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‘Trump officials to monitor immigrants’ social media for antisemitism’ — the harrowing headline made UK and US media this week, far too frequently without so much as an inverted comma around the term ‘antisemitism’.
As one Bluesky user remarked: “You know they aren’t talking about actual antisemitism and you are free to write a headline that accurately portrays this smokescreen for what it is.”
To give editors the benefit of the doubt, the absurdity of reporting under Donald Trump is such that you cannot even write a headline announcing “reciprocal tariffs” because they turn out to have nothing to do with tariff-reciprocity at all.
And you certainly can’t call antisemitism “antisemitism” when it’s judged by a man who’s right-hand man pairs Nazi salutes with AI-generated territorial claims over Gaza.
But you know antisemitism is not what they’re searching for. What they’re searching for is sedition.
With this revoking of First Amendment rights from migrants, the MAGA 180 on free speech is complete. Trump and his inner circle have gone from parading as free speech absolutists, to illegally banning access to media organisations that criticise them, sanctioning law firms that represent political opponents, rigging social media algorithms to push party propaganda, pulling federal grants that include language they oppose, publishing a literal list of ‘banned words’, and attempting to deport critics for non-criminal protest.
Despite this, the UK’s right-wing media is busy celebrating Trump’s “free speech ultimatum” to the UK, after he reportedly warned Keir Starmer “no free trade without free speech”.
The Spectator’s greatest minds can declare without a hint of irony: “The US position at least comes across as liberal and principled”. GB News ran the title: “I thank Donald Trump for his free speech ultimatum.” This is the libertarian Right that tore us out of the EU because of foreign influence. Now they’re cheerleading imperialist US intrusion into our UK policymaking?
The sheer hypocrisy could spark an identity crisis (are we even the word-police anymore, or are we liberalists now?) It’s actually pretty straightforward, Femi Oluwole, outspoken political activist, told Media Storm. “It’s a really good example of how free speech operates in terms of power.
When Trump didn’t have power, he wanted free speech to be absolute so he could say whatever he wanted without being punished for it so that he could win the election. Now he’s in power, he needs to make sure that only his narrative is allowed to thrive. Free speech works for you if you don’t have power and free speech works against you if you do have power
Femi Oluwole, political activist
The thing is, power imbalances are not reserved to the hierarchies of state. Society is unequal in many ways. And the first thing not being said nearly enough, is that the Right’s position on free speech reflects a hierarchy of rights that has a lot to do with race. White people’s right to freedom of speech overrules POC’s right to freedom from discrimination and violence, but not the other way around.
This explains why the Right saw Starmer’s heavy-handed reaction to the anti-immigrant riots last summer as the “biggest threat to free speech in history” (Nigel Farage on Fox News).
But when it comes to Trump’s detention of pro-Palestine activists, they suddenly argue there’s “a very fine line when your free speech is actually inciting violence” — plus “it’s a little bit different when we talk about free speech when you’re an American versus when you are here on a visa” (also Fox News).
Note the racial profile of those arrested. Note that the UK protests were triggered by a false rumour that the killer of three little girls was a Muslim asylum seeker. Note that the US protests were triggered by Palestinian ethnic cleansing and White settler colonialism.
The Right’s justifications of Trump’s free speech crackdown may feel like looping loops through loopholes, but the logic is what it always has been in the US and UK: white rights come first.
This week, The Telegraph published a 6,000-word op-ed arguing Lucy Connolly is a “political prisoner”. The author posted it with cracking-heart emojis and a call to “Free Lucy”. So what was poor Lucy imprisoned for? Tweeting “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f***ing hotels full of the b***ards for all I care,” to her tens-of-thousands of followers.
Incidentally, we do not agree with her 31-month custodial sentence either. But not because we’re trying to minimise racist incitement to violen