PULSE POINTS:
❓What Happened: A report reveals the European Commission has spent nearly €649 million (~$736m) on projects aimed at regulating online speech under the guise of combating “hate speech” and “disinformation.”
👥 Who’s Involved: The European Commission, MCC Brussels think tank, and Dr. Norman Lewis, a digital communication and regulatory policy expert.
📍 Where & When: European Union (EU); report released recently by MCC Brussels.
💬 Key Quote: “This is a top-down, authoritarian, curated consensus, where expression is free only when it speaks the language of compliance established by the Commission,” the report warns.
⚠️ Impact: The report alleges EU-funded programs erode free expression, prioritize censorship, and promote ideological conformity through taxpayer-funded initiatives.
IN FULL:
A newly released report alleges that the European Commission, the European Union’s unelected executive, has funneled the equivalent of around $736 million of taxpayer money into hundreds of projects designed to regulate online speech under the pretext of combating “hate speech” and “disinformation.”
The document, titled Manufacturing Misinformation: The EU-Funded Propaganda War Against Free Speech, was authored by Dr. Norman Lewis, a specialist in digital communication and regulatory policy, and published by the Hungarian think tank MCC Brussels. It accuses the Commission of promoting a “soft authoritarianism” by funding 349 projects through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and universities.
According to the report, this spending exceeds the EU’s annual budget for transnational cancer research by over 30 percent, a discrepancy the authors describe as deliberate. “The EU Commission regards stemming the cancer of free speech as more of a priority than the estimated 4.5 million new cancer cases and almost two million cancer deaths in Europe in 2022,” the report warns.
“This is a top-down, authoritarian, curated consensus, where expression is free only when it speaks the language of compliance established by the Commission,” the report states.
The report criticizes the Commission’s use of vague, euphemistic language—dubbed “NEUspeak”—to obscure its intentions. Project names like FAST LISA and VIGILANT are described as deliberately misleading, with MCC Brussels stating that such initiatives aim to suppress politically undesirable speech in real time using artificial intelligence (AI).
“VIGILANT is an AI surveillance suite aimed at monitoring, classifying, and profiling speech, users, and networks,” the report states, contradicting claims from its designers that the system is ethical and user-focused.
The report further highlights programs targeting young people, which it describes as indoctrination disguised as civic education. These initiatives allegedly train youths to act as “speech police” in a system designed to enforce narrative compliance.
Dr. Lewis argues that taxpayer-funded research is being used to affirm political orthodoxy rather than encourage genuine inquiry. “Research that systematically ‘proves’ this assumption is not research; it is the manufacturing of propaganda,” he writes.
The alarming report comes as the EU routinely regulates speech on social media platforms. Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, previously stated that the EU had offered him an illegal secret deal to censor posts on the platform.
