To those who believe that I spend all my time watching news broadcasts and talk shows on Russian state television, let me open this essay by correcting that misperception. I also do keep an eye on major national broadcasters in Western Europe, including Euronews and the BBC. And, in spare moments, when I am not doing something more intellectual like reading and writing, I flip on CNN.
All of which leads me to a conclusion that is likely to shock readers of these notes in Europe and America: just as on the subject of the Ukraine war, so on the subject of the Hamas-Israel war, there is far more diversity of opinion aired on the American broadcaster than on its Continental counterparts. And that is exactly as it should be, because there is much more freedom of expression in the United States today than anywhere in Europe and Britain.
I have several answers to the “why” that this assertion certainly will raise. The biggest reason is the one most readers will least suspect: Donald Trump During the presidential race of 2016, candidate Trump said things in his public appearances which normal folks like you or me would never have said for fear of inviting a knock on the door from the FBI under charges of subversion. He got away with it as a candidate, he thereby liberated all of us, and then he continued speaking the unspeakable as President, with the net result that society was split down the middle and there was room for every political view to be published. In my own field of Russian affairs, the daily digest of our leading disseminator of writings by analysts and pundits, Johnson’s Russia List, went from being deadly boring for having content only supplied by Russia haters to being a garden of a thousand blooms.
Europe had no Trump. Europe was in 2016 and remains today a cemetery of the intellect. I have in mind not just peer group pressures for creative spirits to just shut up and not rock the boat. No, there are laws in Germany, France and elsewhere that push a fist down your throat if you go public with opinions on Putin, on sanctions and now on Palestine that are not in conformity with the local government line.
For the above reasons, European broadcasters today crop the news on Gaza to say only that Israel has a right to self-defense. Meanwhile, CNN is devoting a lot of air time to the suffering of the Gaza Palestinians under the ongoing hourly bombardments by Israeli ground and air forces that are grinding all residential areas of Gaza City into dust and that have uprooted at least 700,000 Palestinians in a forced move to nowhere in the southern half of the enclave.
Let me add another factor to explain the more serious journalism that subscribers to CNN are receiving compared to your average European television viewer: Black Lives Matter.
It is not in the least surprising that BLM have come out in support of the Gaza Palestinians, for reasons that go back to the Black Panthers. What they are calling for is an immediate cease-fire, urgent delivery of medical supplies, water, fuel, food into Gaza ramped up to at least the pre-October 7th rate of 200 trucks per day. American authorities are forced to accept the demonstrations of BLM in favor of the Palestinians lest all hell break loose in cities across the country.
I think of yesterday’s comments to the The Financial Times by the leading candidate to replace Mark Rutte as prime minister of The Netherlands, the current justice minister Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, on the dangers that the Hamas-Israel war poses for Europe, namely that cleavages in our society will open up. Regrettably, that is the mindset of an authoritarian if not purely fascist politician. When everyone is perfectly aligned and there are no nay-sayers tolerated, then freedom is dead.
The problem of conformism in Europe is not something new. In the past, democracy busting conformism was most common, perhaps, in Scandinavia, as I saw as a frequent business visitor to Sweden in the 1980s. My job required that I meet periodically with the factory management of our subsidiary there to coordinate marketing efforts. We talked about the target markets I was serving, Yugoslavia in particular, where my interlocutors went to promote product sales and also to pick up cheap eyeglasses and other personal and household necessities at a fraction of their cost in Sweden. We never talked politics, only about the pleasures of good raki. But then prime minister Olaf Palme was assassinated and over a lunch in the company cafeteria, my main contact told me “Thank goodness they’ve killed the s.o.b.” I was shocked, since I had never heard a word of criticism in Sweden directed at their politically correct, almost angelic leader. However, my talking partner, like most other managers at the plant was an engineer and he hated Palme for having destroyed the engineering and other departments of Swedish universities.
It is this destructive silence that I see around me in Europe. And so I say, three cheers for healthy cleavages in society that give life to representative democracy, and, at the present moment, three cheers for Black Lives Matter.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
Gilbert Doctorow 
“Europe had no Trump. Europe was in 2016 and remains today a cemetery of the intellect. I have in mind not just peer group pressures for creative spirits to just shut up and not rock the boat. No, there are laws in Germany, France and elsewhere that push a fist down your throat if you go public with opinions on Putin, on sanctions and now on Palestine that are not in conformity with the local government line.”
In the words of Johnny Carson, “I did not know that.” And I also did not know (and I’m not being cute, I am very serious), “Europe was in 2016 and remains today a cemetery of the intellect.”
This is very, very, very far from being good news. This is really bad news. Really bad.
The man who perhaps did the most to liberate the U.S. from Vietnam, was Allard Lowenstein. He was assassinated for his efforts by a “mentally deranged man”, cf. Robert Kennedy, a decade later. What did Lowenstein do? He created the “Dump Johnson” movement in the U.S. and brought about Johnson’s decision not to seek the Presidency again. Now, in the context of the European cemetery of the intellect, we are left with a need for a “Dump Biden” movement. Desperate need. But the clique creating the war in Ukraine was ahead of the game: “we’ll use surrogates instead of Americans to do the fighting”. And it worked. So at this time, despite the fact that only 40% of Americans support Biden’s foreign policy agenda, there is no “Dump Biden” movement. Au contraire, this clearly impaired man may very well be re-elected. And there is no hope from Europe…
Not good.
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While I despise CNN for a variety of reasons, I’m surprised to hear that they in some way have given the idea that open dialogue via the MSM is in some manner being encouraged by them. I’ve never known them to do anything but toe the Democratic Party/Administrative line. An BLM? They only serve their own desires. If that happens to align with a counter-Administration narrative, I guess that’s good.
I knew multiple countries in Europe have passed anti-Russian laws but I don’t know the extent of them all. England and Germany have laws on the books, I believe. I have not heard about France or others. Could you elaborate on the laws that were passed and what kind of penalties are applied for speaking? It would make an interesting post to have these things outlined in detail for folks in the U.S. The MSM, of course, doesn’t cover it and trying to dig it out of Google (which purposefully buries it, IMHO) is a rough task.
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I’m not familiar with the exact situation in other countries, but here in Greece, media bubble lives in a world of its own, mostly disconnected from the sentiments on the street level.
Right now, both the goverment, all major political parties and major media conglomerates support Israel, but the majority of people does not – hence the big rallies in support of Palestine (where participants were mostly greek people, since arabs or palestinians are not in big numbers in the country, anyway).
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Dear Sir,
thank you once again for your insightful commentary.
I am fascinated to read your comments with regard to Sweden. I had a lot to do with Swedish people between 2004 and 2008 and I share your observation with regard to their suffocation conformism and over-the-top political correctness.
The problem which you have described above is in fact much more serious in contemporary Sweden than one could imagine and is know as “Opinion corridor” (Swedish: åsiktskorridor): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_corridor
According to wikipedia: “The concept is similar to the Overton window, which assumes a sliding scale of legitimate political conversation, and to Hallin’s spheres, which assumes that the press implicitly groups issues into questions of wide consensus, legitimate controversy, and deviance. The Swedish Language Council has included the word åsiktskorridor in its 2014 list of neologisms.[1]” and “In December 2013, political scientist Henrik Oscarsson [sv] described how he perceived that the space for freedom of opinion had been tightened in Swedish debates.”
Interesting enough, I see similar suffocating behaviour amongst my German colleagues.
Perhaps it is also not a coincidence that “mobbing” was first defined in Sweden in the early 80ties by a German Psychiatrist, Heinz Leymann.
Isn’t mobbing a form of dysfunctional peer-pressure that brings you “brings you into line”…?
Thank you,
Jędrzej
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Dear Sir,
thank you once again for your insightful commentary.
I am fascinated to read your comments with regard to Sweden. I had a lot to do with Swedish people between 2004 and 2008 and I share your observation with regard to their suffocation conformism and over-the-top political correctness.
The problem which you have described above is in fact much more serious in contemporary Sweden than one could imagine and is know as “Opinion corridor” (Swedish: åsiktskorridor): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_corridor
According to wikipedia: “The concept is similar to the Overton window, which assumes a sliding scale of legitimate political conversation, and to Hallin’s spheres, which assumes that the press implicitly groups issues into questions of wide consensus, legitimate controversy, and deviance. The Swedish Language Council has included the word åsiktskorridor in its 2014 list of neologisms.[1]” and “In December 2013, political scientist Henrik Oscarsson [sv] described how he perceived that the space for freedom of opinion had been tightened in Swedish debates.”
Interesting enough, I see similar suffocating behaviour amongst my German colleagues.
Perhaps it is also not a coincidence that “mobbing” was first defined in Sweden in the early 80ties by a German Psychiatrist, Heinz Leymann.
Isn’t mobbing a form of dysfunctional peer-pressure that brings you “brings you into line”…?
Best regards from Poland,
Jędrzej (Andrew)
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from Kay – Yes, thanks Doctorow for your continued enlightenment on the darkness of media freedom in the EU. However, here’s one sign of light. I found this somehow and have endorsed this petition https://diem25.org/en/ They want EU leader, Ursula von Leyen to be forced to resign for her blatant inhumanity in saying that no food, water or emergency supplies should be sent into GAZA.
I myself perceive GAZA to be the largest concentration camp ever, where Israel has performed numerous atrocities on Palestinians, besides confiscating their land. For example, apart from shooting and killing Palestinians regularly, Israel has had a policy of only allowing limited food and water supplied into GAZA . This author has covered the situation in depth — The West’s hypocrisy towards Gaza’s breakout is stomach-turning 8 October 2023 The West’s hypocrisy towards Gaza’s breakout is stomach-turning (jonathan-cook.net)
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