Telegram and freedom from speech in Europe

Dr Norman Lewis reports on Brussels' war on online communications.

Over the years, Dr Norman Lewis has joined us as a Battle of Ideas festival speaker on everything from woke capitalism to innovation in China, the Big Brother state to international free-speech wars. Here, in our latest premium Substack, he outlines why the hostility to freedom of speech in Brussels and beyond set the scene for the arrest of Telegram’s Pavel Durov last month - and what this all means for those of us who want to debate ideas online.

One of the most remarkable developments surrounding the arrest and charging of Telegram founder Pavel Durov is how quickly the narrative changed from being an attack on free speech to one relating to criminality. ‘The Durov case is not about free speech’, declared the Financial Times editorial board. Well, not directly, it was quick to qualify. Instead, the paper insisted that the case centred on Telegram’s alleged failures to address criminality on its platform, including drug peddling and child sexual-abuse material. Despite Telegram’s often heroic defence of free speech and opposition to censorship, the FT warned that this should not ‘mean allowing criminal content’.

This framing of events is both naïve and disingenuous. Referencing the Telegram case in narrow legal terms without addressing the broader European context fails to grasp why this represents the latest attack on free speech in Europe - one which could be deadly.