This video features a Democrat Congressman delivering a scathing critique of Nigel Farage and the Republican Party's approach to free speech, contrasting it with actual threats to freedom of speech in the US and globally. The Congressman argues that the hearing, ostensibly about threats to free speech abroad, is a thinly veiled attack on European democratic allies.
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Kier Starmer has not shut down GB news where Mr. Farage has his own show just because Mr. Farage has used his airtime to call for banning peaceful protests that he disagrees with. No one has stopped him from going on Russian TV 17 times and saying also and repeating that the one world political leader he most admired was Vladimir Putin. Even though Vladimir Putin is a war criminal and a dictator, this hearing is just a driveby hit against a strong Democratic ally to benefit a Donald Trump sickant and wannabe. Thank you kindly, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to our witnesses. I imagine that in a hearing about threats to freedom of speech abroad, we might hear from a Russian dissident about Putin's massive violations of political freedom or the death of Alexi Noni in prison or perhaps a Chinese pro-democracy activist about President Xi's attacks on free speech in Hong Kong, Tibet, Shing Jang, or the persecution trial of Jimmy Lie. Or maybe a journalist about the Saudi crown prince's assassination of Jamal Kosigible, the Washington Post writer who demanded freedom from religious persecution and oppression in Saudi Arabia. But no, the dictators of the world have got nothing to fear from this hearing. The Republicans called it to attack our democratic allies in Europe. The star witness is not a human rights leader like Navoni, but a far-right pro-Putin politician who leads the UK Reform Party, a party that is four members out of 650 members in the parliament. He calls England an authoritarian regime while saying that Vladimir Putin is the world leader he admires the most. Well, this hearing mimics Vice President JD Vance, who went to the Munich Security Conference in February, in the first two minutes of his speech, whitewashed the world's leading autocratic regimes, proclaiming that the threat that worries him is not Russia. It's not China, he said, but rather it's our European allies. Amazing. Republicans are promoting far-right parties in Europe like Alternative for Deutseland, Reform UK and Bllemon National France and ignoring massive repression in Russia, China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and among all the autocrats of the world. Republicans are vilifying European liberal democracies simply for engaging in the kind of line drawing exercises that we Americans engage in under our First Amendment with respect to the epidemic of child pornography, protecting children from other harmful content, defamatory speech, online scams and false advertising, and speech inciting riots and imminent lawless action. all forms of speech that the First Amendment does not protect and whose tricky contours must still be drawn by law. We could have a meaningful hearing on this complicated subject, but this hearing is just a driveby hit against a strong Democratic ally to benefit a Donald Trump sickant and wannabe. But it's even worse than this. Not only are colleagues ignoring intensifying repression in the world's dictatorships, they're also ti trying to distract the world from the attack on freedom taking place right here in America every single day. Americans aren't worried about the EU or the online safety act in the UK. We're not worried about white nationalists not having enough license to incite lynch mobs to set immigrants on fire in their bedrooms. Americans are worried that Donald Trump is working to rewrite and whitewash American history in our museums, our textbooks, and our national parks. To destroy PBS, NPR, and public broadcasting. To ban books in our libraries, and to censor any news stories critical of him by installing political henchmen in private broadcast rooms. Americans know that academic freedom is in danger when the administration cancels and withholds billions of dollars in scientific and medical research funding from American universities, even for urgent life-saving studies about breast cancer or heart attacks as a way to force schools to impose government orthodoxy on curriculum hiring, admissions, and any student and faculty speech that MAGA considers politically incorrect. Americans see Trump trying to harass, intimidate, control, and shut down the press like ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, and PBS. The Republican controlled FCC essentially blackmailed media companies Sky Dance and Paramount into agreeing to install a spy, a monitor, a minder, I think the Brits might say, to police CBS news programs to make sure that they are being sufficiently Trumpy in giving us the news in order to get approval of a merger from FCC. Meanwhile, Trump sued 60 Minutes and CBS personally for $20 billion for the frivolous cause of action that he thought an interview with Kla Harris was edited too favorably and then walked away with a cool $16 million in a shakedown settlement for his library. All part of a now familiar pattern. When Trump doesn't like the news, he sues the broadcaster and unleashes the FCC on them until they pay up and agree to a government spy stationed in their office. Free speech is so much in danger in the US today that if the government tries to violate our rights, we might not even be able to find a lawyer to defend ourselves because Trump is systematically exacting retribution against law firms that represent anyone on the other side of a case against him. Look, our country loves free speech. We fight for free speech. We fought for free speech. And we know it's in danger when students who are lawfully in the United States are taken off the street and and arrested without warrants by masked federal agents in unmarked cars for writing an article or attending a rally that Steven Miller doesn't like. Free speech is in danger when visitors to our country have their social media accounts screened at the border for any criticism of Donald Trump. Free speech is in danger when to kill a mockingbird. The Handmaid's Tale, 1984, and The Kiterunner are banned from our schools and libraries across the country. And even families defending our freedom abroad have to fight for their kids' right to read freely in public schools run by the Department of Defense. Freedoms in danger when the administration tramples the civil service rights of hundreds of thousands of nonpartisan expert civil servants. These civil servants have been protected against political discrimination for more than a century to maintain the excellence and independence of our federal workforce. But they're now being fired simply for doing their jobs, like prosecuting violent criminals and insurrectionists who try to overthrow our government and attack our police officers or because they honestly gave honest economic information and labor statistics to the public. These honorable civil servants are being fired because they won't be the political hacks Trump demands that they be. When private comments made by federal employees are scrutinized for anti-Trump bias and they can lose their jobs because of it, then we've entered the realm not just of Vladimir Putin, but of Joseph Stalin. Now, Mr. Trump and Mr. Farage both claim they're protectors of free speech, but they only want to protect speech they agree with. In the UK, Mr. Farage is openly promoting the abolition of the human rights act of 1998 to be replaced with a British bill of rights that limits the right of speech. Free speech to British citizens and legally sanctioned residents. He complains that racist threats against immigrants are not protected free speech while he proposes to strip migrants, tourists, and perhaps even visiting American Congress people of any free speech rights at all. I had my own close encounter with that when Mr. Raj and his team presented for more than an hour in a conversation we had about free speech and after three minutes of talking uh he cut me off and terminated the meeting because he didn't like what I was saying. That's the kind of free speech he's committed to. There is a free speech crisis in America today. But there's no free speech crisis in Britain. UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer has not shut down GB news where Mr. Farage has his own show just because Mr. Faraj has used his airtime to call for banning peaceful protests that he disagrees with. No one has stopped him from going on Russian TV 17 times and saying also and repeating that the one world political leader he most admired was Vladimir Putin. Even though Vladimir Putin is a war criminal and a dictator who has regularly interfered in other countries democratic elections, no one has stopped Mr. Fraj from paring Putin's absurd talking points like when Farraj claimed that NATO, the US and Britain provoked this war in Ukraine. For a man who fashions himself as some kind of a free speech martyr, Mr. Farage seems most at home with the autocrats and dictators of the world who are crushing freedom on earth. Mr. Mr. Fra wants to get rid of the online safety act in his country. A law shephered by the conservative party and implemented by the Labor Party which bans child pornography online, protects children from harmful content, forbids non-consensual pornography and other unlawful content. He should go and advance the positions he's taking here in Congress today in Parliament, which is meeting today if he's serious about it. To the people of UK who think this Putinloving free speech impostor and Trump sickant will protect freedom in your country. Come on over to America and see what Trump and Mega are doing to destroy our freedom. Kidnap college students off the street. Ban books from our libraries. Militarize our police and unleash them against our communities. Take over our universities. Wreck our professional civil service and turn the government into a money-making machine for Trump and his family. You might twink think twice before you let Mr. Farage, make Britain great again.
