Prior to Donald Trump’s return to X, via a longform conversation with Elon Musk, a rather unexpected character inserted himself on the scene. The character is Thierry Breton, Internal Market Commissioner for the European Union. In a letter sent and published on X, Breton publicly threatened Musk with repercussions for, at that time, his future hosting of Trump and the content which may end up being contained in said interview. Breton of course parsed his words in Euro-bureaucratese saying the letter was merely to “remind” Musk of “due diligence obligations set out in the Digital Services Act,” for which Breton’s department is responsible.
If there were any doubt about the threatening nature of the letter, its final sentence should put any doubts to bed. Referring to the then upcoming Trump interview, it read “My services and I will be extremely vigilant to any evidence that points to breaches of the DSA and will not hesitate to make full use of our toolbox, including adopting interim measures, should it be warranted to protect EU citizens from serious harm.” Yikes.
What Thierry Breton did was attempt to regulate and control a conversation — under threat of censure — taking place in the country of a foreign ally over which Breton has zero jurisdiction. The conversation in question was of course about the future of the United States, and could have serious implications about the next election. Breton also rather bizarrely references events in the U.K. at the start of the letter, another a country not in the EU and not subject to his whims or authority.
Musk, responded in rather, um, direct terms, with a meme suggesting Breton perform what newspapers used to refer to as a lewd act with his own face. The exchange was great content, if not exactly high brow debate.
The letter sent by Breton should, however, be taken seriously, despite its patently ludicrous nature. It is revelatory once again of the disturbing willingness of too many left leaning governments to make use of state tools to limit freedom, while at the same time caterwauling about the dangers of the far-right.
Now, someone espousing actual far-right views (not standard conservative ones the left terms “far-right”) is clearly a concern along with being a particularly undesirable person. People like Breton clearly think they are protecting the vulnerable populous against such people when they send out such ludicrous letters.
Yet the evidence of past years demands that we take such self-anointed societal protectors with a significant helping of incredulity and skepticism. For, while concerns and noise abound these days about possible abuses of power by people like Trump on the right, the worst examples often come from the Thierry Bretons of the world on the left.
In Canada, during the Stephen Harper years from 2006-2015 every decision made would be viewed through a lens of malevolent intent and right-wing hatred. Yet, it was not Harper, but Justin Trudeau who, in 2022, enacted the Emergencies Act and limited the expression rights of all Canadians when the Freedom Convoy wouldn’t leave Ottawa. While I continue to believe the protesters should have left after a few days and not dragged things out, the fact remains that the heavy-handed response to crush them came not from the Harper government we were told to fear, but rather the one which came to save us from them.
In the United States, the endless cries about Trump turning the United States into a “far-right” dictatorship are similarly shrill. But, as Andrew Sullivan noted in a interview with UnHerd entitled “What I got wrong about Trump,” his worst fears of what Trump would do when elected in 2016 never materialized. This is of course not to say that Sullivan supports Trump; he clearly does not and calls him “deranged” in the interview. But upon taking a step back, he realized he had been caught up in the somewhat hysterical thinking of the time. And indeed, during Trump’s time in office, many of the worst and most corrosive effects on American life came from the cancelling left.
In the U.K., the situation is no different. Recently the official U.K. government account posted a tweet which read simply, and ominously, “Think before you post.” This was in reference to the U.K.’s Online Safety Act which punishes online content deemed to be harmful or incite violence. The act, not set to come into effect until next year, is already under consideration to be strengthened by Keir Starmer’s Labour Government to include “legal but harmful” content and be able to punish media companies accordingly. In Canada, we of course have the Online Harms Act, Bill-C63, which, if passed, would include penalties up to life in prison for violations.
In a world awash with bad actors and misinformation, the attempt to regulate content and to hold online media companies to some level of account is understandable. However, as Thierry Breton most recently demonstrated, there is a very unhealthy desire for control in governments and bureaucracies. That many left leaning governments present themselves as good natured and well intentioned actors in their pursuit of control should give us all the more pause for thought. Seldom has more damage been done to the world than by people who believe themselves, beyond all doubt, to be in the right.
National Post
Adam Pankratz is a lecturer at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business.