It felt like a speech, if delivered on X.com, laden surely with community notes.
US Vice President JD Vance, taking the stage in Munich, to eviscerate totalitarianism in Europe. But not in Moscow, especially after its savage invasion of Ukraine. Instead, in Ukraine’s allies in the European Union. The “enemy within”, as he called it, in Europe, is jailing opponents, and afraid of its own voters.
For the vast majority of the audience, both in Munich – and the rest of Europe – this is the tweet where the reader comments take a conspiratorial, Red-Bull-mother’s-basement-barefoot-at-3-a.m. turn, and you tune out. But while Munich had been hoping to hear greater detail on the Trump administrations publicly morphing peace plan for Ukraine, they were battered with a bizarre, post-truth litany of culture-war complaints and a bid to sow serious doubt about electoral integrity across Europe.
First up was the suggestion Romania’s recently annulled presidential vote was somehow a bid to deny voters their choice. To be clear, Romania annulled only the first round of a presidential vote last year in which a far-right pro-Russian candidate very narrowly won a place in a second-round spin-off, because courts agreed with evidence from Romania’s intelligence agencies that there had been significant interference from Russia. Vance was objecting to the rule of law in Romania, and pro-Russian sentiment and electoral interference being tackled.
It is really not clear who he was referring to when he said his European allies were censoring their opponents, or “putting them in jail – whether that’s the leader of the opposition, or a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news.” It sounded like Eastern Germany in the 1950s – a world geographically just a few hundred kilometers to the north, where these Soviet-era horrors are still living memories.
Vance said, “Old entrenched interests” were “hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation.” To be clear, many in the room would have hailed from the brutal occupation of the former Soviet Union. They didn’t need to be lectured on how authoritarianism spouts falsehood to excuse the poor and cruel governance of the minority.
Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, quickly replied Vance’s words were “unacceptable.” He opposed “the impression that Vice President Vance has created that minorities are being suppressed or silenced in our democracy. We know not only against whom we are defending our country, but also for what.”
Vance then launched into a wide-ranging diatribe about freedom of speech being shackled in Europe. He cited a case of a man arrested for praying silently near an abortion clinic in the UK. New laws in Britain mean political activity is prohibited within 150 meters of abortion clinics to prevent women being harassed when seeking medical help – not quite the same thing. Abortion is less of a hot button issue in Europe than in the United States, and happens with much less controversy.
Vance’s complaints struck at the heart of a key difference in the role of free speech in Europe and the United States, a much fresher democracy. In Europe, free speech is paramount and enshrined in law, but so is responsibility for the safety of citizens. Some European legal systems suggest this means you cannot falsely shout there is a “fire” in a crowded theater and escape punishment if the resulting stampede causes injury simply because you had the right to shout “fire.” In the United States, the First Amendment means you can shout whatever you want. In the smartphone and post-9-11 era, Europe has prohibited some extremist activity online. It is still illegal to advocate for the Nazis in Germany, and it should not be controversial or mysterious why. The wildly rebellious press across Europe are a vibrant sign of its free speech. And the fringe parties Vance objected to being absent in Munich are growing in their popularity. Nobody is really being shut down.
Vance had clearly long prepared this tirade as a starting gun for the second Trump administration’s bid to refuel populism across Europe. The continent he spoke to is a little wiser now, after Trump’s first term with some populist experiments already ending in electoral disaster – like in the United Kingdom, where the Conservative Party has been ejected from power.
Vance spoke to a room acutely aware of the threat far-right populism poses to mainstream and moderate ideology, and the challenges of immigration that have swept across Europe that Vance railed against with barely veiled xenophobia.
But the real figure looming large across the room he feverishly addressed was Kremlin head Vladimir Putin. The sins the audience and Europe were accused of are, in reality, occurring in Russia. Putin was not mentioned. Ukraine was only mentioned fleetingly. The bad guys were the United States’ own allies. And the real threat to western democracy was itself.
It should not take an extensive grasp of history to know it is ugly to talk this way in Munich. Europe has been here before. As George Orwell said as the dust of the last big land war settled in 1949, the “final most essential command” of the Party was to “reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.” Vance asked for that, and made it sound like a virtue.
