Vice President J.
D. Vances much-maligned warning that Europe has a serious free speech problem has now been dramatically confirmed in a way that even his harshest critics will find difficult to ignore.
Last year, Vance was pilloried by liberals on both sides of the Atlantic for daring to suggest that European governments no longer treat freedom of expression as a foundational Western value. According to Western Journal, the backlash was so intense that when Vance correctly criticized European censorship, CBS host Margaret Brennan reacted with such fury that she effectively blamed the Holocaust on freedom of speech.
That hysterical response from the corporate media looks even more absurd in light of a new episode that lays bare the illiberal instincts of European elites. In a bizarre, full-circle moment, left-wing anti-Semites Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker have been barred from entering the United Kingdom after the government there revoked their travel authorizations, the BBC reported Monday.
The two are related by family Piker is Uygurs nephew but kinship isnt all they have in common. Piker, who was born in the United States and raised in Turkey, has spent years attacking the U.S., defending Hamas, and dehumanizing Jews.
Uygur, a Turkish-born naturalized American citizen, has also built a career on anti-Israel extremism and appears fully convinced that Jews are responsible for all of his problems. Britain still should have let both of them in.
Piker and Uygur probably would have spent the entire trip reminding everyone how dumb they both are, but the British people will now be denied the opportunity to see it live. They both expressed their outrage on X:
In reality, Britains archaic censorship likely gave these morons more attention than they otherwise would have received while traversing the U.K. and peddling conspiracy theories. The British people should have had the opportunity to hear both of them.
By silencing even repugnant voices, the British state has handed these men exactly what they crave most: a ready-made narrative of victimhood. But because Europeans, broadly speaking, do not view free speech rights as a crucial block of a healthy society, Piker and Uygur now get to portray themselves as victims of the same oppressive policies Vance warned about while in Germany last year.
Vance stood at the Munich Security Conference shortly after taking office and dragged European governments for denying their people basic freedoms and defying fundamental Western values. He was relentlessly attacked by the American media and the left for it.
Just over a year later, the vice president has been completely vindicated. The truly remarkable thing here is that Britain in proving Vance right somehow managed to make Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur look sympathetic.
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