To Win Trade Deal, UK Simply Needs To Respect Free Speech Like America Does

Just stop arresting people for their unpopular ideas, says Marco Rubio.

Photo by Steve Smith on Unsplash

Vice President Human Pile Of Butthair says that the Trump administration is very close to a “trade deal” with the United Kingdom, or at least an agreement that would remove or reduce the tariffs Donald Trump wants to put on the UK. The UK actually buys more stuff from the US than the other way around, so even under Trump’s weird imaginary logic for tariffs, there’s not much reason for tariffs anyway, or at least less reason than for other countries. (Remember, Trump thinks that if the US buys more from any country than we export to them, we’re being “cheated” somehow.)

JD Vance said earlier this week, “I think there’s a good chance that, yes, we’ll come to a great agreement that’s in the best interest of both countries.” He said negotiations with Prime Minister Keir Starmer were moving along, and explained that Trump is a big fan of monarchs since he wants to be one himself, only without any dumb Magna Carta getting in the way. Joking! That’s our spin on what Vance did say in an interview with the British website UnHerd (registration required):

“The president really loves the United Kingdom. He loved the Queen. He admires and loves the King. It is a very important relationship. And he’s a businessman and has a number of important business relationships in [the UK]. But I think it’s much deeper than that.

“There’s a real cultural affinity. And, of course, fundamentally, America is an Anglo country.”

And then all the dogs started howling. (Yeah, Vance would no doubt insist he means “culturally,” in the way white nationalists always carefully couch their terms.)

There are of course various demands that the UK let our Googles and AIs get a taste, but the biggest change Vance wants, and has been demanding for months, is for the UK to eliminate its hate speech laws so that nice Christian Nationalists can freely say horrible things about immigrants and LGBTQ+ people. Again, not how he frames it; he just says “free speech” and tells sob stories about police going after people simply for praying!!!! (The part he leaves out? The very few cases have involved people praying as part of public protests within no-demonstrations zones near abortion clinics, and refusing to move when asked.)

Trump’s government has made it very clear that its love of “free speech” extends only so far as allowing rightwing voices to be as loud as they want, while pushing school book bans, whitewashing official history (again and again and again!), arresting and deporting people for wrongthink, stripping nonprofit status from uppity universities, and speculating about the need to jail anyone who says immigrants have due process rights, since that’s “aiding and abetting a terrorist.”

The UK has a pretty robust law, the Online Safety Act, which as the Guardian explains,

makes social media companies, websites and search engines responsible for “harmful content” published on their platforms. […]

The version now on the statute book focuses on unambiguously nasty stuff – incitement to violence, terrorism, race hate, encouraging suicide, child abuse images. Technology companies are required to have systems for removing such content.

That would obviously be bad for business at the “free speech” haven Twitter, whose CEO, Elon Musk, has been an enthusiastic supporter of rightwing extremists who lie about Muslims and immigrants and follow up the lies with rioting.

The law hasn’t been implemented yet, and might not be at all if Starmer agrees to kill it off for the sake of getting the tariffs removed. And again, no matter how much the US insists this is a very important matter of “protecting free speech,” the real point is to let tech companies operate with as little content moderation as possible, not simply because Elon loves free speech for Nazis but not his critics, but mainly because systems to filter out nasty stuff reduce companies’ profits.

The monetary motivation is even clearer when you remember all that yelping about “free speech in peril” is coupled with demands to let American tech giants avoid taxes and skirt antitrust laws. Or as a Guardian column puts it,

Regulation that impedes the operation of US digital behemoths – anything short of blanket permission to do as they please – will apparently be treated as a hostile act and an affront to human liberty.

This is an imperial demand for market access cynically camouflaged in the language of universal rights. The equivalent trick is not available in other sectors of the economy. US farmers hate trade barriers that stop their products flooding European markets, but they don’t argue that their chlorine-washed chickens are being censored. (Not yet.)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is also doing his part to promote free speech too. On Wednesday, Rubio announced the State Department had shut down its “Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office,” which tracked and fought online influence campaigns in America and around the world. But American wingnuts considered that “censorship,” so now foreign disinformation can flow freely on American social media.

Rubio talked up the capitulation to foreign propaganda operations as a great victory for free speech in an interview with rightwing “free speech” guy Michael Benz, and even posted the transcript to the State Department’s website. Rubio didn’t specifically mention the pressure on Britain to drop its hate speech laws, but did fret that in some “western countries,” people are being arrested for expressing themselves: “the cop comes knocking on their door, you're going to go to jail for 60 days for posting something online. You know, this is crazy stuff that's happening all over.” Wow, that’s horrible! Imagine people being arrested and punished simply for their opinions, as if they were international students in American universities.

We should add that Benz is a big fan of ending “censorship” of rightwing opinions, which makes all kinds of sense since, as a 2023 NBC News investigation revealed, Benz was the real person behind “Frame Game,” an extremist alt-right persona who pushed racist conspiracy theories accusing Jews of secretly running everything and of plotting to genocide the white race.

“The account in question was a project by Jews to get people who hated Jews to stop hating Jews,” he wrote. “Let me be clear: I am extremely proud of this.”

Seems like the perfect guy to host Rubio, then, since he was the real victim, as far-right guys always are.

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Welcome To Trumpville, Population You!

Far-Right UK Rioters Just Want To Burn Stuff, Also People, Is That So Wrong?

Relax! It's Only A Police State For Some Of Us! Who, Exactly? Oh, You'll Find Out!

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[Independent / Guardian / NBC News via Nick Martin on Bluesky]

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