA.

Here’s what happened next: EU politicians collectively called bullshit on Breton, told him he was abusing the law, and kicked him out weeks later.

The system worked. Someone abused their power, the system caught it, corrected it, removed him. That’s how institutions are supposed to respond to overreach.

Now, let’s come over to this side of the Atlantic. Remember Brendan Carr? The same FCC chair who threatened to abuse the power of the FCC to punish Disney for not kicking Jimmy Kimmel off the air? That temporarily worked. Disney pulled Kimmel off the air that very day and only brought him back the next week after they saw millions of cancellations of Disney+ as the public protested.

Unlike Breton, Carr actually succeeded. He used his government position to censor speech he didn’t like, and it worked. And what happened to him? Nothing. He’s still there, still threatening TV and radio stations whenever they say things that upset Trump or MAGA. No consequences, no correction, just more threats.

Now, with the US government banning Breton from getting a visa to ever come to the US again as “punishment” for his “censorship” effort that failed and got him fired, it seems like maybe people should be asking why Trump and Rubio are punishing Breton and not Carr.

Carr succeeded where Breton failed. Carr is still in power and still threatening. Breton got fired and now banned from the US.

Of course, we all know how this double standard works. Carr is allowed to do this because he’s abusing his powers to stifle speech Donald Trump doesn’t like. Breton must be punished because he tried to stifle speech Trump does like.

There’s nothing more sophisticated to it than that, but the similar nature of both politicians’ attempts to abuse the law to silence speech they didn’t like is notable. Frankly, I don’t think either the US or the EU should have anyone who has the power to abuse laws to enable censorship.

But only one system actually responded to the abuse of power by removing the abuser. And it wasn’t ours.

The contrast here reveals something more troubling than simple hypocrisy. When Breton overstepped, EU institutions checked him immediately. When Carr overstepped, US institutions… did nothing. No real pushback from Congress (Ted Cruz whining doesn’t count), no internal accountability, no consequences whatsoever. The system that’s supposed to prevent government censorship just sat there and watched it happen.

So when you hear the next MAGA official shrieking about EU censorship, remember: the EU’s institutions worked. They caught the abuse, stopped it, and removed the abuser. Our institutions failed. They enabled the abuse, rewarded it with continued power, and are now punishing the guy from the system that actually worked.

That’s not a story about two bad actors. That’s a story about which democratic system still has functioning antibodies against authoritarian overreach—and which one doesn’t.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, brendan carr, censorship, consequences, donald trump, dsa, eu, fcc, free speech, marco rubio, thierry breton

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