CBS Is Wrong About Free Speech in Germany and the Rise of Nazism
The weekend programming over at CBS was unusually focused on speech norms and censorship in Germany. First, Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan casually assert that free speech is what empowered the Nazis to take over the government and implement the Holocaust; then, 60 Minutes conducted an interview with present-day German authorities in which they detailed their efforts to suppress not just Nazi speech but also misinformation, gossip, and insults toward politicians.
It was an alarming degree of contempt for cherished free speech principles, to say the least. News organizations are free to evince a preference for Europe’s pro-censorship policies, but the criticism they attract from the right—from Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in this case—was quite deserved.
Moreover, CBS had its facts wrong. Brennan’s claim that “free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide” in Nazi Germany is a profound misreading of history.
This remark from Brennan came during her interview with Rubio, in which she challenged him to respond to Vance’s speech on Friday at the Munich Security Conference, where the vice president delivered a thunderous condemnation of European leaders. It is fair to criticize Vance for being overly friendly with Germany’s far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), during his visit to Europe; much of the speech, however, focused on the European Union’s contempt for free speech and betrayal of “some of its most fundamental values.” Indeed, EU commissioners have taken increasingly brazen steps to police speech on social media and have drawn criticism from American civil liberties groups.
Brennan prompted Rubio to defend Vance’s conduct, and made the claim that the Nazis “weaponized” free speech to conduct a genocide.
Utterly bizarre assertion from Margaret Brennan. She claims the Nazi Holocaust occurred because “free speech was weaponized” in Germany, thus making Vance’s c
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