In May of this year, the Mathias Corvinum College published a detailed report that describes the “EU-funded war against free speech.” (i) In the report, which is titled “Manufacturing misinformation”, British researcher Dr. Norman Lewis exposes “a covert campaign conducted by the European Commission to regulate the boundaries of legitimate public debate in Europe”. Lewis discovered how the European Commission “has funded hundreds of unaccountable non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and universities to carry out 349 projects related to countering ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’ to the tune of almost €650 million. Taxpayers’ money has been consciously used to fund an Orwellian disinformation complex to dictate and control the language of public debate. […] The EU is engaged in a silent war to regulate language and, through this, the de-legitimisation of alternative narratives, like the rising tide of populist opposition. This is a battle over language and the legitimacy to dictate the terms of public communications. It is a top-down, authoritarian, curated consensus, where expression is free only when it speaks the language of compliance established by the Commission.”
The “hands of the State”
Some time ago, in 1848 to be precise, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels declared in their Manifesto of the Communist Party that “the proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; […].” Which is to say that in communism, the State is the Vicary of the proletariat presumably organised as the ruling class. One of the 10 “measures” that “will be pretty generally applicable” to establish communism “in most advanced countries”, was formulated as follows: “Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.”
An “ever closer union”
In the year 2000, the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission jointly presented in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union their version of the process of centralisation of the political power of the several “peoples of Europe” in the hands of the European State. (ii) In the opening phrase of the Charter’s Preamble, the Eurocrats declared that “The peoples of Europe, in creating an ever closer union among them, are resolved to share a peaceful future based on common values.” While it is quite likely that most if not all European peoples wish to share a peaceful future, this doesn’t necessarily mean that such a future must be based on holding “values” in common. Neither is it so that this so called “resolve” spontaneously arose in the hearts of the peoples of Europe who got caught up in a historic process of “creating an ever closer union among them”.
Fundamental Rights
The European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) defines Fundamental Rights as “the basic rights and freedoms that belong to everyone in the EU. They are the same no matter where you’re from, what you believe or how you live. These rights enforce important principles like dignity, fairness, respect and equality. They set standards for how we live and work in Europe today.” The FRA described the Charter of Fundamental rights as “the European Union’s bill of human rights” whose “50 articles bring together the rights and freedoms belonging to everyone in the EU.” (iii) So, it’s no wonder that the EU picked the Charter of Fundamental Rights as the venue to infuse in the minds of everyone in the EU to whom these rights basically ‒ i.e. naturally ‒ belong the fallacious narrative that the quest for the centralisation of power in the hands of the European State, is to be understood as their quest.
The peoples of Europe as “social class”
In the Introduction to his work Human Action, Ludwig von Mises wrote that “Marxism asserts that a man’s thinking is determined by his class affiliation. Every social class has a logic of its own. The product of thought cannot be anything else than an ‘ideological disguise’ of the selfish class interests of the thinker.” The Eurocrats used the Charter to one-sidedly lay down in writing the false premise that the peoples of Europe must be regarded as a “social class” whose members must inevitably produce the thought of “closer union among them,” just because that thought must of necessity be the logical expression of the particular interest of “Europeans”.
The Manifesto of the European Union
In light of Mises’ observation, the Charter might very well be read as the Manifesto of the European Union in which the authors proclaim, to paraphrase the words of Marx and Engels, that in creating an ever closer union among them, the European peoples will use their political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all instruments of political power from their own national governments, in order to centralise these powers in the hands of the European State, i.e. the European peoples organised as the ruling class. Since the Charter’s fundamental rights “set the standards for how we live and work in Europe today”, their enjoyment and defense are supposed to spontaneously energize and necessitate the historically inevitable process of the centralisation of all instruments of political power in the hands of the European State. In Marxist terms, this is how fundamental rights play a key role in establishing and solidifying the European Union as the Vicary of the peoples of Europe “organised as the ruling class”.
EUtopia
In reality, the European Union, is definitely not the product that was “thought into being” by the peoples of Europe. It is definitely not “the peoples of Europe organised as the ruling class.” It was not instituted among the several peoples of Europe but above them by the EUtopists as the instrument to wrest from them their national identity, their independence and their national sovereignty by inducing, enforcing and controlling the European peoples’ political unification. In the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, the Union’s unelected bureaucracy reassures its “proletariat” that, in spite of its despotic structure, the Union is “[c]onscious of its spiritual and moral heritage” and that it is “founded on the indivisible, universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity.” Yet, in this EUtopia, the long standing national and patriotic values that define the diverse cultures of the Member States have no place. They are to be deleted from reality and replaced by “the citizenship of the Union” in the counter-image of reality wherein the Union can now “place[s] the individual at the heart of its activities”.
Despotic inroads
Yes indeed, the establishment and institutionalization of the European Union bears all the hallmarks of a utopian project. As with all such projects, the utopists involved have no other option than to obtain by sleight of hand the position of “ruling class” and resort to coercion and suppression to realize their Utopias. In their Manifesto, Marx and Engels openly declared that “in the beginning” the realization of the Communist State “cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production”. Likewise, the realization of the European State cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the various rights and freedoms traditionally belonging to and enjoyed by the ‘natives’ of the European countries. To forcefully place these inviduals “at the heart” of the Union’s activities, countries located in the geographic part of the globe called Europe were turned into Member States of the European Union. Their citizens were to be marked as European citizens, so that their fundamental rights and freedoms could be usurped and rebranded by the European State as its values. Everyone’s thinking is now determined by his/her purported affiliation to the social class that the Eurocrats dreamed up to legitimize their dominant role in realizing EUtopia.
An “area of freedom, security and justice”
This is why these rights were infused into the EUtopian project in the form of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Rather than simply affirming the fundamental rights that already existed in the several European countries as basically belonging to everyone in those jurisdictions, the infusion serves the goal of installing the European Union as the supreme creator and guarantor of “an area of freedom, security and justice” where those rights can blossom and be enjoyed. More in particular, regarding the freedom of speech, the Union solemnly proclaims in Article 11 of said Charter that every individual “has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.” Concerning what Marx and Engels defined as “the means of communication”, the same Article provides that “[t]he freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected.”
Responsibilities and duties
Utopists, however, are not in the habit of tolerating opinions, information and ideas that might be contrary to, threaten or stand in the way of realizing their Utopias. So, although the Union “recognises the rights, freedoms and principles set out” in its Charter, it did insert a proviso in the Charter’s Preamble which stipulates that the “[e]njoyment of these rights entails responsibilities and duties with regard to other persons, to the human community and to future generations.” The Charter itself does not explicate this point. Instead, in Article 52, it briefly provides: “In so far as this Charter contains rights which correspond to rights guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the meaning and scope of those rights shall be the same as those laid down by the said Convention.”
“Greater unity”
Said Convention was signed in 1950 by the 12 Governments that, at the time, were the members of the Council of Europe. In the Convention’s Preamble, the Council considered that its “aim … is the achievement of greater unity between its members and that one of the methods by which that aim is to be pursued is the maintenance and further realisation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.” (iv) Apparently, the Council was mainly interested in pursuing the maintenance and further realisation of Human Rights and Fundamental freedoms because it served the aim of achieving greater unity between its Members. In this regard, the Council foresaw that the “right to freedom of expression [which] shall include the freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas, without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers” ‒ laid down in the Convention’s Article 10.1 ‒ could very well threaten or impair the achievement of greater unity when exercized by people who opposed or questioned the endeavour. (emphasis added)
Formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties
To handle this potential problem, the Council determined in the Convention’s Article 10.2 that “[t]he exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.” This opened the door to prescribe “by law” the “formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties” designed to realize EUtopia.
The Harmonisation of Digital Services
In 2022, the EU prescribed by law the formalities, conditions, restrictions and penalties to which the use of the World Wide Wide in the European Union shall be subjected. In Recital 3 of the Regulation on a Single Market For Digital Services, it declared digital information open to censorship by the providers of such services since “[r]esponsible and diligent behaviour by providers of intermediary services is essential for a safe, predictable and trustworthy online environment and for allowing Union citizens and other persons to exercise their fundamental rights guaranteed in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (the ‘Charter’), in particular the freedom of expression and of information, the freedom to conduct a business, the right to non-discrimination and the attainment of a high level of consumer protection.” (v) This approach rests on the misleading Marxist/Socialist promise that coercion and censorship are necessary because, in this case, the “sum of freedom” in European society will increase. There will be more freedom to a wider group when the freedom of expression is taken away from the group’s members. Obviously, the EU’s nomenklatura will decide which freedom(s) must be taken to produce more freedom for all.
Freedom of speech becomes freedom from speech
By law, digital service providers were turned into censors of the communication that “Union citizens” impart or receive when they exercise their fundamental “right to freedom of expression”. As private owners of online “means of communication”, the service providers are forced to demonstrate “responsible and diligent behavior” by assessing whether the freedom of expression and the freedom to conduct a business of users of their “means of communication” must be curtailed in case a piece of information or idea might possibly upset the right to non-discrimination, the attainment of a high level of consumer protection or any other fundamental right enumerated in the Charter. The Digital Services Regulation enables the European State to centralize the online means of communication in its hands by creating, formulating and reformulating the types of information that “Trusted Flaggers” and anyone else who does the EU’s bidding must report to the service providers as “illegal” or as “disinformation or other content” the online dissemination of which may generate a “societal risk”, so that “fundamental rights enshrined in the Charter are effectively protected and innovation is facilitated.”
The hands of the EU
The Digital Services Regulation forms the visible aspect of the operation that Norman Lewis describes as the EU’s “carefully created machinery of speech policing, supported by a vast system of public financing. […] Imbued with the authority of hundreds of covertly funded NGOs and academics, the covertly funded ‘Trusted Flaggers’, “the EU is even able to claim that it polices speech in order to ‘protect democracy’.” Lewis concludes that the EU Commission “rightly understands that controlling the language of communications means it can dictate what is information and disinformation, truth or lies, what is legitimate or illegitimate speech, and who can speak or not.” Language, i.e. the spoken or written word, is Man’s fundamental means of communication. Without having to revert to the burning of books and blunt censorship, words can now be kneaded by the hands of the EU so that they no longer mean what they were originally meant to mean. War is peace, slavery is freedom, ignorance is strength, autocracy is democracy. The voices of the peoples of Europe shall sing in an ever closer harmony to the tune of the unelected Eurocrats. Welcome to EUtopia ! Bye bye to freedom of speech.
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[i] Manufacturing misinformation: The EU-funded propaganda war against free speech; Dr Norman Lewis; Mathias Corvinum Collegium / MCC Brussels; May 2025; https://brussels.mcc.hu/uploads/default/0001/01/9fcfc904bd2e930bef107b7725b7f3ff9d0779d0.pdf
[ii] Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union; 2000; https://www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/pdf/text_en.pdf
[iii] What are fundamental rights? EUFRA; https://fra.europa.eu/en/about-fundamental-rights
[iv] European Convention on Human Rights; Drafted 1950 / Entered into force 1953; https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr/convention_ENG
[v] Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of of 19 October 2022 on a Single Market For Digital Services and amending Directive 2000/31/EC (Digital Services Act; https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32022R2065
