This issue is likely the pinnacle of their hypocrisy, which can be at best avoided in conversation, but never denied.

The moment they reach power, fascists immediately drop the free speech line, embracing draconian censorship of their detractors, up to people being deported for protesting a genocide abroad or calling for the boycotting of a company or foreign country, as is happening in the US at the moment.

How many years had today’s western fascists, overt or not, decried state encroachment on free speech, in the form of hate speech legislation, social media TOS, “imposed speech”/pronouns (copyright Jordan Peterson), woke culture etc.? What happened to their immense devotion to free speech absolutism?

The dingo ate it.

Were fascists and their sympathisers actually being censored by liberal elites?

You can judge for yourself, given that they propagandised relentlessly for years (some funded by far-right think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, others funded covertly by Russia), until a character like Trump ended up in the White House, with his circle of corporate sociopaths and religious fanatics.

Their lies spread like a strep infection, year after year, scapegoating minorities (and quite often women) for problems caused by wealth and power inequality in western countries.

Criticism, of which there was plenty, is not censorship and persecution over speech, which is what Trump is inflicting at the moment on his own country. Firings, expulsion of students, arrests, deportations. Over speech and nothing more.

Some far-right propagandists doubled and trebled their audiences during Covid (when everyone was indoors, consuming content). They actually thrived in those conditions, at least online. Still, they label it the most oppressive period in recent history for free thought and free speech. How come, if censorship was indeed present, they were not forced underground and were able to spout whatever publicly, gaining massive audiences? Doesn’t anybody ever wonder?

Every man and their chicken was putting out theories about Covid, including but not limited to neo-Nazi ones involving a Jewish plot to control the planet. These people were not stopped. They were not banned; it doesn’t look like they were penalised or even threatened. Their channels are alive and well today. It was a circus designed to portray them as persecuted truth-tellers, when they were anything but.

Contrast this make-believe persecution with what is happening today to those who speak against Israel’s actions, journalists and Holocaust survivors included.

Remember Andrew Tate? If not for his arrest for his crimes against women and girls, he would still be putting out tutorials on how to deceive and pimp them, as well as steal their money, combined with self-help advice for men and verbal diarrhoea about “the Matrix”. He flooded the internet with this crap. No one stopped him.

Why has anyone heard of figures like Richard Spencer, Nick Fuentes, Tommy Robinson? Robinson, mind you, did time in prison repeatedly, for a variety of crimes, unrelated to free speech.

It took years to hold Alex Jones accountable

Alex Jones spewed any speculation he saw fit for about two decades and still does.

Despite his legal troubles and eventually having to pay out an immense sum to the families he victimised with this conspiracy theory, claiming the Sandy Hook school shooting had been a hoax, he is now back on YouTube excreting Trump and Musk propaganda. The latter, perhaps, as Musk helped him out when his Twitter account was in the middle of being bought by The Onion.

Jones was correct overtime, in many respects, about what was coming – with the twist that he now fully embraces it, concertation camps, censorship, mass surveillance, mass slaughter, unaccountable corporations and all. There are surely some in the same sphere who didn’t kiss the fascist ring; the only one I’m aware of is David Icke, who has remained consistent in being anti-war and anti-corruption. He does say many things that are unnecessarily out there (such as ascribing to the supernatural what can be explained by pathology in proverbial elites).

In Jones’ case, it doesn’t take Nostradamus to describe a prospective authoritarian regime, as history provides plenty precedents, adapted to the new reality, making use of technology to surveil and suppress large numbers of people. It’s intuitive.

During his trial, his lawyer had the following defence: Jones was just a showman. A character. A character who nonetheless had caused untold suffering to grieving families and had caused a man to be harassed into suicide, after having lost his son in the school shooting. This should be criminal.

I find it relevant in the sense that it’s an admission of not having been censored at all: he enjoyed the right to spout absurdities he knew were not true, simply to attract an audience. He was penalised afterwards for the consequences; nonetheless he was not censored.

Social media censorship and surveillance

Back in the day, when Facebook and Twitter had taken off, there was widespread speculation about social media being used in the future by authoritarian governments to identify individuals who had taken part in protests. This was a foreseeable issue and the first to be raised about these platforms – the volunteering of private information to be used against ordinary people, as a tool of mass surveillance.

In 2025, the Trump administration announced it would do just that, using protest footage and social media profiles to target those who had spoken out against Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. Not one peep from those who had spoken about this for years. Crickets. Fried ones even.

Gradually, the focus of criticism of these platforms shifted to opposing the so-called woke culture and the banning of certain words, like racial slurs or terms mocking the disabled. The N word became a free speech issue, not a moral one, focusing on free speech absolutism, with no exceptions.

Note how these creepy-crawlies were focused on the principle, and not the details, such as any words seen worthy of banning in user interactions on social media platforms, as they were already culturally unacceptable and discriminatory. In 2025, the principle is away with the Dodo.

Social media ideological monopolies

In terms of monopolies, right-wingers were very concerned by the political leanings of the owners of Facebook and Twitter back in the day – both platforms having a liberal bias.

In April of 2022, Elon Musk, already showing his true leanings, bought Twitter, essentially ruining it for the vast majority of users. He did promise one thing: unbridled free speech.

Not only has he censored individual accounts (his own detractors, his baby mamas, recently his own employees at Tesla) – he engaged in mass political censorship as well, at the behest of Modi, the Prime minister of India, banning hundreds of accounts simultaneously, which Modi deemed were spreading propaganda to his detriment. Musk has banned the word “cisgender” or “cis” (whether one agrees with the term or not, it’s the principle of it).

Gone are the days of the massive Cambridge Analytica scandal, when Facebook had to attend hearings over users being targeted with political propaganda in deceptive ways. Musk can now involve himself in elections and other countries’ political troubles, censoring one side at will, with no one batting an eyelid. The megalomaniac is using Twitter as his personal fiefdom. He believes calls for boycotting Tesla, now dubbed the swasticar by detractors (after he gave a Nazi salute twice at Trump’s inauguration) should be illegal.

In November of 2024, Zuckerberg capitulated as well (or rather, switched strategically and with zero conscience) following his pilgrimage of shame to Mar a Lago, after Trump was elected. Zuckerberg just wants to keep making money. Ergo, the two main social media platforms in 2025, Twitter (yes, I will always call it Twitter) and Meta are owned by people subservient to Trump’s fascist agenda and whims.

Do right-wingers in general have a problem with that? Centrists? Anybody not on the left? The crickets have now fallen into a radioactive puddle and have suffered mutations. They seem to produce a Baked Alaska tune.

The crude reality seems to be that many are very excited about being able to use slurs when addressing others directly, taking their existential misery out on them. It’s a pressure valve of sorts. That’s all they care about.

Snowflakes

Donald Trump has a history of suing public figures and entities over his belief of having been misrepresented. The popular program 60 Minutes is just recent example. Some cases are still ongoing. Years ago, he even sued comedian Bill Maher (since turned right wing propagandist) over a joke. Musk, likewise, has at least threatened to sue critics for defamation.

Not only are high profile fascists, as well as their coterie of propagandists, extremely sensitive to criticism – they simultaneously decry the state of western societies, dominated by snowflakes who are offended by everything. You couldn’t make this up.

Everything is antisemitic

Antisemitism is a real problem and originates – surprise – from the far-right, gaining visibility as the rhetoric and replacement theories become normalised in western countries.

While the Trump administration embraces Zionism and uses false accusations of antisemitism as an excuse, to silence anyone opposing Israel’s genocide in Palestine, neo-Nazis ultimately want the policies Trump is implementing, hence they hold their noses and support him regardless. A fascist is a fascist at the end of the day, whether they believe Jewish people are the root of all problems or embrace Zionism, scapegoating Muslims and Arabs in general instead.

They are of the same mindset and essentially want the same things: mass deportations, racial segregation, chasing Muslims out of Europe and the US etc.

Claiming that opposition to the state of Israel is antisemitism is like claiming that opposing Hitler’s regime is anti-German bigotry. No one is genuinely that stupid. Whoever claims this is blatantly lying and should not be trusted with walking a dog, let alone explaining political events.

Since the 7th of October of 2023, the world has witnessed a mind-numbing paradox: Jewish individuals and groups demonstrating for peace, accused of antisemitism and at times arrested for protesting mass murder committed in their name. This level of absurdity will be mentioned in history books, should western countries recover from the general insanity (and I believe that they will).

The one guaranteed way of worsening antisemitism globally is to associate all Jewish people with the state of Israel and its actions.

The right to peaceful protest

What is happening in the US at the moment and is uniquely reminiscent of the Gestapo is the snatching of law-abiding residents off the streets, imprisoning them in attempts to deport them, for having voiced their opposition to Israel’s genocide.

This is unprecedented in a country priding itself in having freedom of speech enshrined in its constitution.

You’d think the trademark free speech crowd would be shouting from the rooftops – instead, they put the xenophobia forward by claiming foreigners should not voice an opinion contrary to US state policies. One such utterance came from Tim Pool, who was being paid by the Russians to put out right wing propaganda in the US. The irony.

What initially applies to residents will apply to citizens soon enough; it’s a given. Propagandists attempting to manufacture consent for this chilling repression must know this. They feel safe nonetheless.

Let’s consider what that means, for one second: it means they do not foresee any point in time when they might publicly disagree with the fascist administration, regardless of how far it goes in targeting other people. If they do disagree, they won’t voice it. They will never dissent. Hence they are and always will be safe.

Think of what that says about them.