Capping a week of tyrannical grasping unique even by its own impressive standards, the European Union on September 12 revealed plans to fine internet giants such as Facebook and Google if they do not take down speech deemed illegal within one hour of official government notification.
“Terrorist content is most harmful in the first hours of its presence online because of the speed at which it spreads. The Commission is therefore setting a legally binding one-hour deadline for content to be removed following receipt of a removal order issued by national authorities,” an EU fact sheet on the draft proposal reads.
Google and Facebook both expressed their desire to work with the EU on the new rules. “We welcome the focus the Commission is bringing to this and we’ll continue to engage closely with them,” Google said in a statement.
“We’ve made significant strides finding and removing terrorist propaganda quickly and at scale, but we know we can do more,” Facebook added in a statement of its own.
What is “Terror” Speech?
The proposed law references “terror” speech but with the unelected bureaucrats of the European Union getting to define speech as they see fit, it’s a small skip and a hop to having the ruling apply to anyone who opposes EU values – like unchecked immigration.
Another European Union fact sheet, titled “Countering illegal hate speech online,” notes that:
“On 9 January 2018, several European Commissioners met with representatives of online platforms to discuss the progress made in tackling the spread of illegal content online, including online terrorist propaganda and xenophobic, racist illegal hate speech as well as breaches of intellectual property rights.”
That quote refers to a joint statement that also begins by mentioning “terror” fears before quickly honing in on what the EU very non-specifically calls “online hate speech.”
Busy Bully Week
The harrowing one-hour proposal came in the same week the EU also announced a copyright directive aimed at protecting big corporate interests on the internet. Article 13 of the directive would mandate that platforms work with copyright holders to prevent unauthorized uploading of protected content by anyone utilizing their website.
As James Vincent at The Verge reports, “[t]his would create an incredible burden for small platforms, and could be used as a mechanism for widespread censorship.”
And the EU wasn’t done there. It also invoked Article 7 on Hungary for its refusal to take in violent foreigners – er, lamb-like “refugees.” Punishments that can be utilized via this article include the stripping of voting rights in the European Council.
British politician Nigel Farage, the Brexit champion, blisteringly took the EU to task over its “show trial” of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “The commissar that comes from the unelected government has the audacity to lecture you on democracy,” Farage said to Orban in a speech at the EU Parliament. “The fact that you have 50 percent of the vote in your country and that no one has ever voted for Timmermans (European Commission Vice President) – or can’t remove him – seems to have passed him by.”
“What is really happening here, Mr. Orban, is they’re just updating the Brezhnev Doctrine of limited sovereignty,” Farage continued. “There’s no point pretending that in this Union you’re independent; there’s no point pretending you can run your own country.”
Obvious Ploy
A child can see what is happening here. A European Union spreading its authoritarian wings has castigated a member nation for shunning its self-declared “values” by refusing to open its borders to a floodtide of third world immigration.
At the same time, the EU proposes new rules to wipe the Internet clean of “terror” speech within an hour after it is spotted. This same EU gets to define for itself what is “hateful” and “dangerous” “terror” speech. The endgame will be this: If you, as a private European citizen, oppose the EU’s open borders mandate for the inundation of the continent by mobs of third world aliens, then you will be branded a “threat” and scrubbed from the internet.
Within the hour.
How much more of this Soviet-style brutality will Europeans take before their homelands are lost forever?
