“Our democracy is under attack,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told MEPs in her State of the European Union speech in September. “The rise in information manipulation and disinformation is dividing our societies. It is not only eroding trust in the truth – but also in democracy itself. This is why we urgently need the European Democracy Shield.”
That proposal to tackle disinformation and foreign election interference was put forward today, and in talking about it the Commission only wanted to talk about one foreign actor: Russia. “In addition to its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine, Russia is also escalating hybrid attacks, waging a battle of influence against Europe. The tactics used are reaching deep into the fabric of our societies, with potentially long-lasting impacts,” the Democracy Shield text reads. “By spreading deceitful narratives, sometimes including the manipulation and falsification of historical facts, they try to erode trust in democratic systems.” Russia is in fact the only country mentioned in the text.
Nobody at the Commission has dared mention the elephant in the room: that these attacks on European democracy are coming from both East and West. And while the EU has cut all its ties with Russia, its dependence on America has meant that the ones doing the interfering from the West have been able to intimidate the Commission into watering down its plans.
In her September speech, von der Leyen promised that the shield will “monitor and detect information manipulation and disinformation”, setting up a new European Centre for Democratic Resilience. She also promised a Media Resilience Programme to “support independent journalism and media literacy,” noting that, “the first step in an autocrat’s playbook is always to capture independent media. Because this enables backsliding and corruption to happen in the dark.”
This is very clearly what’s happening in America at the moment. So it’s no surprise that MAGA came out swinging against what it called an EU effort at censorship. Republicans held a hearing in the US Congress in September called “Europe’s threat to American speech and innovation”, accusing the EU of