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Europeans are effortposting on X right now, centering around a reported $140 million fine apparently for how X changed the blue checkmark and restricted API access to researchers. But this comes at a time when Europeans are bearing down on Musk for not curating feeds based on the opinions of paid 'misinformation experts', an industry effectively invented post-2016 election.
It is a terrible look for Europe. They are falling behind China and the US economically while acting as the global regulators for industries they are no longer capable of building themselves. Their posture has become so hostile to business that Apple is now withholding major features from the European market. Jamie Dimon just sounded the alarm on how their hulking regulatory regime is dragging down their ability to innovate, warning that they’ve effectively driven investment out.
My impression of European bureaucrats in the last 24 hours is of a body staffed by a bunch of snooty has-beens. The economist Robin Brooks has been noting the deep hypocrisy here too: their moralizing doesn't match their actions on things like Ukraine, given they are still buying endless amounts of Russian oil via backchannels and refineries in places like India.
The free speech thing is really annoying too. I was actually surprised to see Trump hold back on this when meeting PM Starmer in Scotland. There is a real and serious difference in free speech between our nations. As an American, I can express myself without fear that some busybody will knock on my door.
It’s upsetting because while things might have been less turbulent under Harris, I’m truly glad that the attempt to codify a global regime of 'acceptable' online speech has met resistance. It’s odd to think that we nearly saw a unification of US/EU efforts on this front, importing their safetyism to our shores.
Europe is and always will be our friend, but they’re not on their game right now. The reactions aren't principled—they’re distasteful.
I am not the biggest fan of European attitude towards free speech, but it's amusing to see how it just displays the ignorance of Americans to think that something has fundamentally changed in Europe in relation to the treatment of free speech when it has always been like this in Europe. Nowadays the issue is just that speech is increasingly online. I think it's far to criticize Europe, but I think most of the dunking coming from US actors are in terribly bad faith and nonsensical. You have the most brazenly corrupt president in the history of US and country full of non-White immigrants (with VP's wife being Indian for god's sake), and we get lectured for seemingly failing to be democratic and preserving our cultural identities. As far as European weak military goes, this is has been fully devised by US policy. I think dunking on economy is fine, but even there when Musk makes snide remarks about how EU should be dismantled in favor of sovereign nations, you know he is full of shit. EU is the best thing that could've happened to a business wanting to export into EU with the exception if you favor Putin-style cronyist regimes where single people can be paid off. I am self-critical of Europe as an European, but most of the criticism I'd take as fair if it came from a country like Japan, not US.
I don't know, it feels like something changed with respect to speech between 2010 and 2020. Like, people would look down on you for saying non-PC things loudly in public, but you didn't get arrested for it. And as for the VP's wife being Indian, for a while we had in the UK:
All either Indian or Arab, at the same time.
It is not only about free speech. During 1990s and early 2000s there was a huge discussion of how will the EU look like post Maastricht, labeled as Europe of Nations vs federal Europe - with the former being labeled as "eurosceptic" and latter as proeuropean of course. The eurosceptic side basically lost with 2007 Treaty of Lisbon. The new empowered EU beurocracy started churning regulation at breakneck speed - doubling the already burdensome regulation by 2024 so now majority of national laws are passes just to implement EU regulations. It now borders with comical, such as the latest EU Space Act which despite declining EU space programs boasts how it will bring about safe, sustainable and green space exploration or something silly like that. EU institutions and bureaucrats are unironically proud of EU being regulatory superpower, some of them really believe in how they are essential for regulating the whole world.
EU is basically a paradise for bureaucratic structures - the so called Deep State - with byzantine rules hiding responsibility behind layers and layers of structures and almost no real oversight. Just look at this simplified graph of EU institutions from wikipedia and keep in mind that each of this rectangles hides layers of equally byzantine rules of how they are constituted. I'd say that with EU institutions gaining more and more control, the whole thing is turning into something akin to ancient Chinese system of true bureaucracy or maybe something like late Soviet or post Deng and pre Xi system of collective leadership, where it was not dear leader, but party structures controlling the state.
It's practically dark humor that EU efforts to be a regulatory superpower abroad are fuel to the EU-US divorce, which in turn justifies further strengthening the EU institutions. It may be all according to keikaku to some EU advocates, but I've heard many express incredulity about how various US political leaders might take issues with attempts to fine American companies with great political influence into compliance with European Union political interests.
The sort of default Atlanticism that might view continental political propaganda as unobjectionable but Russian political propaganda as toxic is passing away with the Boomers. The emerging generations filling the bureaucracies are increasingly likely to see it either from a neutral principle lens, in which case either European propaganda is just as bad or Russian propaganda is just as harmless as the other, or through a partisan friend-foe lens. The later case is just as bad in its own way, as it means the European-Russian axis only matters in so much that it provides a stick to beat the opponent with, regardless of from which direction.
Geopolitical alliances crack when one party is seen as the partisan partner of one's own domestic political opponents. Sometimes that crack can be overcome by sufficient time, see the South Korean left's political evolution regarding views on the US following the dictatorship period. But actively pursuing it unprompted is somewhere between feckless, malpractice, or a deliberate tradeoff for shorter-term priorities considered more important.
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