For too long, Left-wing ideologues have conflated the idea of ‘human rights’ with adherence to Left-wing ideologies that do not represent the views of the U.S. as a whole. The State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which produces the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, became, in Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s words, “a platform for left-wing activists to wage vendettas against ‘anti-woke’ leaders in nations such as Poland, Hungary, and Brazil, and to transform their hatred of Israel into concrete policies such as arms embargoes.”
But the State Department’s newest release of its human rights report, which includes a detailed summary of every country’s record over the previous year, signals a welcome shift. As opposed to previous reports that evaluated nations’ human rights records on their compliance with LGBTQ and pro-abortion ideology, the new report focuses on the priorities of the current government, elected by the American people to represent their values.
Among the core priorities reflected in the new report is the freedom of speech. For Americans, the right to free speech is not simply one among many, but the right upon which all others rest — it is listed first in the Bill of Rights for a reason. Lose it, and tyranny quickly follows.
President Donald Trump’s reelection came as a result of a broader cultural backlash to tyranny that included threats to free speech. The Biden administration exerted heavy pressure on social media companies like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to suppress or remove posts that defied establishment orthodoxy related to COVID. Meanwhile, lopsided online content moderation by social media companies removed Constitutionally protected speech under vague “misinformation” and “hate speech” policies.
As Dominic Greene wrote in the Washington Examiner Friday, correspondence unearthed in the “Twitter files” releases “show that senior staff at Twitter and Facebook, and current and former intelligence officials, tried to shape the informational environment on behalf of federal agencies and staffers on Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. Accounts were ‘boosted’ and ‘deboosted’ according to whether they were informationally appropriate. If they were not, they were ‘disinformation.’”
While the free speech crisis has largely passed in the states with Trump’s election and Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, it rages in Europe, a fact the human rights report hammered home.
The U.K section of the report described numerous instances of speech restrictions, including a man who was jailed and handed an eight-week sentence for posting a meme suggesting a link between migrants and knife crime. In October, an individual was convicted in England for engaging in silent prayer in violation of a “safe zone.”
The human rights report’s noted these and other assaults on free expression.
“Significant human rights issues included credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression, including enforcement of or threat of criminal or civil laws in order to limit expression,” it read.
The right to freedom of expression is under a similar assault in Germany. The report, which described Germany’s human rights situation as having “worsened during the year,” claims that German law enforcement “routinely raided homes, confiscated electronic devices, interrogated suspects and prosecuted individuals for the exercise of freedom of speech, including online.” In one disturbing instance in March 2024, German police raided the homes of 45 individuals across the country as part of an effort to “combat misogyny on the internet.”
In France, the report underscored “serious restrictions on freedom of expression, including enforcement of or threat of criminal or civil laws in order to limit expression.”
STATE DEPARTMENT RELEASES FIRST HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT AFTER RESHUFFLING
The report is not without its issues. Many have noted that it downplayed the human rights abuses of Trump’s favored countries, such as El Salvador and Saudi Arabia. These accusations appear to have merit.
But the focus on freedom of speech is a long overdue development for a State Department that purports to advance American priorities and values.