In Trumpland, “Defending Freedom of Expression” means one thing: the president’s presentation | Rafael is a dazzling

CThe United States is still with many countries around the world, and it is a great democracy, but it is much less than it was four months ago. The constitution has not been rewritten. Checks and balances have not been resolved. The difference is the president who ignores these restrictions and the inability of the institutions that must be implemented.

What is the real United States, which has been devoted to law or the person who smiles in contempt of the law? If the last, should Britain welcome embrace it as a good nation? This is an existential question lurking in the technical folds of the potential Atlantic Trade Agreement.

If you are supposed to believe JD Vance, then the chances of such a deal are looking. The US Vice President states that Donald Trump “really loves the UK.” The two countries are associated with a “real cultural rapprochement” that goes beyond commercial interests.

This is Vans more than the person who previously condemned Britain, along with other European democracies, as a hotbed of anti -Christian prejudice and endemic control. In a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February, Vans told his fans that the biggest threat in Europe does not come from Russia or China, but “from the inside.” Qara saw a retreat from “common values ​​with the United States of America.” Vans returned to the topic when He visited the White House Care StarmerThe Prime Minister’s reprimand for “violations of freedom of expression that … affects American technology companies, and thus American citizens.”

This was a criticism of the online safety law, which makes social media companies, websites and search engines responsible for the “harmful content” published on their platforms. The law had a courageous emergence between 2022 and 2023. Its scope and contracting, depending on what was considered and desirable under three different conservative presidents.

The version is now focused on the basic system book on bad things in an unambiguous manner – incitement to violence, terrorism, hatred of race, encourage suicide, and abuse of children. Technology companies have to have systems to remove this content. These mechanisms are evaluated by the organizer, Offcom. An insufficient implementation with fines is punished. The refusal of compliance can lead to criminal judicial prosecutions.

This was the theory. The issue of how the law was implemented in practice. It seems that the answer is not much if Britain wants a commercial agreement with the United States.

Last month, OFcom received a delegation from the US State Department, which sparked online safety law in line with the Trump administration’s mission “to confirm the commitment to defend freedom of expression in Europe and around the world.” Last week, I answered questions from the Parliamentary Communication Committee, Starmer confirmed this The regulation of dance regulation was on the table In commercial conversations when he admitted that “there are questions about how technology affects freedom of expression.” The Prime Minister also admitted that the UK digital services tax, which aims to spend international technology companies that avoid taxes by hiding their profits abroad, could be negotiating.

These demands were marked by the White House a long time ago. In February, Trump signed a “A note to defend American companies and innovators from extortion abroad.” The administration promised to take a bleak look at any attempt to raise taxes from American technology companies and any use of “products and technology in ways to undermine freedom of expression or control.”

It is clear that the regulations that hinder the operation of the American digital giant – anything less than the comprehensive permission to do it – will apparently be treated as a hostility and insult to human freedom.

This is an imperial request to reach the markets camouflagedly sarcastically in the language of comprehensive rights. The equivalent trick is not available in other sectors of the economy. American farmers hate the commercial barriers that prevent their products from flooding European markets, but they do not argue that their chlorine chicken is controlled. (not yet.)

This does not mean that digital connections can be subject to toxic tests just like agricultural exports. There is a wide room for reasonable dispute over what is considered unbearable content, and how it should be controlled. The border is not easily defined. But it is doubtful that the presence of thresholds. There is no issue of freedom of expression of images of sexual assault on children. The most liberal judicial authorities realize that the state has a duty to ban some materials even if there is a market for that.

The question of how the online space should be complicated in principle and difficulty in practice, not the least of which is because the infrastructure we deal with as a public allowance run by private commercial interests. Britain cannot let the conditions of discussion dictated by a closed American administration to spoil the political relationship with these interests.

It is impossible to separate the commercial and ideological threads of Trump’s relationship with the lack of silicon valley. They used their strength and wealth to enhance his candidacy and want to recover from his work. There is not much cohesion of the doctrine. “Free” speech is the type that brings the president’s personal biases. Correct his lies with verified facts is censorship.

This distorted framework extends beyond the beaches of the United States. Kimi Badnosh, who is considered a friend. When asked about the speech of Vice President Munich, the conservative leader said she believed that he “dropped some of the bombs of truth, in full frankness.” Badnotch speeches constantly concern about the elite institutions captured in Britain, especially the White Hall bureaucracy, Through the oppression of the doctrine, the doctrine.

There is a school of armed lefts that suffer from observers, liberal piety extends to the extreme, and there was always. But it is very far from power. Badenoch may collect the danger to attract a fanatic audience on social media. Perhaps it was extremist by reading about it. In both cases, to confirm the policy of protest on the campus as the main threat to Western democracy when the tyrant in the Oval Office sits a measure of mental work that, if not stupid, imitates strong stupidity.

Britain does not have to take instructions on political liberation from a system that suffocates the independence of the media with bullying and turbulent litigation; This demands universities to teach the ruling Orthodox; The courts are dictatorships while sabotaging democratic alliances; This kidnaps the innocent prisons and prisons without any consideration of the due legal procedures, then ignores the court rulings that they say must be free.

These are the “values” that Vans talks about when he regrets that Europe and the United States are drifting. This is the “Freedom of Expression” model that is expected to be supported by Trump’s commercial partner; For protection. Are these “real cultural rapprochement” things that gain Britain? Let’s not hope.