In his Munich speech, Vice President JD Vance illustrated a significant disconnect between Americans and Europeans when he lamented the attendees’ relentless attacks on free speech as a betrayal of shared values. In fact, free speech never was a principle that Europeans promoted, observed, or had regard for. Far from a shared value, the philosophical difference between how Americans and Europeans regard free speech is one of the defining differences between the US and the rest of the developed world.
One narrative of speech-policing in Europe holds that after the Holocaust, Europeans – with Germany and its collaborators in the lead – were so shocked and embarrassed by what they had done, that they enacted strict speech codes with regard to Neo-Nazism and Holocaust denial.
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