On Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio upset European socialists by announcing he would “bar leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex from entering the United States.” The New York Times provided an unintentionally laughable headline on Christmas Eve: They Seek to Curb Online Hate. The U.S. Accuses Them of Censorship. The Trump administration said five regulators and researchers who work to tackle disinformation and abuse on the internet had been barred from entering the United States. Yes, censorship is defined by the Left as “tackling disinformation and abuse,” or “curbing online hate,” but it’s still suppressing and punishing speech. Imagine if European socialists censored The New York Times website or their social-media communications. But they don’t – they’re censoring “the Enemy,” the haters. So it’s all good. The headline in the paper on Christmas was "5 Fighters of Online Hate Are Barred From the U.S.," those poor hate fighters. Times reporter Adam Satariano began by painting the European censors in positive terms: Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg lead a German legal aid organization that assists individuals facing online abuse and violent threats. Clare Melford runs a British group that helps identify disinformation. Imran Ahmed is a British activist who runs an organization that has chronicled anti-vaccination content on social media. On Tuesday, the Trump administration accused all of them of a campaign of censorship against Americans. The four individuals, along with a former senior European Commission official, Thierry Breton of France, were barred from entering the United States after Secretary of State Marco Rubio labeled them “radical activists” who undercut free speech. Again, this is not merely an accusation. It's a reality. Notice that other than Rubio's "radical activists" citation, none of them are identified as leftist ideologues. It never happens in this story. They treat Rubio's accusation as dubious. Ballon and von Hodenberg's group is called HateAid. Melford runs the Global Disinformation Index. We especially call out Imran Ahmed, who runs the “Center for Countering Digital Hate,” which in 2021 tagged NewsBusters as one of the “Toxic Ten” for pushing “climate deniers” like our friend Marc Morano and his book Green Fraud. The reporter laments “Mr. Trump and others on the right have successfully pushed social media firms to roll back moderation rules that they viewed as silencing conservative voices.” They viewed? Imagine a reporter spending an entire article presenting the sun coming up as an allegation. Speaking of "silencing conservative voices," Satariano's article never quotes Rubio or any other conservative. We just get a press release for these censors. The prime minister of France turns it upside down: “These measures amount to intimidation and coercion aimed at undermining European digital sovereignty,” Mr. Macron said on social media." Censorship is "digital sovereignty." The Europeans aren't just trying to "curb online hate," as you can see: The issue came to a head this month when the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, fined Elon Musk’s social media platform X $140 million. The commission said that the site had violated the Digital Services Act by selling verification check marks that allow users to mislead others about their identities, by maintaining opaque advertising practices and by refusing to provide researchers with data access. This isn't just about fact checking or hate fighting. It's about using the power of government to aggressively supervise speech on social-media platforms, and especially conservative speech.