Speaker: Assita Kanko, Member of European Parliament for Belgium

Moderator: Nico Perrino, Executive Vice President, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Time codes refer to the session video.

[00:00] Nico Perrino

Free expression in Europe. I do free speech work here in the United States, and I'm talking to people about free speech issues all the time. Of course, we have our own challenges here, and the previous panel was discussing those. But I often talk with people who raise their concerns about Europe, often as a caution for us in the United States. They see free speech in Europe against the First Amendment standards we have here, and how free speech is treated legally and culturally in Europe is somewhat different. So I wanted to start with you and get your sense of the state of free speech in Europe. Are Americans right to be troubled by what they're seeing, or is it perhaps overstated?

[00:46] Assita Kanko

Thank you for having me here. Daily, in my own personal life and also in my job as a member of the European Parliament, I can feel from very close how difficult it is to think freely and to express one's views freely. It is expected that you think a certain way, and it is expected that you don't speak about certain thoughts. That's very disturbing. And when you happen to be Black, like I am—which I often do not remember, because nobody walks around every day thinking, oh, I remember my color—you think your thoughts based on your critical thinking, on using your brain, not on the color of your skin. So when you express an opinion that is not a left-wing opinion and you happen to be Black, people will sometimes act like you need to remember who you are. But who I am is not the color of my skin. It's my character. That's very difficult. And mostly those people will be people who pretend to fight racism, who pretend to fight for freedom, who pretend to fight hate speech. But reassigning someone to the color of their skin is brutal. It is violent. It reduces the person to a piece of what the person could be or is. And saying to people, because you have an opinion about radical Islam, you are Islamophobic, is also violent, because by saying that you put a target on them. Then they get threats, and some of them have been killed already in Europe. When you are a legislator, you need to be able to think freely about what you are doing. And above all, I figured out after seven years in Parliament, you need to never be afraid to lose your job. I'm permanently on the job market, because I never want to be scared of losing my job.

[02:42] Nico Perrino

You mentioned that accusing you of Islamophobia can be a form of violence, in the sense that it puts a target on your back. But do you think it should be illegal to say that sort of thing?

[02:53] Assita Kanko

No, I think that's more a moral issue than a legal issue. It must be possible to confront someone who says that and to say, that's not Islamophobic. That is just a normal way of interacting in a democracy: you need to be able to criticize something, especially when it's dangerous for democracy and for individual freedom. For example, now I say we need to put the Muslim Brotherhood on the EU list of terrorist organizations. When there is a terror attack like the one that happened in Brussels in 2016, when people shout "Allahu Akbar" before blowing up the metro or the airport and killing innocent people, including children who were on their way to school in the morning, how can you say it has nothing to do with Islam? It's obvious. I was born within a Muslim background. I grew up using my capacity to think, to be critical, and I think they can too, if they try. So when we say it has something to do with Islam, we need to be serious about that, because that's the reality. But when you say that, then you are Islamophobic, and then you become the problem, not the terrorist. That's not okay. So I'm going to fight to get the Muslim Brotherhood on the list of terrorist organizations, so that we can actually push them back in Europe.

[04:15] Nico Perrino

Let's talk a little bit about the legal tools used around speech in Europe. In February 2025, 60 Minutes, which is a very prominent news program here in the United States, ran a segment about what's going on in Germany. It had news cameras following German prosecutors and police as they knocked on doors and raided the homes of people who were critical of German politicians. I remember one example of a man who accused a German politician of being a "pimp," which I guess is close to a German word for a certain part of the anatomy. It seemed kind of tame, given the discourse we have here in the United States, to accuse a German politician of that and then have the police come knock on your door and arrest you for it. But it shocked a lot of Americans, and the way the German prosecutors just dismissed any free speech concerns around it was foreign to us. So talk about the legal environment. You've talked about the cultural environment already. Talk about the legal environment for speech in Europe, particularly around criticism of government officials—you yourself are a government official—but also this broader concept of hate speech.

[05:32] Assita Kanko

Look, I'm feeling a bit embarrassed about what people can fight about in Europe, especially about body parts, when it's not very relevant to what they should be doing in society. But that's how it goes. Now, when they try to change the law because they want to bend it to what they actually want to manipulate in society—and this is something that is ongoing in the European Parliament right now—they say they want to make a European law against hate speech. When you tell people you want to do something against hate speech, they might say, yes, you are right, you should do something against that, because nobody wants hate speech. But when you go deeper, it's very different from what we assume it is, because it's a manipulation. When they say hate speech, they mean the speech that they do not like. That is not hate speech. That's speech you are not comfortable with. In our families—I am a mother, and I always have uncomfortable conversations with my 19-year-old daughter, and I think in many families you can relate—conversations are not always easy, but the difficult ones are the ones you need to have. As a humanity, we are also a wider family, and we need to be able to speak about difficult things with each other. But when you have this law against hate speech, you stop having any difficult conversation, and you cannot achieve any progress anymore.

[07:08] Then we divide humanity into good people and bad people according to one standard, and we can never think anymore, because we will agree with everything. So this law against hate speech is something that cannot happen. I don't support it. And when I say I don't support it, people go on social media and say that I am for hate speech. That's information manipulation. That's not true. I am against the censorship that they want to do.

I'll give you two examples. If you say, as I said before, that you want the Muslim Brotherhood on the EU list of terrorist organizations, they will say that is hate speech. Or female genital mutilation. I experienced that myself, both undergoing female genital mutilation as a child and, as a politician, trying to make laws against it. I say female genital mutilation is an assault on women—not only on their body, but on their potential, on their life, on their future. You cut through their life. You destroy their capacity and their self-esteem. When I say that, they will say it's racist, so it is hate speech, because I'm making African people embarrassed about their tradition. But this is a very bad tradition. It's a very painful tradition. It should never exist. People should be prosecuted for continuing it.

[08:28] So when you say something like that, they say you are pronouncing hate speech. This is crazy, because this law is going to be against the fundament of the human rights that we are defending right now, and against free speech. So I'm not going to support it. They will also use it to overregulate technology. If I write something on my social media that a left-wing person disagrees with, they will say it's hate speech. Yet they go on my social media—because I'm a center-right politician, which is outrageous, because since I'm Black, I should be a far-left Democrat. I don't want to be, because I also don't want to pay too much in taxes. Your invoice doesn't ask you, hey, are you Black or white? Your invoice has got to be paid. So it's a matter of being rational. And when I write on my Facebook any opinion I have, the left-wing people who want a law against so-called hate speech go on my social media and write, "How is life on the plantation?" Can someone tell me what that is? Is that not hate speech? To be honest, I don't care, because I know that I'm free, whatever area they think I am in. So I let them do it. But I will never support this law, and I will combat its existence.

[09:47] Nico Perrino

Is your perspective on hate speech laws, the ways they can be abused, and their subjective nature a unique opinion within the European Parliament? Do you stand alone in holding it, or is it shared by a significant cohort of your peers?

[10:04] Assita Kanko

Luckily, I don't stand alone. But people have a certain degree of expressing publicly what they think. We are here at this summit for that reason as well. I have many colleagues who agree with that idea. Of course, they will not necessarily say it out loud, because there are always consequences. I really cannot keep my mouth shut, so I got in trouble a lot. But I have colleagues who will come and vote for the proposal, for the idea, but will not really talk much about it. I think that's also okay. In a team, everyone has a different role. Luckily, we have a broad majority in the Parliament. Since the elections of 2024, I can feel a difference. I'm the spokesperson for my group in the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, where we talk about all these kinds of things, and when I want to build a majority, I go to the center-right, and then we can find some support from the right side, or sometimes from the center. It was not like that in my past term. For the first five years, there was a very powerful left-wing majority, and it was very hard to break. But I can see now that there is momentum to build progress on free speech in Europe.

[11:18] Nico Perrino

Yesterday we had a panel here on antisemitism and free speech, and there was a debate over how you address hateful speech in the United States and also in Canada—we had a representative from Canada here—with very different approaches to these issues. How do you view antisemitism and free speech, particularly in the context of this hate speech debate? Here in the United States, we had a very contentious congressional hearing about whether calls for Jewish genocide would be prohibited on college campuses, whether that would be considered hate speech, and whether chants like "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" should be considered protected speech or banned from college campuses. How is that debate unfolding in Europe right now?

[12:03] Assita Kanko

First of all, I find it very sad that in a modern society, in the US and Europe, we need to have this conversation about something that is very obvious. It is hate speech when you want to erase Jewish people. When you say "from the river to the sea," it is hate speech, because you want to pretend that they do not exist. That we need to have this conversation says it all. It's like we need to prove to each other that we are humans and not something else. This is so obvious, and so sad that we are reduced to that.

I was in a committee meeting a couple of weeks ago, and my adviser, who was sitting next to me, told me, please just look behind you on your right and look at the cup on the table. So I said okay. And he was like, don't look now. And then I turned immediately, because when you tell me that, I really look now. So I turned and looked, and there was a far-left member of Parliament sitting there, and in front of her was something to put her water in. On it was a map where you could see Israel and Palestine, all of it, like in the propaganda, and it was written "Palestine from the river to the sea."

[13:13] I was shocked. It was an official committee meeting in the Parliament. You're not even supposed to come inside with a drink, and she had a drink in front of her with that propaganda on it—propaganda that is profoundly antisemitic. Of course, she left very quickly after the committee meeting. But this is an example of what's going on in Parliament sometimes. Antisemitism is so widespread in Europe, and also in other areas of the world. So what you're discussing here is also a concern that we have.

Universities should be the place where free speech is born. I learned about free speech when I was a student. I would never have learned it if my university had been that stupid. So I learned it the hard way. My mentor, who was a journalist, was assassinated when I was a teenager in Burkina Faso, where I grew up. I was 18 when I realized we have to fight for free speech, because without it, we have nothing. As citizens, we cannot build anything in a country where there is no free speech. The students followed me in that protest. We grew up intellectually, and that has followed me until now, so that I can actually fight for something. What is your life if you cannot fight for that? So if you just go to college and you don't think, I think that is even child abuse, because we don't give our children the opportunity to be grown-ups who think, who can be challenged, who are not overly sensitive, who have resilience.

[14:47] That is how we build a resilient society: by giving that to individual people. So this is taking away the fundaments of education. I grew up in one of the poorest countries in the world, and yet I managed to learn how to think. How can you be in the United States or in Europe, have three meals per day—believe me, that's not like that for everyone; it wasn't for me—and not even make the effort to think? I think that's a basic human contribution.

Let me add one thing about antisemitism in Europe. During the hearings of the commissioners, I asked a question to one commissioner about the denial of the fact that there is antisemitism. People will say there is no problem at all; Jewish people are just exaggerating. But then I asked, are they exaggerating when we have the military and the police guarding the Jewish schools? You don't see any Jewish school in my country, or anywhere in Europe, or a synagogue or a Jewish museum, where there are no armed military or police officers surveilling it to avoid attacks. Are they doing that because someone was going to bring flowers? I don't know.

[15:59] Nico Perrino

I'd remind our audience that we're going to go to questions in a couple of minutes, so if you have one, scan the QR code and submit it, and we'll get to as many as we can. You mentioned the importance of the freedom to think. One of the things I often hear about is the pollution of the information environment through misinformation or disinformation. People don't know what is true, so they shut down their critical thinking and throw up their hands. Being in Europe, close to the Russia–Ukraine war and to the epicenter of information wars that have gone on for decades, going back to the Cold War, how is the European Parliament trying to deal with both misinformation, broadly defined as errors and lies, and disinformation, which is often government-coordinated campaigns to destabilize democracies?

[16:54] Assita Kanko

We have a very big problem in Europe with disinformation and misinformation. What the European Union is trying to do now is create a European committee focusing on tackling disinformation and misinformation and looking at the hybrid threats that Europe can be a victim of, usually also through cyber threats and cybercrime. Europe is doing great on that. But at the same time, like in anything Europe is doing, it's sometimes just too much. It's good to regulate tech. It's good to regulate something in society, because you need to have rules. But when you go too far, it becomes bureaucracy. It becomes babysitting. And you cannot do that. You cannot stand behind every human being. We are 440 million Europeans. You cannot stand behind each of them and surveil them to see if they are thinking the right thoughts. That's just not possible. So we need to know that people are grown-ups. I'll bring this up again: when you are the mother of a teenager—I had to learn how to become the mother of a teenager after being the mother of a child—you need to let them think. It's the same as politicians, as institutions. We cannot treat citizens who have the right to vote, who are adults, as if they were babies, as if we need to tell them what to do and we know everything better than they do. That's a tendency Europe has now regarding disinformation, and sometimes it exaggerates. The most recent example is the cancellation of the elections in Romania. This was not good. What the EU did was not respecting the sovereignty of a country.

[18:36] Nico Perrino

For our audience who might not be familiar with the Romanian situation, what happened there?

[18:40] Assita Kanko

Nobody is truly familiar with the Romanian situation. We're still investigating what happened there, and I think even the Romanians don't know. They're just very angry. They had elections, but there was a lot of interference, mainly from Russia, as we also have in Poland. What happened is that the EU was so frustrated, and thought, okay, we suspect that there was fraud, and then they canceled the elections in Romania. Until now, the Romanians in the Parliament are very angry about this. To remind everyone: we are not a federal state like the US. We are member states with sovereignty, and the EU is just a place where all the member states meet. We cannot replace a member state in the decision that the member state is making. But if the EU can do that in Romania, how is it possible that France or Germany or Belgium are safe inside the EU? So it brings a concern when the EU says, now we are not going to vote with unanimity anymore for important stuff; we are going to vote with qualified majority, meaning that even if one country doesn't agree, we can just go through with it. Belgium says, we are so small, we don't agree, because we don't trust you. So the trust in the EU is not very high anymore, because people don't want to be abused as member states. They don't want the EU to overstep and take over.

[20:09] Nico Perrino

Is there a risk that some member states might leave?

[20:11] Assita Kanko

For the moment—you know, for the British, it was not a risk. It's like when someone tells you, I don't love you anymore, I want a divorce. You need to believe them. The British always said what they wanted and what they didn't want, even Margaret Thatcher when she was prime minister, and it's still the same language. But the EU kept ignoring it. You would come home, cook dinner, wear a beautiful dress. But the British told you. Why don't you believe them? So in the end, the British left, and the EU was surprised. I'm like, why are you surprised? Everyone could see they wanted to leave, because they didn't want you to treat them the way you treated them. They wanted sovereignty. They wanted to participate in economic deals. They wanted respect for the national budget. They wanted what a sovereign country wants. That's what each of us wants. And they went through with it, because it's very easy to leave the EU when you are the UK. You are an island. But if you are Belgium, I don't know how you would just fly to the moon and stay there. How are you going to escape? So geography is not on the side of the countries that are remaining in the EU. What they can do is reform the EU. I am very critical of what the EU is doing, but I also believe in the positive aspect of the EU. If you are the US, or you are China, or you are Africa, and you want to speak with European countries, you can speak with 27 tiny countries, or you can speak with one bloc. I think it's more comfortable to speak with one bloc, but that bloc has to be representative of what the members of that bloc really need. That's my job as a member of the European Parliament: to make the Belgian voice heard, and citizens' voices heard.

[21:49] Nico Perrino

You're also a member, if I'm not mistaken, of the delegation for relations with the United States. Before we turn to audience questions—again, if you have a question, please scan the QR code and enter it—I'm curious how those relations are going. The Trump administration comes into office, and one of the first big speeches JD Vance gives is at the Munich Security Conference, where he really lays into Europe for its treatment of free speech. Yesterday we heard from Under Secretary Sarah Rogers, and, if I'm not mistaken—the audience can correct me—she cited an example out of Belgium where an academic was removed from their position, and she talked about the soft power America has to reverse those sorts of decisions. The idea was that we wouldn't do foreign exchanges with Belgian universities unless this academic was reinstated. So I'm curious how the relationship with Europe is going vis-à-vis free speech, including with the tech platforms, where there's a lot of effort to regulate them, and this administration is none too happy about that.

[22:55] Assita Kanko

You saved your most complicated question for the end. The relationship between the US and the EU is a very difficult one, but at the same time it is one that is full of love. We have a saying in Burkina Faso: some people tell you, I want to give you a hug, but please do not touch me. It's impossible to achieve. That's what is happening between the EU and the US. The EU and America love each other. They do so much work together. In fighting crime, we work a lot with the FBI and with American institutions, sharing data to fight crime. But at the same time, there is a disagreement, mainly about the tech companies, and also about defending culture, defending civilizations, whereas we should be on the same line, because we are the West. When there is an attack against the US or the EU, it is not necessarily with weapons. It is also with something that tries to destroy what you are as a society, as a culture, as a civilization. That is what Hamas is doing. That is what Hezbollah is doing. That is what the Muslim Brotherhood is doing. That is what political Islam is doing.

[24:13] They do not intend to destroy just one tiny piece of the West. It's the whole West they want to destroy. To prevent that from happening, we need to work together. But on the one side there is the US, which is very blunt about what it wants to do and expresses opinions very openly. That is very American. And then you have the EU, which is sometimes a bit British, even though the British are not there—a little bit going around in circles and not really saying things. That's why we're speaking about laws against hate speech: because we are not able to say the things that need to be said, even if our future depends on it. So that is an area where we continuously experience some challenges. And we don't want to pay for defense. I would say, thanks to President Trump, the EU is finally paying for its participation in NATO. That is a big achievement, because for a very long time only the eastern countries were paying their part to NATO, and the others were very comfortable, because war had nothing to do with us. But we need to be prepared now. We're stepping up defense expenses. So I think the cooperation is quite good. Sometimes when you experience a lot of tension in the room, it doesn't mean the cooperation is bad.

[25:22] It means that something is happening. Going back to families, it means that we are having honest conversations at last. I think that is what is mainly going on regarding tech regulation. Of course there is overregulation in Europe. I was 15 years in the private sector before joining Parliament, so I'm very pro-business. I think politicians have nothing to do in other people's business. Just let them do their business; they know what they're doing. We have laws that already exist for when someone commits a crime or does something that is not compliant with the rules. So why do we need to go and micromanage CEOs? That is not what we should do. But in the US, there is also a very open space where there is zero regulation for so many things, and that is also not good. We need to have at least a little bit of regulation. Recently, even the AI companies have been asking for a bit of regulation. They can self-regulate, but when there are big threats involved, maybe the US and the EU should jointly see what is reasonable to regulate, without going too far, but also without doing too little. I think that is the challenge we have.

[26:29] Nico Perrino

It looks like we have some questions here. Let's go to the first one: How do you balance your opposition to political Islam with protections for free speech?

[26:41] Assita Kanko

That question leads me to say there is no difference between the two. To oppose political Islam is at the same time to make a choice for free speech. But how do you protect it? I don't think you can, generally speaking. Maybe you can try. But in my personal experience, you just survive. That's all you can do. Because when you oppose political Islam, automatically you have a challenge, because even the fact that you use the expression "political Islam" is not accepted by those who are the reason political Islam exists and can thrive in Europe and in the West.

[27:26] Nico Perrino

I don't know what the questioner meant by political Islam, but does that mean importing Islamic law into European society? Is that how you interpret it?

[27:33] Assita Kanko

Yes, that's how I see it. There is normal Islam, like my grandfather's Islam. That is still not acceptable for me at a certain point, because he has two wives, which is not okay in my perception of what is normal in life. But he is not saying that his neighbor should become Muslim. He is not saying that if you don't have two wives, if you are not asking your daughters to cover up and marry a Muslim guy with a beard, then you are bad. He is not saying that. He's just minding his own business and keeping his religion private. This means he is not doing political Islam. He's just living his own life. Political Islam is when you step outside and want your religious beliefs to be superior to the law that the state—

[28:25] Nico Perrino

Has imposed on others.

[28:27] Assita Kanko

Imposed on others as well. And if they do not comply, you will do something to them. You think there is a supremacy of your religious beliefs over the normal laws in society. In Europe, we have people who believe that women should never divorce, and if they try to divorce, they are going to make them victims of honor crimes. I'm working on a law against that, because you cannot just keep women captive in a religious marriage they did not ask for, and you don't need to bring them to a Sharia court. There are Sharia courts in Europe. Why would a Sharia court exist in Europe, where there is a constitution and there are national laws? For me, national law is here, and Islamic law is here, and it applies only in your household. And even that—I think the women of your family should sue you if you treat them differently from how you should be treating them. Then political Islam goes very far. They can say that everyone sitting here is an infidel, so they need to die, because the Muslim Brotherhood and everyone who supports this Islamic ideology want a caliphate on earth, where the only values are the values of Islam in the time of Muhammad. This is a very remote time. We don't want to be in that time. Today we are in 2026. We cannot be marrying nine-year-old girls. We cannot be forcing girls to stay in a marriage. We cannot have boys being the boss of their sisters. We cannot have men marrying four wives to prove that they are men. You need to be able to not do it, to prove that you are a man. That's what we should be doing. And that is the problem.

[30:01] Nico Perrino

We've got a good number of questions. This is the second audience question: You have a lot of criticism of supporters of Palestine, but do you have any criticism of the current government in Israel, especially regarding freedom of the press? The questioner says journalists are not allowed in Gaza and Israel has targeted journalists.

[30:16] Assita Kanko

I haven't fact-checked that. I'm very fond of checking what I've heard before commenting. But what I can say is, of course, no government is immune from criticism. When you are not criticized, you are not a democracy. And Israel is the only democracy in the area where it is located. When I went to Israel last year, in November, I saw that the citizens have a lot of criticism of the government, and that is perfectly normal. That is how you live in a democracy. Nobody is perfect, and when they have elections, they have the sovereignty to say what they want. That is really important. And of course, when people tell us there is a problem, we want to investigate it. But I would not say that Israel is not a democracy. When I see what is located next to Israel, the comparison is quite obvious. We need journalists to be able to go to Gaza. We need to have real information, because there is a lot of fake news circulating, and there is a lack of investigation into the financial crimes committed when we give a lot of money to UNRWA and to organizations in Palestine that use it to indoctrinate children. We have evidence from the schoolbooks. If a journalist goes there, they should look into that, because every child in Gaza who receives a proper education—meaning they will grow up not wanting to kill their neighbor, not thinking that others are bad, but thinking about how they can improve and build a society where everyone is free—that is something that saves that child. That's what we need to use the money for, and we need accountability for how the money is used. I see that there is not enough investigation into this.

[32:01] Nico Perrino

I think the questioner might argue that's because journalists are not allowed into Gaza to investigate how the money is actually used.

[32:10] Assita Kanko

If the EU gives money, the EU has to make sure we know what happened to the money. That's what is going on in Africa as well. People give money to governments. Since I was a baby in Africa, African countries have received a lot of money. It is also called debt today, which African countries have to pay back. When I was ten years old, they came to my school and told us we were poor and they were going to give us money. I didn't know we were poor. I knew we didn't have much, but we were happy. The money was given to the government. Who checked what the government did with the money? Today we are in 2026. Are these countries developed? If you give money and there is no accountability, there will not be any development. I totally support Dambisa Moyo's book Dead Aid, because that's what happened. The aid did not bring development. It brought dependence. It didn't create a market; it destroyed the potential of a market. So I think we also need accountability. And if journalists are really not allowed, that's not okay. They should be. But I cannot speak about facts I'm not aware of.

[33:12] Nico Perrino

Sure. Let's go to a different question, because that's not necessarily a free speech question; we'll get back to it if we can. Do you oppose all religion-led political movements? Are you also opposed to political Christianity or Christian nationalism?

[33:27] Assita Kanko

I think that question is probably American. In Europe, we think that any religion should be private. It is your life. It's not to lead the government. However, honestly, any Christian thing never hurt me. What I'm afraid of is political Islam, because it tells me how I live my intimacy. It tells me who I should marry. It tells me whether I have the right to leave an abusive situation or not. It tells me all kinds of things where I no longer have any decision I can take. And I think it's very important: Europe's roots are in Christianity and Judaism, so we cannot say that is not the case. However, in society there are laws, and the laws that rule are the laws in the book. We have the Constitution, we have our laws, and when you go to court, these laws need to apply. But I also see a lot of abuse of the right of people to express their Christianity in the West, as if they should be ashamed of it, and I think that should not be the case.

[34:26] Nico Perrino

That's one of the things JD Vance brought up at Munich.

[34:29] Assita Kanko

I loved JD Vance's speech. I don't know much about other things JD Vance has been doing, but I was in Munich when he delivered that speech about the fact that Europe should stand up for itself. That was the summary of the speech. And why was everyone angry? Sometimes when you are angry about something, wonder why it triggers you so much. There must be some truth in it. Europe is not used to someone rubbing it in their face—sorry for that expression, I apologize. Europe is not ready to hear the truth. But what he did was hold up a mirror, and when Europe saw itself in that mirror, the image was ugly. That's why Europe was angry.

[35:08] Nico Perrino

In the United States, some people were angry about that speech because they saw it as hypocritical, since this administration was alleged to be committing censorship against American citizens while holding Europeans to a separate and higher standard for free speech protections. I see the clock is now ticking up, which means we are 34 seconds over. So I want to thank you for this generous conversation and urge everyone to continue it out in the forum. Thank you.