Vice President J.D. Vance called on European leaders to honor the will of their people, warning against the growing “threat from within” that has fueled censorship under the guise of combating hate speech and misinformation.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, Vance argued that free speech is “in retreat” across Europe, citing several instances of government suppression: German police raiding citizens accused of posting anti-feminist content online, Sweden convicting a Christian activist for burning Qurans, and the United Kingdom prosecuting pro-life activists for silently praying in public.
“The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor, and what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America,” the vice president said.
“For years, we’ve been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values, everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy,” Vance continued. “But when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard — and I say ourselves, because I fundamentally believe that we’re on the same team, we must do more than talk about democratic values.”
JD Vance went to the Munich Security Conference and roasted the entire continent of Europe for being petty tyrants and criminalizing freedom of speech, including a British man arrested for praying at an abortion clinic.
pic.twitter.com/o51VoWZ6Mr— Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 14, 2025
Vance highlighted instances of European nations cracking down on so-called “hateful content” and even thought crimes, focusing particularly on the case of Adam Smith-Connor, a British army veteran who was penalized for praying outside an abortion clinic in the United Kingdom. Smith-Connor had prayed in memory of his unborn son, whom his girlfriend had aborted years earlier.
“Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new buffer zones law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within two hundred meters of an abortion facility,” the veep explained, adding he wished this was a fluke, but said it was not.
“Just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer or within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe.”
Continuing, Vance said, “Free speech, I fear, is in retreat. And in the interests of comedy my friends, but also in the interests 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 like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leaped from 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.”
Vance asserted that while President Joe Biden’s administration worked to silence Americans for expressing their views, President Donald Trump’s administration will do “precisely the opposite.” He pledged: “There is a new sheriff in town, and under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree.”
Vance specifically criticized the terms “misinformation” and “disinformation,” urging European leaders to embrace alternative viewpoints rather than punishing lawmakers or nations for expressing dissenting opinions. He argued that the most pressing threat facing the West is mass migration, which he described as the consequence of “a series of conscious decisions made by politicians” over the past decade. To underscore his point, Vance referenced this week’s attack in Munich, where a driver plowed into a crowd, injuring at least 28 people.
“Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters,” the vice president told the assembled European politicians. “There’s no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principal or you don’t. Europeans, the people have a voice. European leaders have a choice, and my strong belief is that we do not need to be afraid of the future. You can embrace what your people tell you, even when it’s surprising, even when you don’t agree.”
JD Vance just absolutely ROASTED the leaders of Europe for being a bunch of sniveling babies when it comes to Elon Musk:
“If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you can survive a few months of Elon Musk.”
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) February 14, 2025
“If you do so,” he added. “You can face the future with certainty and with confidence, knowing that the nation stands behind each of you, and that to me is the great magic of democracy. … To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice, and if we refuse to listen to that voice, e
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