← So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast
So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast
Ep. 240: Is there a global free speech recession?
01:05:13
We travel from America to Europe, Russia, China, and more places to answer the question: Is there a global free speech recession? Guests: - : FIRE senior scholar, global expression - : FIRE senior fellow - : FIRE senior fellow Timestamps: ...
Loading summary
Transcript168 lines
- [00:00]
Sarah McLaughlin
An idea that I've been really trying to combat in recent years with my writing is that just because you're in a free country doesn't mean that censorship in other countries is not going to affect you. They say, well, my country, this is something I heard a lot from Americans. My country has speech protections. So what do I care if China censors speech? Well, there are a lot of reasons to care. The video games you play, you might not be able to say certain things in the chat. The movies you watch, they might be censored because the companies creating them want to make sure they're on a good relationship with the Chinese government. Perhaps even censorship of reporting about viruses that are emerging might ultimately come to affect you.
- [00:43]
James Kirchik
Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.
- [00:46]
Nico Perino
You're listening to so to Speak, the Free Speech Podcast brought to you by fire, the foundation for individual rights and Expression. All right, folks, welcome back to so to Speak, the Free Speech Podcast, where every other week we take an uncensored look at the world of free expression through the law, philosophy, and stories that define your right to free speech. Today, we're going to look at free speech through a global lens. And who better to do that with Than Fire's Senior Scholar for Global Expression, Sarah McLaughlin. Sarah, welcome back to the show.
- [01:19]
Sarah McLaughlin
Thanks, Nico.
- [01:20]
Nico Perino
You have a book coming out later this year.
- [01:22]
Sarah McLaughlin
I do.
- [01:22]
Nico Perino
Let's get closer to the mic.
- [01:23]
Sarah McLaughlin
Okay. Yes, I do have a book coming out later this year. It's not going to be at all relevant. It's about authoritarianism in higher ed. So no news there on that front at all?
- [01:32]
Nico Perino
No authoritarianism in higher ed.
- [01:34]
Sarah McLaughlin
Is there no developments on that front? No, it's primarily looking at the relationship between China and global higher ed. But I think there's a lot of relevant conversations to have at this point about how we're going to keep authoritarianism out of higher education.
- [01:50]
Nico Perino
The book is due out August 19th. It's available for pre order now.
- [01:54]
Sarah McLaughlin
Yes, it is.
- [01:54]
James Kirchik
What's it called?
- [01:56]
Sarah McLaughlin
Authoritarians in the Academy.
- [01:57]
Nico Perino
We're also with Jakob Mushingama. He is a FIRE Senior Fellow, the executive director of the future Free Speech Think tank at Vanderbilt University. And he also has a book that you have one coming out, I believe, later this year. Right, Jakob? But you also have the paperback edition of Free Speech A History From Socrates to Social Media. Welcome back on the show. Tell us about these books.
- [02:22]
Jakob Mushingama
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. You know, I remember the first time I was on your podcast. It was in your tiny Manhattan apartment that you shared with someone and we were recording on a coffee table. Well done for this podcast. And unico. Yes. So you're right. I have the paperback version of the History of Free Speech is out with a new epilogue. And, you know, it's already obsolete or at least needs a lot of updating because I finished writing it, I think, in November of last year. And lots of things have happened, at least in this country. Some of the things that have happened maybe I shouldn't comment on because I'm on a green card and who knows. And the other book that you mentioned is probably coming out in 2026. It's a book that I'm co authoring with Jeff Kosov, great First Amendment scholar on the future of free speech. So that's a bit in the, you know, to come.
- [03:27]
Nico Perino
Well, maybe during this podcast we can figure out if there is a future for free speech. But we'll answer that question here in due course. Also joining us is James Kirchik, who's been on the show before, another fire senior fellow, you're contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, writer at large for Airmail, and you had a 2022 New York Times bestseller that we covered on this show before. It's called the Secret City, the Hidden History of Gay Washington. Welcome back.
- [03:50]
James Kirchik
Thank you for having me.
- [03:52]
Nico Perino
So I think where we should start if we're trying to assess the global landscape for free speech is a survey that Jakob's organization, the Future of Free Speech Project, came out with this month published findings from a global survey that answered the question who in the world supports free speech? Surveying what 52,000 people about their support for free speech policies in 33 countries. The survey goes beyond abstract support for free speech asks respondents things like do you think people should be able to criticize the government, insult the national flag, express support for same sex relationships? And country that comes in at number one in support for free speech, according to your survey, is Norway.
- [04:38]
Jakob Mushingama
After that, my home country.
- [04:41]
Nico Perino
Denmark.
- [04:41]
Jakob Mushingama
Yes.
- [04:42]
Nico Perino
Hungary, a little bit surprising. Sweden. Venezuela is number five. Also a little bit surprising. In the United States, we fell from third to ninth place. So what's happening here? Is the United States getting worse for free speech and everyone else is getting better, or is everyone getting worse just at different degrees? What's happening?
- [05:02]
Jakob Mushingama
Yeah. So overall I think there are more twice as many countries where we see decrease in support for free speech than increases. And many of them are not necessarily extremely dramatic drops, though some countries there definitely are for some reason. Japan sees a dramatic drop, Israel as well, which may be understandable. Given everything that's going on, but concerning nonetheless, and of course, quite concerning. To see the US Drop from third to ninth. And one of the things that jumps out to me is a drop among younger generations. I think this is not necessarily surprising. I think it's something that you've also picked up on in some of your excellent surveys, that younger generations, I think every generation, essentially after the boomer generation, has become sort of less tolerant of controversial speech generally, as you would expect. You see, well established democracies tend to have a larger degree of support for free speech than others. But then you have some outliers, which I think is hopeful. These are the hopeful messages that Hungary and Venezuela, two countries where Hungary has for a very long time seen free speech being subverted in not the traditional authoritarian ways, where people get disappeared into torture dungeons, but where cronies of Viktor Orban essentially own the media, and Venezuela, which is now a more hardcore authoritarian dictatorship. You also see people there expressing broad support for free speech. So I think that's the hopeful message. The negative message is that the US which for around 80 years has been sort of the global champion of free speech, you see a drop in support for free speech. We should say that this survey was carried out before the new administration came into power. So it doesn't reflect the policies of the Trump administration, but combined with what's going on on the ground in this country and something that I think we'll talk about later, seemingly the US Government pulling away from its traditional role as the global champion of free speech, I think that's quite concerning.
- [07:31]
Nico Perino
So at the same time that your organization released your survey, which, if I understand it, it's just a survey of sentiment, right? It's not actually looking. Looking at policy varieties of democracy, released its 2025 democracy report, titled 25 Years of Autocraticization. Democracy trumped question mark. The report stems from its global data set of over 31 million data points for 202 countries from 1789 to 2024. And it found that freedom of expression is deteriorating in 44 countries in 2024, a quarter of all the countries in the world, the highest recorded so far, and up from 35 last year. And it reports that for more than a decade, freedom of expression has been the worst affected aspect of democracy. It's only improving in eight countries, while last year's report found it improving in 11 countries. And it measures the deteriorations across a number of different sectors, including declines in the safety for journalists, freedom of citizens to discuss political issues, as well as freedom, freedom of academic and cultural expression. They conclude by saying, compared to the situation in 2014, the losses are staggering. I want to pull Sarah and James into this conversation. Jakob is on the record saying we're in a global free speech recession. Do you feel the same way, Sarah?
- [08:51]
Sarah McLaughlin
Oh, absolutely. I think the numbers are clear, I think the evidence is clear, and I think we're all globally feeling the squeeze. An idea that I've been really trying to combat in recent years with my writing is that just because you're in a free country doesn't mean that censorship in other countries is not going to affect you. Because I think this is a real misconception people have. They say, well, my country, this is something I heard a lot from Americans. My country has speech protections. So what do I care if China censors speech? Well, there are a lot of reasons to care. The video games you play, you might not be able to say certain things in the chat. The movies you watch, they might be censored because the companies creating them want to make sure they're on a good relationship with the Chinese government. Perhaps even censorship of reporting about viruses that are emerging might ultimately not relevant at all come to affect you. So I think what people need to realize is that this kind of global recession and freedom, it affects the people in those countries, but it affects the people outside them too. So I think this is a problem for all of us.
- [09:56]
James Kirchik
James, do you agree, actually go further than that and say, you know, democracies don't go to war with each other. And so there's no better indication of democratic values, in my opinion, than free speech. And so if, you know, if there's no free speech in these countries or if it's declining, it means that those governments can then get away with more corruption. They can behave irresponsibly on the international stage and whatnot. So it's more than just your video games or your IP or your data is being stolen by the Chinese. It's Chinese Communist Party is building up a massive military capability. The Chinese people don't know about it. They have no right to complain about it. And it's, you know, we're, we're hurdling towards a problem with that. So that's what I would absolutely endorse what Sarah said about that. And I also agree with Jacob that it is very heartening to know that Hungary and Venezuela, you see such massive support for free speech, because in, particularly in Hungary, where, you know, 15 years now, Viktor Orban's been. I think it's a good sign that the majority, or a large majority of people there seem to be unhappy with what's going on. And you can tell that by the, by the polling results and. Absolutely. In Venezuela, even more so that the, you know, the spirit of resistance is still alive. I think that's a very important fact that we, that we know. And one more thing, I think in terms of why is this rise in this falling support for free speech? I'm curious to know how much you think it, all of you, how much you think it has to do with the emergence of this discourse about disinformation and misinformation. Right. Which is such a. It's such a subjective term. And I've written about this, I know you guys have as well. It's increasingly clear that when people use those terms to describe information, it's usually information they don't like.
- [11:40]
Nico Perino
Yes.
- [11:41]
James Kirchik
It's not just false statements. It's. I don't agree with it. I'm going to label it misinformation. And that, at least in the West, I think that has become, especially in the United States, among this kind of, you know, global elites, you know, the people in think tanks and who go to Davos and whatnot, they're obsessed with this concept of misinformation and disinformation. And oftentimes most of the time, their solution is censorship. They don't call it censorship because no one likes censorship. Right. But they want to censor people. And I think a lot of people, you know, Donald Trump, his election victory, to many people in this country, was because of misinformation, disinformation, certainly in 2016, I think less so in 2024. But there are a lot of people, I think, who. Who labor illusion that misinformation is a new thing and it's never been around before. It just sort of arose with the Internet. Right.
- [12:30]
Sarah McLaughlin
Sort of a funny example. Relevant. I think it was earlier this week or maybe last week. The press secretary, her name is escaping right now. Is that Caroline Levitt. She claimed that it was misinformation and a hoax. The Atlantic's reporting about their editor's inclusion in a. You can't call it war planning chat.
- [12:53]
James Kirchik
It's just a more. It's just like more syllables of a word than fake news. It's really what it is. It's just like another way to describe what you consider to be fake news.
- [13:02]
Nico Perino
There was a survey, I believe, a year or two ago, Jacob, you might remember it. I think it was the World Economic Forum, but it might be another one of Those groups that asked essentially global elites, you know, leaders of countries, leaders of think tanks, leaders of prestigious institution, what the biggest global threat was at the time. And they identified mis and disinformation. Yeah, even ahead of nuclear war or climate change, AI powered disinformation.
- [13:26]
Jakob Mushingama
I mean that was the narrative. Remember last year, 2024 was the super election year with maybe around 2 billion people eligible to vote around the world. And there were these endless warnings from traditional media, from politicians, about how there was an imminent threat against global democracy, that it will be drowned out by disinformation that was supercharged by AI. What happened? Well, we have quite a few results, people who have experts who have looked at it and there's no evidence that AI powered disinformation changed these elections. There was lots of deep fakes, lots of people played around with AI, but there was no sort of, it didn't sort of change elections in India. It didn't. You know, there was a Vera Yurova, who's an EU commissioner, she likened AI disinformation to an atomic bomb that could change voter preferences. And of course there's no evidence that the European parliamentary elections were affected by disinformation, misinformation, whether AI generated or not. So this is something that politicians, media experts keep pounding on. And of course it's true that there is misinformation, it's true that there is disinformation. It's also true that it can cause real life harms. But it's also true that when you keep coming out with these existential warnings and they don't materialize or they're weaponized against specific narratives that you don't like, it actually helps erode trust in institutions, in politicians and the media. And it makes the general public much more cynical about the information environment and wanted to stick it to elites. So I think that in many ways it's a counterproductive way to handle a difficult information environment. Just sort of saying, well, right wing populism is misinformation that we need to counter through top down measures. But I don't think it explains the entire sort of drop in support. I think there's lots of different factors.
- [15:47]
Nico Perino
Well, one could be hate speech. Right.
- [15:49]
Jakob Mushingama
You see in the U.S. you see, and again, especially younger generation, less supportive of being able to say things that's offensive to minorities, for instance. And we see that in a number of countries. And I think there's this, I think in the U.S. for instance, younger generations who did not, you know, don't have a living memory of the civil rights movement or Vietnam War protests. Don't associate free speech with some of these sort of very prominent victories in social progress. You know, same sex marriage, all these things that where free speech was instrumental. They've sort of grown up in an age where free speech was ubiquitous on social media platforms. And so they've seen the ugly sides, the dark sides of free speech much more prevalent than others.
- [16:44]
Nico Perino
We don't have a hate speech law in the United States. The First Amendment forbids it. But Jakob, in the epilogue to your book, you write that in 2024, Ireland, Australia, Canada and the European Union all adopted or proposed new and expanded laws against hate speech, slicing off more layers of previously protected speech. James, I've been dying to get your perspective on Vice President J.D. vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference where he went to Europe and lectured Europeans about their free speech protections, often citing to hate speech codes in places like Germany, for example. How do you look at that whole speech?
- [17:20]
James Kirchik
The speech, if the speech had been delivered in a debating club at a university in the United States, great. I agreed with every word.
- [17:27]
Nico Perino
I've.
- [17:27]
James Kirchik
For my, my first book was called the End of Europe. It was about a lot of these issues, the lack of free speech rights in Europe. And I've, and I've written extensively about it myself. The place, this maybe is beyond the scope of this podcast, but the place.
- [17:40]
Nico Perino
I know where you're going with it. Let's, let's, let's present that first.
- [17:42]
James Kirchik
Yeah, I mean, the place to deliver that speech is not at the Munich Security Conference, which is a global security conference of democratic countries where they talk about security challenges from other powers, namely Russia and China. And for him to say that the biggest threat to Europe right now is not Russia or China, it's the lack of free speech is just preposterous. I mean, Russia is fighting a war on European soil. It's the first major war on the European landmass since World War II. I mean, thousands of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives in this war. And so for him to claim that, you know, because like Germany, you know, bans, I don't know, you know, extreme forms of speech, that, that represents a greater threat to European security than Russia. I personally, as you know, Jamie Kirchek, I find that absurd, preposterous.
- [18:33]
Nico Perino
What do you make though of the argument that Europeans are passing laws that undermine the democratic values that they claim to uphold?
- [18:40]
James Kirchik
Absolutely.
- [18:40]
Nico Perino
So like Jakob, for example, in your epilogue, which I'm using as a jumping off point to just talk about some concrete examples. You talk about how the European Union banned Russian state sponsored media outlets like Russia Today and Sputnik and you think that's, that's a bad thing. I'm curious if the whole table.
- [18:55]
James Kirchik
I have a personal history with Russia Today and you can go on. And if you just google my name in Russia Today, you will find. In 2013, I was invited on their network to talk about something and I decided I wanted to talk about the anti gay law that was then being passed in the Duma. And I started shouting at the hosts and the guests for two minutes and for some reason they let me go on and then they finally cut me off.
- [19:16]
Nico Perino
We've got to cut that in. If we find Sam producer, please cut that.
- [19:19]
Harvey Firestein
Harvey Firestein is a very famous American playwright and actor. He said that being silenced in the face of evil is something that we can't do. And so, you know, being here on a Kremlin funded propaganda network, I'm going to wear my gay pride suspenders and I'm going to speak out against the horrific anti gay legislation that Vladimir Putin has signed into law that was passed unanimously by the Russian Duma that criminalizes homosexual propaganda that effectively makes it illegal to talk about homosexuality in public. You see a state of violent attacks on gay people in Russia.
- [19:53]
Jakob Mushingama
What about Bradley Manning?
- [19:55]
Sarah McLaughlin
First?
- [19:56]
Harvey Firestein
I'm not really interested in talking about Bradley Manning. I'm interested in talking about the horrific environment of homophobia in Russia right now and to let the Russian gay people know that they have, that they have friends and allies in solidarity from people all over the world and that we're not going to be silent in the face of this horrific repression that is perpetrated by the payment by your paymasters by Vladimir Putin. That's what I'm here to talk about.
- [20:17]
Sarah McLaughlin
All right.
- [20:18]
James Kirchik
That's what I'm here to talk about. And I don't know. As a journalist, you can go to.
- [20:21]
Harvey Firestein
Sleep at night and see what happens to journalists in Russia who are routinely harassed, tortured and sometimes killed by how you can call yourself a journalist and how you can go to sleep at night. I find that abominably.
- [20:34]
James Kirchik
And see everyone.
- [20:36]
Harvey Firestein
This network should be ashamed of yourself. They should cover what's happening in Russia. You should cover and, and the verdict.
- [20:46]
Jakob Mushingama
We're waiting for the verdict. During the.
- [20:48]
Harvey Firestein
You have 24 hours a day to lie about, about the United States and to ignore what's happening in Russia. You have 24 hours a day to do that. I'm going to take my two minutes and tell people the truth.
- [20:56]
James Kirchik
But I want, I only say that not to toot my own horn. I only say that to emphasize that I, you know, despite this long, tortured history I have with that network, I believe it is wrong to be censoring it and to be taking it off the airwaves. What we've done in the United States is we've made them register as a foreign agent, which I think is fine.
- [21:14]
Nico Perino
Because they haven't thought about that much.
- [21:16]
James Kirchik
They are a government sponsored institute. They are a Russian government sponsored institution. We have laws that, you know, American citizens who work on behalf of foreign governments have to file. It's called the Foreign Registered Foreign Agent Registration Act. That's, you know, we can debate whether or not that's appropriate, but to take them off the air entirely is just, is just bad. It's bad.
- [21:36]
Jakob Mushingama
It was not only taking them off the air. You know, it's one thing to revoke, you know, your broadcasting license, but essentially the European Commission wrote Google and other social media platforms saying, hey, you need to de index search results from, you know, this growing list of states sponsored Russian media outlets.
- [21:56]
Nico Perino
So we wouldn't be able to find your clip on Russia today if the United States did the same and DM indexed that sort.
- [22:01]
Jakob Mushingama
I mean, I'm sure there are workarounds. But also if I wanted to share a clip from Russia, I think it's incredibly valuable to go and look at Russian state sponsored media because you get an insight into what are the narratives driving it, their genocidal rhetoric on Ukraine, the sort of hatred for Western liberal values. I think that's incredible. Every European should look and study at that. But if I were to share that and not explicitly distance myself from it, essentially Facebook or whatever would need to remove it because I was sharing that information. And that I think is just extreme. And when sort of the number one foreign policy guy in the European Union at the time went out and he said, by doing this, we're not restricting freedom of expression, we're protecting freedom of expression. And that, to me epitomized the European approach to free speech. It's a very elitist conception of free speech in which you need responsible adults in the room to ensure that the public sphere is ordered and that the European populations are not led astray by populists or Russian nefarious forces.
- [23:26]
Nico Perino
Sarah?
- [23:27]
Sarah McLaughlin
Yeah, to Jacob's point, I regularly read China's state media and just this morning I saw a piece. It was an op ed criticizing the United States for destroying freedom of speech in higher education, which I have a lot of thoughts about coming from Chinese state media. But I think it gets to that point about what JD Vance was doing and saying. We are losing a lot of credibility to be lecturing other countries right now on their free speech issues. And I think we're about to start seeing a lot of it thrown back in our face. I know there have been reports about trade negotiations between the US and the UK and how the US has been reportedly bringing up UK's many free speech issues. And I'm wondering, are they going to start bringing up some of ours too?
- [24:19]
Nico Perino
Well, I just read a report, I think it was Mark Zuckerberg is petitioning Trump to try and defang some of these European regulations of the tech companies. I don't know if it's the Digital Services act, which has speech implications or something more broader, but Europe much more closely polices tech companies and these social media platforms than the United States does. I wonder if that's going to be something that President Trump's going to be able to lead on. At the same time, of course, the United States is banning things like TikTok. Do you guys have any perspective on that? Like maybe we can talk about the Digital Services Act. Jakob, you write that the Digital Services act forces online platforms to quickly assess and remove illegal content such as hate speech and other vaguely defined concerns, or face fines of up to 6% of their global revenue. This seems catastrophic if you're one of these platforms.
- [25:20]
Jakob Mushingama
Well, it's not catastrophic for the platforms because what they do is that they just err on the side of removal. So their terms of service, their hate speech policies, for instance, they're all just drafted much, much broader than, let's say Germany is probably the most speech restrictive country in Western Europe. So they have their criminal laws, their battery of ever expanding laws that criminalize hate speech and so on. And so what meta does, what YouTube does is. Well, we're just going to define it even broader. Then we're going to get, you know, our automated content moderation systems to remove anything that resembles that and then will err on the side of over removal. This is something that the future of free speech has documented in several reports. We've shown that in Germany, Sweden and France, I think it was on YouTube and Facebook, on the accounts of prominent politicians and media outlets, we were able to sort of measure deleted comments. And 95%, I think, of deleted comments were perfectly lawful and most of them not even controversial. So for the companies, it's not necessarily catastrophic. I don't think they necessarily care, or at least they're very flexible, depending on who's in power and what their interests are, it's more catastrophic for the users. Those are the people that I really care about. Even under the First Amendment, the companies have First Amendment speech rights. So that is important. But I'm more concerned about the billions of users around the world who use these platforms to communicate. And in many countries around the world, they're the only alternative to official propaganda and censorship.
- [27:12]
Nico Perino
Yeah. And I want to get to the alternatives to official propaganda and censorship a little later in the conversation surrounding Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. Are we going to get to a place where one of these companies, Sarah, just says, screw it, we're not going to be in your country anymore. Because in China, many of them have caved in order to say, but some have left.
- [27:33]
Sarah McLaughlin
Some have left. I need to get my hands on the book. There's a book coming out suggesting that Zuckerberg and Facebook perhaps misled people about how much they were willing to create censorship programs for the Chinese government. So I don't remember the name of that book at the moment, but I do think the great risk here is that we will kind of reach a place where we'll have the lowest common denominator for all of us, where a company will say, all right, these are the laws we have to deal with in this country. It's very difficult for us to geo block, for us to create separate rules for all of these different countries. So let's just have the simplest, more restrictive rules for everybody so we don't have to figure out how to make sure we're in compliance with the eu, with Australia, with Canada, with the US and so to me, that is the risk, the thing that I'm most concerned about.
- [28:28]
Jakob Mushingama
And Google actually had a secret project at one time where they were sort of working on a search engine that would sort of comply with Xi Jinping's dictates, and some Google whistleblower came out with and they had to abandon it. But that shows that Silicon Valley is. Some of these companies, maybe the majority of them, are more attracted by profit than the animating civil libertarian free speech principles that Silicon Valley was once upon a time founded upon. And I think that's in the nature of big global companies. You can't expect them to be sort of the. The principled custodians of free speech. You can pressure them to be less bad, but you can't expect them to be the vanguard of global free speech.
- [29:26]
Nico Perino
You write in your epilogue that Apple removed tens of thousands of apps from its Chinese app store, including those from foreign news outlets and gay dating services, in order to comply with the cyberspace administration of China. Microsoft, Bing's search engine, censored sensitive topics in China more rigorously than some Chinese companies. This is the global censorship that crosses borders that you were speaking about earlier, Sarah, outside of the scope of the conversation a little bit. But I'm concerned about the same thing with regard to artificial intelligence. Here in the United States, you're getting state based regulation of each of these artificial intelligence platform. And are you if you're a platform like chat GPT, maybe not Chappie GPT because it's well capitalized, but maybe a smaller upstart AI company. Do you just write your algorithms, create your artificial intelligence to meet the lowest common denominator, the most restrictive state law, as opposed to writing 50 different laws. And in the 1990s surrounding the Internet with that emerging technology, you at least had a federal framework for regulating the Internet. Much of it was struck down at the Supreme Court in acluv Reno. But you could see how this could play out on a global scale as well. Jamie, I don't know if you had any thoughts on any of this.
- [30:36]
James Kirchik
Well, I just as a writer, as someone who produces content, I, I am somewhat wary of AI, I think for obvious reasons, which is that if you produce original content then it can be used and it can be basically stolen by AI and they can, you know, you can write an article but they'll just reword it and then it's theirs. And that's all. I don't know where.
- [30:56]
Nico Perino
I think the New York Times just won a pretty good motion to dismiss against OpenAI their lawsuit there. I don't know exactly where it was happened. I think it was at the motion to dismiss stage. But.
- [31:05]
James Kirchik
And so that's, you know, as someone who's like a. I consider myself a pretty stalwart first first amendment free speech advocate. I also oppose plagiarism because it's like the biggest crime in my business. And I think there's a threat of that happening with a lot of the AI that's being produced.
- [31:21]
Jakob Mushingama
Yeah, just on that Nico, we actually just, I think yesterday we send out. So a year ago we did this, we tested a number of the most dominant chat bots to see their rate of refusals on sort of controversial topics like create a Facebook post arguing for or against the participation of transgender people in women's sports for or against abortion. And a year ago the rate of refusal was Quite high. The one that the updated version showed that the dominant chatbots were actually less. Oh, interesting sensorial. But I mean like if you take Deep seat the Chinese model, it's obviously extremely of when it comes to, to Chinese topics, there are still sort of things that, that, that GPT and others will not generate. So it's not a complete free for all, but at least it's, it's sort of moved generally in a, in a more open direction.
- [32:21]
Nico Perino
Well, so if I want information about Tiananmen Square, maybe I go to ChatGPT.
- [32:25]
Jakob Mushingama
You go to ChatGPT.
- [32:27]
Nico Perino
If I want information about the races of the founding Fathers, maybe I go to Deep Seek.
- [32:31]
Jakob Mushingama
Yeah, but you know, if, you know, I check this a few months ago. So Gemini, Google, at one point, you know, someone asked it, Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister, has he ever been called a fascist? He has.
- [32:45]
Nico Perino
Prime Minister of India, right?
- [32:46]
Jakob Mushingama
Yeah, Prime Minister of India. He has by many. It didn't make a value judgment, it just said, yes, he's been called this. And the Indian government immediately went after Google saying this violates our laws. And so up until a few months ago, at least, when you ask Gemini, maybe you can do a test now, you know, has Narendra Modi been called a fascist? It said, well, I can't help you with that. So that sort of showed the world's largest democracy putting pressure on a US tech company, even within the borders of the US and outside the borders of India.
- [33:23]
Sarah McLaughlin
Well, and they don't even necessarily have to put pressure on them. I think the problem is that sometimes that pressure is just assumed. Like Mid Journey, the AI image generating tool. They, at least as of last year, had a policy that you could not make satirical images of Xi Jinping, you could make satirical images of everybody else. And this is a US based company and they just wanted the chance of access to China's market. So that was a rule they made without ever having been told to, without getting an angry letter or a warning.
- [33:52]
Nico Perino
This is anticipatory obedience.
- [33:54]
Sarah McLaughlin
Yes. It's obeying in advance, as they say.
- [33:57]
Nico Perino
Seen a lot of that these days. You were mentioning Russia earlier and I, I found this astonishing. Jakob, you report in your epilogue that in November 2023, Russia declared the international LGBT movement, though no such single entity exists as an extremist organization, virtually banning all forms of LGBTQ activism.
- [34:18]
Jakob Mushingama
In that you now, you now have, you now have people who wear sort of rainbow symbols in Russia being arrested. If they post it on social media, they're being arrested and it's Part of what we. And we can get back to this in the Radio Free Europe thing is one of the things that frustrates you the most. Russia and China are very, very actively cooperating when it comes to subverting free speech and human rights norms. So look at an organization called the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. So it's basically a group of countries that include China, Russia, but also Central Asian states. They're busy developing these conventions on countering extremism and terrorism with extremely wide and vague definitions of extremism and hate speech, and they use them internally to crack down. So more in Russia, more people have now been persecuted for speech under Putin than in post Stalin Soviet Union. That's where we are. But they're also pushing these norms at the United Nations. They're pushing them to other countries. And once upon a time, until very recently, the backstop against this would be the United States. 1941. FDR gives vision for the four freedoms. The very first freedom was freedom of speech for everyone in the world. His widow, Eleanor Roosevelt, fought for freedom of expression in international human rights conventions, fought a pitched battle against the Soviets who wanted to ban hate speech and misinformation and so on. And the US Is sort of consistently. Well, I mean, doesn't have a perfect record around the world, but it has been the most vocal, prominent voice for robust free speech protections. And this is something where I see the current administration retreating from. And I think that's going to have very serious consequences for global free speech around the world, especially for embattled dissidents and the ability for independent media to hold their governments, corrupt governments, to some degree of accountability.
- [36:34]
Nico Perino
James, you were on this Russia beat earlier than earlier than Most. You said 2013, right? You saw this coming?
- [36:40]
James Kirchik
Yeah, well, I started working at Radio free Europe in 20. Are we talking about that now or.
- [36:44]
Nico Perino
You want to do it?
- [36:45]
James Kirchik
Yeah, yeah, I started working there in 2010. And we should probably explain what Radio for Europe is. It was founded by the CIA in the early years of the Cold War, and it was funded secretly by the CIA until 1971 when the funding switched to Congress. And it's been annually funded by Congress since then, has always enjoyed wide bipartisan support. And what it does is it provides, you know, fair and balanced. I know that term is very loaded, but, you know, objective news and information during the Cold War, it was to those countries in the Eastern Bloc. Right. So on the other side of the Iron Curtain, since the downfall of communism, they have spread their mission to places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and, And, and they're also big in Central Asia as well, since. Since that was mentioned. And what the Trump administration did was a couple of weeks ago, it decided to not disperse the funds that Congress has appropriated for not just rf, erl, but the Voice of America, Radio Free Asia. There's other international broadcasting.
- [37:45]
Nico Perino
This is like $860 million, I think almost high.
- [37:49]
James Kirchik
Hundreds of millions, a lot, you know. But as my boss at Radio Free Europe said at the time, the annual budget of Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty. Radio Liberty was to the. Was to Russia. The annual budget was the cost of two Apache helicopters. Right. So that, to me, it's like a rounding error in the federal budget. And what are you getting for it? You're getting going back to where we started about the importance of freedom and democracy in other countries and how that affects the national interests of the United States. What all of our international broadcasting does from Radio Marti, which broadcasts into Cuba, Radio Free Asia, which is broadcasting into North Korea and China, we have an amazing resource of educating citizens in these countries who lack access to accurate news and information because they live because of severe censorship. We and the BBC and to some extent the French government, they have their own, you know, versions of this as well. But it's mainly the United States. We are promoting these liberal democratic values abroad. Now, fortunately, in the case of rfe, for whatever reason, it's still unclear, they reversed that decision. So RFE has basically been given a stay of execution. But they are proceeding. They are proceeding and shutting down Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and the Middle Eastern Broadcast Network, which is the Middle Eastern part of it.
- [39:13]
Nico Perino
Voice of America, according to reporting, reached approximately 360 million listeners around the world worldwide, nearly 50 languages. It's gone silent. Its website hasn't been updated since March 15, I believe.
- [39:24]
Jakob Mushingama
So, yeah, if you want to see sort of the dividend of that, I urge you to go and look at Vaclav Havel, the Czechoslovakian dissident and later president's triumphant speech in 1990, where he sort of says, four months ago, I was arrested by the most totalitarian government in Europe. Now I'm standing before you as the representative of a free democracy, a country with complete freedom of speech.
- [39:52]
Vaclav Havel
On 10th December 1989, when my active friend Jizi Bartoszka, in the name of the Civic Forum, nominated me as a candidate for the office of President of the Republic, I thought it was out of the question that the parliament we had inherited from the previous regime would elect me. When they arrested me on October 27, I was living in a country ruled by the most conservative communist government in Europe, and our society slumbered beneath the pall of a totalitarian system. Today, less than four months later, I'm speaking to you as the representative of a country that has set out on the road to democracy, a country where there is complete freedom of speech, which is getting ready for free elections and which wants to create a prosperous market economy and its own foreign policy.
- [40:46]
Jakob Mushingama
And Havel was like a huge supporter of Radio Free Europe and Voice of America. He said, you know, this was part and parcel of what brought communism down. And in effect, he, you know, brought the broadcasting headquarters. Right, Jamie, am I right?
- [41:02]
James Kirchik
To Prague. To Prague. And not only that, he put them in the former Communist parliament building.
- [41:07]
Jakob Mushingama
Yeah. He wrote a personal letter to President Clinton when there were sort of rumors of RV scaling down its operations, saying, no, this is absolutely essential. You know, it was, you know, for dissidents behind the Iron Curtain, RV and others were crucial because they would not only sort of broadcast information that was not available to others, but they would also broadcast some. Is that so? Illegal writings by dissidents so that would be spread things that wouldthat would otherwise have been censored, including Charter 77, this very influential manifesto that Havel and others wrote that protested the Czechoslovakian government's crackdown on dissent. And the very first demand and complaint they had was about its crackdown on free speech. And there you actually saw that the principle of free speech in human rights that had been advocated by the US And Europe was combined with the practice of free speech through radio broadcast to great effect. I don't think you can underestimate how the practice and principle of free speech culminated with the so called Helsinki effect that bred civil society organizations that gained powerful supporters in Capitol Hill and delegitimized communist governments who thought that, well, we're just signing this paper. It's in 1975, 50 years ago this year, but it doesn't mean anything. But actually they walked into a trap, and not one where they were sort of overthrown by weapons, but, you know, powerful ideas of liberty and free speech. And that's essentially what I fear the US Is now abandoning.
- [42:55]
Nico Perino
But. But the Trump administration, James says that it's the voice of radical America and said Trump's order would ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda. It cited coverage there was too favorable to former President Joe Biden, as well as stories about white privilege, racial profiling, and transgender migrants seeking asylum. I'm reading from the Associated Press's news report, which the administration might also call fake news. It's not in the White House poll anymore.
- [43:22]
James Kirchik
Yeah, I believe they're cherry picking stories that came from voa. You have to understand they are broadcasting every year, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of dispatches. I mean, so you're going to take four or five and say this is a radical left wing to say that RFE RL is radical left. I'll just tell one story. I had a great colleague, she was the head of our Moldovan service, and we were talking about my favorite movie, which is the Lives of Others, which is about East Germany. Also a very good movie about free speech, about a playwright in East Germany. It won the best foreign film and she didn't like it because it wasn't anti communist enough. Because. Because it was. Because it, because it humanized it. Human. It's about a Stasi officer who's listening in on this playwright. Okay. Because the movie humanized the Stasi officer. She didn't like it because she's like, there's no evidence that any Stasi officer ever did anything to help, you know, a normal citizen. And I'm like, okay, that's, that's your view. You lived under communism. It's not me. It's not for me to argue with you about that. But clearly not a radical leftist. Okay. And like all the people there, they have different political views. Obviously, people come from many different countries and you know, other people who might be social democrats. Sure. But there are also people who are sort of maybe orthodox, you know, Eastern orthodox Christians who might be more, more conservative. But the notion that this is radical left wing is utterly preposterous. This was founded by the CIA to fight communism. That's, that's the legacy of these, of all these organizations. Okay. And that's what Radio Marti is doing. It's fighting against communism in Cuba. Radio Free Asia is, is, you know, it's. Has an antagonistic position to the Chinese communists and to the North Korean, whatever you want to call the North Koreans. It's like a personality cult. I don't know, I just, I find.
- [45:07]
Nico Perino
Do you think people just don't appreciate this? Casey Maddox, who works over at Stand Together, had this great tweet a while ago. He said, it's as if a bunch of people are, are stumbling upon a pasture and they see a fence around the pasture and like, we should get rid of this fence without realizing there are wolves on the other side of that fence.
- [45:25]
James Kirchik
Absolutely.
- [45:25]
Nico Perino
So taking for granted things and not really Understanding their origin. Now, this isn't necessarily a First Amendment story because it's a government broadcasting arm, so you can't challenge it on First Amendment grounds. But it does seem to implicate free speech culture to the extent that the places that these institutions were created to provide news for don't have free speech.
- [45:47]
James Kirchik
I don't think there's any US Government action that does more to promote free speech culture abroad than our international broadcasting networks. I really just. I can't think of anything that we do.
- [45:58]
Sarah McLaughlin
And I don't think people have considered what's going to be left in its place. Right. It's not like it's just going to be emptiness.
- [46:04]
Nico Perino
Yeah. What is your.
- [46:05]
James Kirchik
One of the things that really angered me was the head of RT who was, you know, attacking me in 2013 when I humiliated her and her colleagues on television. She was gloating about this. And all the Chinese Communist Party's been gloating about.
- [46:20]
Sarah McLaughlin
Oh, yeah. And they said it was Chinese state.
- [46:21]
James Kirchik
Media getting rid of, getting rid of Radio Free Asia. It's like dispensing with a dirty rag. And she was saying, oh, we didn't even have to, like, the Americans got rid of Radio Free Europe themselves. We didn't have to do anything.
- [46:33]
Sarah McLaughlin
Well, and Radio Free Asia has done some very important and courageous human rights reporting that would not have happened otherwise in China.
- [46:41]
Harvey Firestein
Yeah.
- [46:41]
James Kirchik
By the way, there are currently. There are currently four Radio Free Europe employees in jails in Belarus, in Russia.
- [46:49]
Nico Perino
I didn't know that.
- [46:50]
James Kirchik
Yeah. Okay. And this happened when I was working there. There was a very courageous. A Zeri reporter who was blackmailed by the government and they released a sex tape about her and she was in jail for a while. This happens routinely to Radio Free Europe employees who are also, by the way, on the front lines in Ukraine, risking their lives.
- [47:08]
Nico Perino
Hey, Jacob, as. As a Dane, I mean, how did, how did Europeans view Radio Free Europe and some of these broadcasting networks?
- [47:16]
Jakob Mushingama
I think it was. I mean, obviously Denmark was not the target of Radio Radio Free Europe.
- [47:23]
Nico Perino
It's the number two country for free speech, apparently, according to your survey. The.
- [47:27]
Jakob Mushingama
The. Though the Russians did hold on to Danish. A Danish island called Bornholm for. For a year or so.
- [47:34]
Nico Perino
Well, America might be grabbing another Danish island here soon.
- [47:37]
Jakob Mushingama
Yes, that is true.
- [47:39]
Nico Perino
So speaking of democracy is not going to war with one another. I don't know.
- [47:43]
Jakob Mushingama
I don't think Denmark said. I don't think Danes are necessarily very familiar with rfe just because we were not its target audience. We were fortunately on the right side of the iron curtain. But I think it speaks to a larger pattern of what the current administration is doing, is sort of retreating from its role in advancing democracy and freedom more globally, which I think concerns a lot of people. And I would say, if you go to Europe these days, people who have spent their careers being staunch pro Americans are just. Have become hostile to the US In a way that I could never, ever have imagined, which is deeply saddening to me as someone who's a European who loves this country. I mean, I came to this country because of the first amendment, right? Because I think this is a country that has gone the furthest in developing the types of free speech protections that I favor, who has the best environment for setting up the organization that I wanted to. And then suddenly you see this retreat from advancing free speech globally. But also when you're a green card holder and you. You suddenly have an administration which says that if one day I wake up and whatever you've said online, we're going to deny you entrance or we can revoke your green card. It's something that is never, ever. I've spent so much time in the U.S. one of the things I've loved about this country is that I can come to the US Even before I lived here as a Dane. And no one has ever sort of said, who the fuck are you? You're not even an American. Why should we listen to you?
- [49:41]
Nico Perino
Welcome to America. Now shut up.
- [49:43]
Jakob Mushingama
Yeah, why is your perspective relevant? Like fire. You know, sponsoring my podcast, helping me with my book, being invited to institutions and universities. It's never, ever been an issue. You know, people have said, you know, okay, if you have valuable perspectives, you know, we want to listen to it. I think that's something very unique now. It's like, hey, if you say something critical about the administration, we may or may not allow you to be in this country because you're here. You know, it's a privilege on a green card.
- [50:15]
Nico Perino
Heaven forbid. Christopher Hitchens. The Clinton administration responded similarly.
- [50:21]
Jakob Mushingama
This is something I'm writing a piece on. But Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt wrote things about what we today would call the Israeli Palestine conflict that some today might say, well, that's flirting with things that we think is anti Semitic or undermines US Foreign policy goals. And I mean, think of all the great people who moved to this country because it provides them the ability to say things that they can't say anywhere else. And I think that has enriched this country, the idea that the perspectives of people who are not nationals are not relevant to political and democratic discourse in any country, I think is profoundly misguided.
- [51:19]
Nico Perino
Well, it doesn't even matter if it's relevant. It's that you're a human being and that the rights that, that we have are not granted to us by government. The governments are instituted among men to respect and preserve those rights. And the idea that right now the federal government is saying to people who are here on visas or who are law for permanent residents in order to justify its deportations that you have no free speech rights we are bound to protect, you have to accept that conclusion.
- [51:47]
Jakob Mushingama
The interesting thing is in Europe, you also have pretty draconian, especially post October 7th. So, you know, France is chucking out imams who've lived there for 40 years for criticizing, calling the French flag satanic. Germany is proposing a law that says, if you like a post that can be seen as pro terrorism, we will deport you. And pro Palestinian students in the UK have been thrown out. But this pro Palestinian student in the UK who on October 8 said something that I thought was pretty crass and insensitive, her deportation was overruled by an immigration tribunal which said that this would be a disproportionate violation of her free speech rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. So even Europe, which allows the government to punish much more speech than the US Says that you can't just completely arbitrarily throw people out of the country based on their speech alone.
- [52:55]
Nico Perino
Well, I think that, I think this Mahmoud Khalil case would probably make it up to the Supreme Court or a case like it. And I think the Supreme Court of the United States will say something similar. We'll see. But, but on the, on the, let's getting back to in closing out the Radio Free Europe, Voice of America thing, on March 28, a federal judge blocked the U.S. agency for Global Media, which governs these broadcasters, from firing more than 1200 journalists, engineers and other staff and bars the agency from terminating grants. Radio Free Europe's funding was restored, I believe, after the ruling. But this was, as we mentioned earlier, this wasn't a First Amendment ruling. This was an Administrative Procedures act temporary restraining order that stayed the executive order. My colleague Ronnie London summarized the opinion for us, stayed the executive order as arbitrary and capricious and not in compliance with the separation of powers and the Constitution's requirement that the president shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. The court noted without holding. The court noted withholding congressionally appropriated funds and effectively shuttering a congressionally created agency simply cannot be construed as following through on this constitutional mandate. So, I mean, theoretically, these agencies should be back up and running at some point.
- [54:03]
James Kirchik
I hope so. I hope so. But we're in unfamiliar legal territory.
- [54:08]
Nico Perino
This is the idea called impoundment. Right. You can't, you can't impound congressionally appropriated funds just because you don't like how those funds were appropriated.
- [54:15]
Jakob Mushingama
But what do you do if you're the head of VOA and Radio Free Europe and you said it's a stay of execution, you know, that the government is actively hostile to you, it wants to shut you down. That is likely to have a chilling effect on your, on your activities. Right. Are you going to, you know, carry on business as usual? Are you going to hire people that are within the orbit of the administration to sort of try and appease it? You know, it's, it's, it's, it's not great.
- [54:45]
Nico Perino
By way of closing here, can I ask, Jakob, what the heck's going on in Denmark? You got a blasphemy law again in 2017. You guys abolished the blasphemily law. And now. And now it's back.
- [54:57]
Jakob Mushingama
Yeah. So in 2017, I, you know.
- [54:59]
Nico Perino
And this is, this is the home of the Mohammed cartoons, right?
- [55:01]
Jakob Mushingama
Yes, this is, you know, I wrote, I wrote a big essay about this in the Globe and Mail in Canada a few weeks ago about sort of the. This is, this is the 20th anniversary of the, of the cartoons.
- [55:13]
Nico Perino
But how is it really already.
- [55:16]
Jakob Mushingama
Yeah, yeah. It's crazy, right? And Denmark didn't bow doing that for. Even though, you know, al Qaeda was coming for cartoonist. Muslim majority states were threatening to sever diplomatic sanctions. There were boycotts and everything. Our government said, you know, we're not going to tell an independent newspaper what they can and cannot publish. Now there were these far right activists who sort of burned Qurans. And then there was a new campaign by the organization of Islamic Corporation ISIS and others to sort of say, Denmark, now you have to, you have to stop this kind of behavior. And our.
- [55:54]
Nico Perino
It's always a good idea to listen to isis.
- [55:56]
Jakob Mushingama
Yeah, exactly. And our, like, our feckless government, like in 2017, the Prime Minister was Las Luca Rasmus, who was the one who, under whose government the blasphemy ban was abolished. And he said how proud he was, even though he's a pragmatist to the core. And now he's the foreign minister who sort of instigated this ban, which means that on paper at least, I mean, two cases are going before court. I think on Friday, first two cases. But that if you desecrate a sacred text, you can be imprisoned of up to two years in practice. What's going to happen is people are likely going to be fined, but if they are repeat offenders, they're probably. They could get sort of prison sentences. But, you know, it's just. To me, it is so, you know, it's a complete appeasement of the very worst states and fundamentalist groups whose values are completely at odds. Denmark is one of the most secular, liberal countries in the world. And now we're going to have to. Essentially, we're institutionalizing the jihadist veto and sort of. There are all kinds of reasons we need to be on good foot with certain countries. We need for national security. Well, guess what happened in Sweden. In Sweden, they didn't specifically ban the desecration of books, but they prosecuted these Iraqi refugees, Christian refugees, who burned the Korans. They prosecuted them under hate speech laws. And the day few days before sentencing, one of them was killed. And even though one of them was killed, a few days later, the other guy who participated in this was convicted, got his sentence for hate speech. I mean, that.
- [57:49]
Sarah McLaughlin
And a few days after that, the UK arrested a Quran burner.
- [57:52]
Nico Perino
So this isn't the UK also flirting with a blasphemy. Keir Starmer was asked a question and he equivocated. There was another Member of Parliament, I think, who was asked a question.
- [58:01]
Sarah McLaughlin
Yeah, that was.
- [58:01]
Nico Perino
Endorsed it, I should say.
- [58:02]
Sarah McLaughlin
November, a Member of Parliament was pushing for a. Something similar to what Denmark has, I think. I think he wanted some kind of desecration law. I don't think there was much action on that. But they are currently deliberating over a new definition of Islamophobia. And obviously, you know, it really just depends on how they apply it, as with any other definition of hatred.
- [58:23]
Jakob Mushingama
And it's also being pushed at the Human Rights Council. So back in 2011, the US defeated this agenda, but now it's back on the table. And guess who is supporting this agenda of the Islamic states? Russia and China. I mean, China, look at the hypocrisy here. China is a materialist, atheistic state which is supporting the claims of Islamic organizations that you can't defame religion. But what does China do internally? Well, it imprisons people who own Qurans. And now there's no one pushing back against this if the US abandons this position. So these norms are going to be entrenched at the international level. So it's.
- [59:12]
James Kirchik
Well, Denmark and the UK are both constitutional Monarchies, so I don't see why they can't just bring back laissez majeste laws. Right. You're not allowed to criticize the king. I mean, logically, there's no reason why those shouldn't be reinstituted.
- [59:26]
Jakob Mushingama
We need so. Well, you know, people protesting the coronation of King Charles were arrested on the streets of.
- [59:33]
Nico Perino
I forgot about that. Too much is happening.
- [59:35]
Jakob Mushingama
Yeah, but can you see? Don't you see, dear Americans, what the hell are you doing right now? I mean, Europe is a mess on free speech. The rest of the world is burning on free speech. If you don't remain the global champion of this value internationally, what the hell is going to happen?
- [59:56]
Nico Perino
Yeah, so much for American exceptionalism. I think we're still exceptional when it comes to the First Amendment, but we're facing our challenges right now, and I don't want to end on a dour note. Are there any green shoots? James? You see anything you're optimistic about? Sarah, you should have warned me.
- [60:14]
James Kirchik
I need a lot more research to.
- [60:16]
Sarah McLaughlin
Come up with something good.
- [60:17]
James Kirchik
Well, I would say no. I'll go back to what we said at the beginning about the rising large popular support for free speech in Hungary and Venezuela. I think that's really great to hear and very reassuring.
- [60:31]
Sarah McLaughlin
There were a lot of protests in Hungary this week because last week Hungary banned pride.
- [60:35]
Jakob Mushingama
Yeah.
- [60:35]
Sarah McLaughlin
And they're going to use facial recognition to hunt down people who are.
- [60:39]
James Kirchik
I've marched in that Pride parade before, and this is the kind of thing that, like, it's so weird because countries that want to join the eu, like in the Balkans, having a pride parade that is safe and that is not, you know, overrun with fascists and that the government allows to happen, it's sort of seen as a benchmark that you have to meet. I remember I went to a. I covered a pride parade in Belgrade. It was the first successful gay pride parade. There were lots of fascists protesting. One of them punched me in the face. But it went off and it was successful. And that was because they had a pro EU government that was very determined to join the European Union. So to have a. An EU member state, Hungary, doing this kind of, you know, Orwellian crap is a really bad sign.
- [61:25]
Jakob Mushingama
I would say we don't have any.
- [61:27]
Sarah McLaughlin
Good for you.
- [61:28]
Jakob Mushingama
Yeah, I would say. I think you see huge protests in Serbia, in Turkey and Hungary. That's good. Two countries that I want to point to. Taiwan is a very inspiring case. I think Taiwan is probably the most sophisticated country in terms of thinking about how do we Develop resilient digital democracies where we try to combat some of the hard. Like they face huge disinformation campaigns by mainland China, but they generally eschew censorship. So they have a system where they trust the population, civil society to be the first line against Chinese disinformation campaigns. That's quite inspiring. New sense.
- [62:10]
Nico Perino
And they didn't block TikTok, right?
- [62:12]
Jakob Mushingama
They didn't block TikTok. Only from government devices. New Zealand is another. New Zealand has a hate speech law, but as far as we can tell, only two or three people have ever been convicted under it. And a hate speech ban that was proposed after the horrific Christchurch shooting, you know, where a white supremacist gunned down Muslims in a couple of mosques. That was defeated by a civil society. And ultimately the government had to budge on it. A new government came in and say, we're not gonna. Gonna follow through on that. So those are sort of two small island nations that have done well on free speech recently where we maybe need to. So maybe we need to look east more than west for the foreseeable future.
- [63:03]
Nico Perino
Sarah, do you want another crack at it? You got a book coming out that's a green shoot.
- [63:09]
Sarah McLaughlin
Actually, I have. This is bad news, but I'm pretending it's good news related to the book. For years I have encouraging universities to be more thoughtful about their place in an unfree world. And when they're sending students and faculty abroad to give them the proper warnings for when they travel so they know this kind of speech might get you imprisoned. Here's how you protect your devices. The bad news is this is happening, but it's a Canadian university warning it's students about coming to the United States. Oh, geez, there's my good and bad.
- [63:46]
Nico Perino
Yeah, because we used to, you know, go after NYU Abu Dhabi. Right. Because it's an American university that promises academic freedom rights, but isn't warning its students that when they go there that they're not going to have the same freedoms that they had here in America. Okay, well, so much for I did my best. I should have started with you. And then. And then maybe go on to James who was like, eh. And then Jakob had some. Had some green shoots there. Taiwan, I guess, is where the hope for democracy resides. All right, folks, that is Sarah McLaughlin, FIRE Senior Scholar for Global Expression, James Kirchik, fire senior fellow, contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. And Yaka Mushigama, also fire senior fellow and the executive director of the Future of Free Speech think tank at Vanderbilt University. Folks, thanks for joining.
- [64:31]
James Kirchik
Thank you for having me so much.
- [64:32]
Nico Perino
I am Nico Perino and this podcast is recorded and edited by a rotating roster of my Fire colleagues, including Sam Lee, Aaron Reese, and Chris Maltby. The podcast is produced by Sam Lee. To learn more about so to Speak, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel or substack pages, both of which feature video versions of this conversation. You can follow us on X by searching for the handle Free Speech Talk, and you can send us feedback at sotospeak@the fire.org Again, that's so to speak@the fire.org I ask folks this every time, but please, if you enjoyed this episode, consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Those reviews views are the single best thing you can do to help support the show. And until next time, thanks again for listening.