Trump Administration Calls Out Eurocracy Over Free Speech

We’ve been following events at the OSCE for the past nine years (see the OSCE Archives) and observed the slow, gradual Islamization of the organization. The pace has accelerated this year, however, apparently due to intensified actions by the Red-Green alliance that now dominates the organization.

Chris Hull of the Center for Security Policy has written an article for The Daily Caller about the latest illiberal actions by the OSCE, as the Counterjihad Collective begins its interventions this week during the OSCE conference in Warsaw.

Trump Administration Calls Out Eurocracy Over Free Speech

by Christopher C. Hull, via The Daily Caller

This morning, the Trump administration officially objected to the latest attempt by a Europe-based multilateral organization to shut down free speech, joining a chorus of complaints by activists and even European members of parliament.

The United States Mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (USOSCE) expressed concern in its opening statement about the largest European gathering of human rights organizations of the year, which takes place in Warsaw, Poland.

Referring to a new Code of Conduct required by OSCE Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights ( ODIHR ) to register for the meeting, the Trump administration statement said in part:

[T]he United States must object to certain provisions of the Code of Conduct promulgated by ODIHR.

A number of the provisions amount to content-based restrictions on the participation of civil society.

We need not — and do not — agree with all of the ideas espoused here to defend the right of civil society to participate.

When we disagree with the ideas presented, we should respond with alternative viewpoints, not censorship.

We are disappointed that the Code of Conduct appears to formalize the latter approach.

It should be revised.

The Code of Conduct is, in part, a reaction to a free speech delegation that has attended the annual meeting for a decade, according to senior U.S. officials and meeting participants.

That delegation, led by Austrian freedom fighter Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, expresses concerns in ODIHR meetings about restrictions on freedom of expression put in place by European nations specifically with respect to unfettered immigration, Jihad violence and the growing threat of the totalitarian Islamic law known as Sharia.

The free speech delegation released a letter to ODIHR Director Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir at the end of last week expressing similar concerns to those raised by the U.S. government’s statement today.

That letter, signed by 27 representatives of civil society organizations from a dozen countries, documents a series of attempts to restrict free expression on immigration, Jihad and Sharia over the course of at least two years.

It calls on Director Sólrún to make specific changes in the Code of Conduct, as well as in ODIHR’s behavior going forward.

Today’s statement by the USOSCE also follows on the heels of a meeting last week at the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., in which two senior Trump administration officials originally publicly signaled this official opposition.

At the meeting of 20-30 non-governmental organizations on Wednesday, a senior Trump administration official revealed that the U.S. government was deeply concerned about ODIHR’s new Code of Conduct in particular.

On the other hand, as indicated in today’s statement, the senior official qualified that he disagreed with some of the past comments made by the free speech delegation.

Some of those comments, he said, were “fundamentally wrong,” given that they were “attributing to all Muslims advocacy of the imposition of medieval Sharia.”

In fact, few if any comments by the delegation made such a claim explicit.

Regardless, the official said, he would have liked to have had “a substantive disagreement” with members of the free speech delegation, rather than “just having ODIHR slap them on the wrist every time they made a point.”

ODIHR, the official said, appeared to be intent on using the new Code of Conduct to shut down speech “on the basis of substance,” a position unacceptable to the U.S. government — except in the case of advocating for violence, a longstanding and well-accepted exception to freedom of expression.

The U.S. official noted that he had just finished reading the free speech delegation civil society letter before he entered the meeting. He told the other meeting participants that it was “very substantive and raised important concerns.”

The senior Trump administration official in Washington expressed the hope that all representatives of civil society present in Warsaw would stand with the U.S. government in defense of freedom of expression, even on matters with which those representatives disagree.

The recent concerns all center of the Code of Conduct’s prohibition on speech:

“…That might be provoking … likely to give rise to violence, [or] discriminating [against] other persons on the basis of their race, color, sex, language, religion or belief, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

Further, the document continues,

“ODIHR reserves the right to instruct HDIM moderators to interrupt any Participant who speaks in violation of these principles. In case of repeated non-compliance ODIHR reserves the right to void the Participant of the right to speak at the session, or as a last resort of the right to further participate at HDIM.”

According to free speech delegation members, the language is, in fact, another transparent attempt to shut down freedom of expression in the ODIHR’s OSCE ambit.

Specifically, ODIHR staff may be attempting to silence concerns with respect to terror and migration policies with which that staff disagree, but which are central to platforms of ever-increasing numbers of OSCE Participating States.

Those states including not just the Trump administration, but also the current government of the host government in Poland, as well as those of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Italy and, after recent tumult and elections, potentially Germany and Sweden, respectively, as well.

Another official based overseas said that USOSCE had approached ODIHR, first in July, to express a potential concern about earlier attempts to shut down free speech, and then again more formally the week prior.

The overseas U.S. official stressed that the USOSCE “was in the minority” on the issue. “Even some of our European allies” support attempts to restrict free speech on these issues, that official said.

Finally, the oversees official said, the U.S. government would continue to oppose restrictions on freedom of expression.

Christopher C. Hull, Ph.D., the Executive Vice President of the Center for Security Policy, served four tours on Capitol Hill, including most recently as the Chief of Staff for U.S. Rep. Steve King, (R-Iowa). He is the author of Grassroots Rules.

For links to previous articles about the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, see the OSCE Archives.

6 thoughts on “Trump Administration Calls Out Eurocracy Over Free Speech

  1. Speech “that MIGHT be provoking….. ” etc. is a category that is everlastingly extendable. This definition is unacceptable.
    Speech that incites violence is rightly what should be prohibited.

  2. Why are the Euro Elites so intent on banning free speech, free expression and e-commerce?

    I don’t know how many of your readers have been following this issue, but the European Parliament has been trying to pass some kind of law or regulation that would effectively shut down a great many blogs, social media sites and even micro businesses who use Ebay and Etsy (for example) as platforms.

    Needless to say, the most important aspect of these fascist dictates involves the use of “memes” or copied links that people use in their various postings. (just like I’m doing here).

    The publication Tech Crunch” has an interesting article that should be spread near and far:

    “The European Parliament has just voted to back controversial proposals to reform online copyright — including supporting an extension to cover snippets of publishers content (Article 11), and to make platforms that hold significant amounts of content liable for copyright violations by their users (Article 13)”.

    The Left never stops, they never sleep, they never quit. And they want us dead.

    https://tinyurl.com/y9ec9ksf

    • “Why are the Euro Elites so intent on banning free speech…”

      That’s a central question, although I’m not sure we really need an answer. We do need to know that international organizations with anything even faintly resembling regulatory powers will use those powers to suppress nationalist actions and to suppress the right to dissent from leftist, globalist principles. Emphatically, we do not need to know the “why” as long as we can reliably predict the action.

      It’s like quantum mechanics. Why do two separate particles coalesce into either a wave or particle form instantaneously, the communication taking place even faster than the speed of light? Why knows why, but the effect itself is built into science and used to produce extremely reliable engineering.

      So, the question is, as much as I appreciate the hard work done by the freedom-loving delegates to the OSCE conventions such as Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, Steven Coughlin, and others too numerous to compile, the question is, are international organizations an appropriate forum to advance freedom? The more participation groups like the OSCE get, the more influential they are, and since they seem to be invariably taken over by leftist drones, they end up as a resounding obstacle to real freedom of speech.

      To me, it’s a mistake to try to reconcile the directions of the East European countries, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, etc, with the Western European countries which are now sliding into totalitarianism and police state operations. The value sets are too different; better to let true freedom develop in its new home, and allow the budding totalitarian states to go their own way, which they will in any case. Eventually, the populations will sort themselves out. Merkel’s communist father moved voluntarily to communist East Germany, which apparently suited his family as well.

      So, my view would be that freedom lovers should give a wide berth to OSCE conventions and operations. The objective is not to reverse their probably-inevitable slide into totalitarian philosophy, but to take away any power or influence they might get from the presence of an international group of participants.

  3. Once Red gets what it wants, Green will be disposed of. And Green is too dumb to know that because they never read history.

  4. Just think of how social we are as a species. It is an astonishing characteristic. This can only mean that we communicate like crazy with one another. When you install rules such as this Code of Conduct you inject friction into one of our most important and fundamental biologic characteristics. Unanticipated harmful consequences are certain.

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