Free speech stole the show last week during the joint press conference between US President Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer after a British reporter asked point-blank the Yankee wannabe dictator whether free speech is more under attack in Britain or in America, following Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension over Charlie Kirk comments.

At this historical juncture, both Britain and America are at a new low when it comes to freedom of expression. In fact, free speech is under serious attack in most Western societies.

Britain has no equivalent to the First Amendment, but the current draconian speech laws are so outrageous that even traditional liberties are vanishing. British police are arresting people for offensive online speech at record numbers while the right to protest has been severely curtailed.

In Germany, the situation is just as bad, if not worse. Long before recent efforts to stifle pro-Palestinian voices, the country’s laws on freedom of expression stood on tenuous grounds. As the late German jurist Weinfried Brugger noted nearly a quarter of a century ago in a study comparing German and American law on hate speech, if a protester was to shout on the steps of the US Capitol “our President is a pig” and even held painted pictures of the president as a pig “engaged in sexual conduct with another pig in a judge’s robe;” or that “all our soldiers are murders;” or that “the Holocaust never happened,” none of these allegations would lead to criminal prosecution as the First Amendment would protect them. However, criminal law would apply to all of the above messages if the protester made the speech on the steps of the German Bundestag. As further elucidated by Brugger, freedom of speech in Germany is not a “preferred right” and does not deserve “absolute protection.”

For the duration of Trump 2.0, we must be prepared for a barrage of further anti-democratic actions taking aim at any individual, group, or organization whose ideas, beliefs, and actions threaten the ego of the “beloved leader” or simply irritate his idiotic whims

In this sense, conservatives in the US, like Vice President JD Vance, are not totally wrong when they criticize Europe over free speech, even though they are complete hypocrites. Indeed, the problem with Vance and the rest of the MAGA Republicans who are seemingly disturbed by the backsliding of free expression in Europe is that they are not interested in free speech as such; they are interested in controlling it. They only want to protect speech that is aligned with their own ideological beliefs and values. Thus, in his speech to the Munich Security Conference in February, where he scolded Europeans for their failings on free speech, Vance not only spread a lie when he claimed that the Scottish government had sent letters to citizens instructing them that “even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law” but kept silent about UK government anti-protest legislation, which, as British academic Eric Heinze astutely noted, targets exactly the kind or protests that Trump fears.

Trump returned to the White House with a promise to protect free speech from government censorship. Indeed, just a few hours after his second inauguration, Trump signed Executive Order 14149, titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” But Trump is a master of doublespeak. His administration has, in turn, carried out a wide-ranging crackdown on universities, student protesters, journalists, lawyers, and the press. The wannabe dictator has accused the press on multiple occasions of being “the enemy of the American people” and has filed personal lawsuits against several news organizations. Under his administration, we are also witnessing the intrusion of the military into civilian life. This type of government action is tantamount to dictatorship, as it constitutes an all-out assault on democracy and the rule of law.

The Trump administration is abusing federal power to silence dissenting voices in a manner that has not been seen since the McCarthy era. Democrats and Republicans alike played the Red Card back in the 1940s and throughout the 1950s in order to silence critics and quash dissent. Trump is doing the same thing by trying to create a climate of fear and suspicion across the country with the boogeyman of the so-called “far left,” especially in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s killing.

To be sure, there should be no illusions about the evolution of free speech in the United States. The current situation is by no means unique, and the First Amendment has never been as sacred as people seem to think. Despite its exalted status, the First Amendment has been “a dead........

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