The election of Donald Trump was a pretty incredible turn for America, as many of the values that America holds dear were unleashed, and that includes free speech and anti-censorship efforts. It wasn't just a political reversal, it was a cultural reawakening, and that led to some very interesting things happening both at home and abroad.
For one, America was no longer adhering to a globalist narrative, and that's something the globalists overseas didn't take too kindly to. You likely recall the run-ins Vice President J.D. Vance had with European leaders, who told Vance he can't just say that Europe has a bad censorship problem... which would be hilarious if its censorship wasn't so troubling.
Narratives are powerful. In fact, I'd venture to say that narratives are power.
If your narrative is the one that dominates the public consciousness, then you hold the most power in any given civilization. Case in point, the American media was dominated by leftists to a disgusting degree and, as a result, the left effectively had free rein to make people believe whatever they wanted. Thanks to a few enterprising folks and Americans who weren't willing to lay down and be silenced, a gap in the left's armor was exploited and now the left's narrative is consistently falling apart.
Don't get it twisted. The battle for the narrative is still ongoing, but for the first time in decades, the truth is slugging it out with the lie on equal footing.
But that can't be said for every country. As previously stated, the EU isn't exactly a fan of this new American narrative that speaks the truth about the outcomes of things like illegal immigration, trade, and even censorship itself. A lot of the EU's power relies on lies to keep the people either pacified or too afraid to speak out. The same can be said for the U.K., where someone can be arrested for speaking the brutal truth.
The issue is that the U.S. narrative and the European narrative, can't exist simultaneously. One of them has to go, or more accurately, one of them has to rule with absolute authority. This means that a war of information has to happen, and in many ways, it already is.
As my colleague Jennifer O'Connell wrote on Wednesday, former head of the Department of Homeland Security's "Disinformation Governance Board," Nina Jankowicz, was overseas effectively egging on the EU to "stand firm against another autocracy: The United States of America," in terms of narratives:
The Trump administration is undoubtedly preparing a pressure campaign to force EU institutions to roll back regulation like the DSA, to end support for Ukraine, to stop holding Russia to account. Do not capitulate. Hold the line. Doing so is the clearest signal the European Union could send to Russia and other adversaries that it will not stop fighting to preserve democracy at home and around the world. The Russian Federation, of course, is thrilled to witness division within and between democracies. Moscow continues to actively exploit deepening fissures in our society, in order to amplify discord and polarization.
In other words, the United States is eating up Russian disinformation and because the U.S. is evil now, it's gobbling it up. Anything coming out of the U.S. is just Russian propaganda now.
Jankowicz now runs a group called the "American Sunlight Project" which uses "the same hysteria to attract donors, insisting that “Disinformation knows no political party. Its ultimate victim is our democracy” according to Jonathan Turley.
READ: Nina Jankowicz Creates New Disinfo Organization to Rally Europe to Attack American Free Speech
Don't think for a moment that this wasn't intentional priming, not by Jankowicz per se, but by the EU itself. The goal here is to give itself the impetus to take action against the United States and silence it by silencing its companies and selectively reporting on who said what.
And it's already happening.
Just this month, the EU fined Apple €500 million and Meta €200 million for violating the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which, when combined with the Digital Services Act (DSA) actually allowed the EU to seize the digital market and control corporate content under the guise of market fairness, and allows them to dictate what can and can't be on a platform. You probably heard the EU warning Elon Musk about violations of the DSA when he welcomed Trump to X. Rest assured, that was just the "aim" portion of the "ready, aim, fire" cycle.
Don't think that the U.S. is going to take this lying down. Threats of increased tariffs have already been made in an attempt to protect its own tech companies, but the EU already made its move, and tech companies are already looking to Trump to respond. According to Politico, the White House is already signaling its readiness to return fire:
The Trump administration appears ready to take the bait: In a statement to POLITICO, National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes called Wednesday’s fines against Apple and Meta a “novel form of economic extortion” that “will not be tolerated by the United States.”
“Extraterritorial regulations that specifically target and undermine American companies, stifle innovation, and enable censorship will be recognized as barriers to trade and a direct threat to free civil society,” said Hughes, calling for an end to “the EU’s regulatory death spiral.”
This is only going to get uglier, but rest assured, it's happening. You're caught up in it and might not recognize it because you don't hear the traditional boom of firearms and bombs, or see physical devastation, but it's happening. You don't see it because the battle is over your mind.
This war is going to go on for a while, but the winner won't be the one left standing, it'll be the country whose narrative is dominant, or whose "reality" is the most believed. There aren't any real borders involved, because it's ideological. It's not EU vs US, it's truth vs. lies.
