Freedom of speech my ass How Trump and Musk silence their critics

US Vice President JD Vance has accused Europe of restricting freedom of speech and opinion. But he should put his own house in order: Donald Trump and Elon Musk barely allow opposition opinions.

Europe restricts freedom of speech, says US Vice President JD Vance in his speech at the Munich Security Conference on February 14. Free speech is under threat, he says.

Statements are being prosecuted as disinformation, he says. And he says: "We have to do more than talk about democratic values, we have to live them."

Six days later, the city council meets in Huntington Beach, California. It is about to approve a new plaque to mark the 50th anniversary of the library when Chris Kluwe takes the floor.

The former Minnesota Vikings professional footballer is bothered by the fact that the plaque plays with the catchphrase MAGA in a rather subtle way.

The 43-year-old says that an institution like a public library should not be politically abused. He then lists what has happened since Donald Trump took office.

"The most important thing," he ends: "MAGA is explicitly a Nazi movement. You've replaced the swastika with the red cap. That's what it is."

He will now practice the honorable American tradition of peaceful resistance, Kluwe continues. He steps forward, but already has his hands behind his back as the police officers present intervene and carry the man out of the hall.

The case makes the headlines. The plaque is waved through. The city council resists, saying Kluwe can move somewhere else if he doesn't like it. JD Vance says nothing about it.

So thin-skinned

Vance's speech in Munich comes across as strangely lopsided: he accuses the Europeans of suppressing opinions and excluding parties like the AfD with a "firewall". At the same time, the new US government is sweeping out its own house with an iron broom.

Department of Education employees participated in DEI training? Fired.

An inspector from the development agency USAID draws attention to the fact that Washington's spending freeze means that 500 million dollars worth of food is at risk of rotting? Fired.

The inspector general at the Department of Agriculture objects to being fired? Security takes her away.

And the new US government is not only less than squeamish when it comes to government employees: Because the news agency is still calling the Gulf of Mexico by its usual name, it has earned an exclusion from the president's press briefing.

The fact that even the arch-conservative channels Fox News and Newsmax are protesting against this shows that this is an astonishingly harsh decision.

Musk is particularly sensitive

Elon Musk in particular is known for not avoiding confrontation. The South African once challenged competitor Mark Zuckerberg to a "cage fight". He shouted loudly after advertisers who turned their backs on his platform X: "Go f*** yourself".

A skirmish with a Danish astronaut shows that the 53-year-old doesn't take the truth too seriously. Musk said in a TV interview that two Nasa astronauts were not taken out of space "for political reasons".

"What a lie," countered Andreas Mogensen on X. Musk replied that he had offered Joe Biden to bring the people back with SpaceX.

Musk calls Mogensen "completely retarded" and an "idiot". The Dane remains cool: Musk knows, as he does, that the return of the astronauts has been planned since last September, thus shutting him up.

Mogensen comes off better than Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, who criticized DOGE in Congress because the efficiency department was acting as if it were working with a "flamethrower".

Musk sics trolls on a blind man

Elon Musk's counterattack is below the belt - because Hedtler-Gaudette cannot see:

"The blind director of a George Soros-funded watchdog group testifies that he sees no widespread evidence of government waste," he writes on X with two laugh emojis - prompting trolls to attack the handicapped man. He is not surprised, "but that doesn't make it any less disappointing", he complains.

Musk has nonchalantly replaced the classic fact checks on X with Community Notes, where users themselves provide corrections. And they dared to question a tweet by Musk in which the richest man in the world claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selnsky only had a four percent approval rating.

Musk's reaction? His Community Notes would be influenced by "governments and the alt-media".

"Work to fix it," he writes further. Zelenskyi influences the polls in his country, has all the media under control and avoids new elections because he is so hated in Ukraine.

Public prosecutor investigates after Musk input

Shayan Sardarizadeh does not go into these lies. But: "The whole point of Community Notes is that they are independent," defends journalist on X.

"If you start manipulating the system because you personally don't like some of your comments, how are users supposed to trust the system?"

When it comes to his own people, Elon Musk can't take a joke, as the temporary closure of the Reddit community r/WhitePeopleTwitter shows.

The identity of some DOGE employees was revealed there. According to Business Insider, there were also threats. The community is now back online.

For Musk, "the law was probably broken" in this case. And that, in turn, has now brought the provisional chief public prosecutor onto the scene: At the instigation of the South African, he will now investigate the relevant people, reports "Newsweek".

Musk publishes name and photo of judge's daughter

Ed Martin wants to "chase the users to the ends of the earth" in order to "hold them accountable". An investigation has been launched. Not only those who have broken the law will be prosecuted, but also those who have "behaved unethically". Musk should stay in contact and report further violations.

However, the entrepreneur himself is relatively generous with data. On the one hand, DOGE publishes the budgets of individual authorities - with the exception of the CIA. Nevertheless, it is now possible to see what the National Reconnaissance Office, which monitors American spy satellites, spends. This makes it clear how many employees there are, according to the Huffington Post.

But Musk can also get personal, as in the case of the judge who blocked a decree by Donald Trump. Apparently to prove that the legal spokesperson was biased in the matter, the father of 13 apparently made public the name, place of work and a photo of the judge's daughter, who allegedly works in the Ministry of Education.

Who has to fear the "enemy within" here?

Musk has declared war on the judiciary if it intends to stop Trump: He commented on an X-Post that Congress can also remove judges with "It's about time".

Specifically, Musk believes that the judge who denied DOGE access to the Treasury Department's payment flows should be dismissed, writes The Hill.

"Wired" reports that many government employees fear that their sensitive data is not secure at DOGE and could be misused. This also applies to information about taxpayers, adds the Washington Post.

Against this backdrop, a clash between the USA and the EU is inevitable. A year ago, the EU introduced the Digital Services Act, which obliges companies such as Facebook and X to moderate their content. Musk and Trump will know how to prevent Brussels from implementing the regulation.

And JD Vance? The American said in Munich that Europe's greatest threat is not Russia or China, but the "enemy within".

He should know.

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