Donald Trump’s campaign for free speech continues, with the US sanctioning two Brits, including Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, for falling foul.
Ahmed and Clare Melford, of the Global Disinformation Index, are among five Europeans hit with visa bans over MAGA claims they wish to “suppress American viewpoints they oppose”. One of the reasons given for Ahmed’s sanctions is that the Centre “supports the UK’s Online Safety Act”, omitting that one of the other bodies which supports the Act is, er, the UK government.
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The US State Department has said it would deny visas to five people, including a former EU commissioner, Thierry Breton, with secretary of state Marco Rubio saying: “These radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states – in each case targeting American speakers and American companies.” Also subject to bans were Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of HateAid, a German organisation that the State Department said helped enforce the European Commission’s Digital Services Act, which recently rapped Elon Musk’s X hellsite over the knuckles.
It’s all part of the Trump’s administration’s determination to promote free speech, which has been loudly supported here in the UK by the likes of short-lived former PM Liz Truss, who has cheered on his legal case against the BBC, and Reform leader Nigel Farage, who earlier in this year gave evidence to Congress on the issue, awkwardly at the same time his party was banning local media from covering its stewardship of Nottinghamshire Council.
Meanwhile, what did Trump have to say this week about the New York Times, which has been continuing to rile the president by reporting the things he says and does? In a late-night Truth Social rant earlier this week he described it as “a serious threat to the National Security of our Nation” and a “TRUE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE” which “must be dealt with and stopped”.
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