At present, there is a pot-calling-the-kettle-black approach being taken by the European Union and the United States regarding the imposition of sanctions upon individuals deemed hostile to free speech.  On December 23, the US State Department announced that it would bar five European citizens accused of spearheading efforts to pressure US tech giants to censor or suppress American opinions.  This came after the European Union’s own tilt to sanctioning individuals accused of spreading Russian misinformation or disinformation, particularly about the Ukraine War.

Those caught in the State Department vice are former EU Commissioner for the internal market Thierry Breton, a key figure behind the Digital Services Act (DSA), Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg of the German legal aid organisation HateAid, British head of the US-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) Imran Ahmed, and Clare Melford, co-founder of the Global Disinformation Index (GDI).

Von Hodenberg and Ballon assisted Jewish college students sue the social network platform X over the dissemination of antisemitic content while Ahmed, in particular, has been praised for his work by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) and Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) on advancing social media hygiene.  “He is a valuable partner in providing accurate and detailed information on how the social media algorithms have created a bent toward antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and he will remain a valuable partner,” insisted the JFNA’s head of government relations, Dennis Bernard. Given that many a policy decision by the Trump administration to withdraw from........

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