This week, the European Commission issued a direct challenge to the Trump administration by releasing a sprawling “Anti-Racism Strategy” for 2026–2030. The document heavily prioritizes expanding the policing of “hate speech,” especially online, framing the effort as “Stepping Up Protection Against Racial Hatred.” Last year, Vice President JD Vance delivered an address to the Munich Security Conference in which he warned, “In Britain, and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.” (RELATED: Letter to the Editor: A Report From Germany — Censorship and Hope, Vance’s Speech in Munich) Evidently, however, European leaders have spit on this warning and are happily continuing plans to expand their censorship regime. Hadja Lahbib, the European Commission’s “Commissioner for Equality,” in proudly announcing Monday what she termed “Europe’s first-ever Anti-Racism Strategy,” pointed out her “curly dark hair” as a marker of her racial diversity. She went on to explain why she believes people need to be prosecuted for comments she deems to be racist. “We have extremists who are sowing fear and terror,” Lahbib lamented. “Racism is not just a question of insults, but something insidious which has wormed its way in amongst our people.” The “Anti-Racism Strategy” document fretted that “incidents of racial discrimination and racist harassment” often “go unreported.” The solution? Police and prosecutors need to increase enforcement against speech. “Enforcement of the relevant EU laws and national legal frameworks must be strengthened to prevent this,” says the document. “Protection against racist hatred must also be ensured, including online, through coordinated actions by the judiciary, police and prosecutors.” (RELATED: How Sweden’s Demographic Winter Turned It Into Europe’s Rape Capital) The reality of how this enforcement operates shows how “hate speech” codes function only to restrict civil liberties and chill speech on topics such as marriage, Islam, immigration, and abortion. Consider what happened to C.J. Hopkins, an American novelist living in Berlin. Hopkins published a book critical of the restrictions imposed on citizens during the COVID pandemic. What got him in trouble was that the book’s cover featured a swastika on a face mask, thus accusing German government officials who imposed pandemic controls of being Nazi-like. Law enforcement has interrogated him, confiscated his computer, and searched his home. And back in 2012, a Catholic bishop in Ireland was the subject of a police investigation for “hate speech” as a result of a homily he gave in which he said the Church was being “attacked from the outside by the arrows of a secular and godless culture.” (RELATED: Is Hostility Against Christians Going to Increase in 2026?) Lahbib and the European Commission evidently believe that more prosecutions of this type are necessary. “Protecting people from hate crime and hate speech is at the heart of the EU’s anti-racism agenda,” declares the “Anti-Racism Strategy” document. The document goes on to detail how the European Commission is working to increase prosecutions for “hate speech.” The European Commission, the document explains, has launched “infringement proceedings” to ensure the full enforcement of the 2008 “Council Framework Decision on Combating Certain Forms and Expressions of Racism.” This 2008 document declares that “[r]acism and xenophobia constitute a threat” and that “It is necessary to define a common criminal-law approach in the European Union to this phenomenon in order to ensure that the same behaviour constitutes an offence in all Member States and that effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties are provided.” The “anti-racism” document also calls for adding “hate speech” and “hate crime” to the list of “EU crimes,” a move it says would “strengthen the legal framework on tackling hate speech and hate crime.” Citing an “absence of progress” in enforcement, the strategy also brings attention to a legislative initiative that would “harmonise definitions of online hate offences” across the 27 EU member states. The “anti-racism strategy” document further claims that the European Commission is targeting “hate speech” in places of worship. The “anti-racism strategy” document further claims that the European Commission is targeting “hate speech” in places of worship. It says it is merely “helping to improve responses to incidents of hate crime and hate speech” by supporting member states “responsible for safeguarding public spaces, including places of worship.” Further initiatives from the European Commission include encouraging member states to expand training for police officers on “hate offenses”; working with UNESCO to “strengthen anti-racism education”; and educating journalists on how to “promote fair, inclusive storytelling” through a focus on “unconscious bias” and “using responsible language.” Somehow, some European activists against “hate speech” still aren’t happy. Julie Pascoet, an activist at the European Network Against Racism, told DW, Germany’s state broadcasting network, that she is very displeased by the European Commission’s “Anti-Racist Strategy” because she believes it was tempered by officials’ fears of the Trump administration. “We don’t need the U.S. to water down our policy documents,” she said. During her press conference this week, Lahbib disputed that the document had been affected by the U.S. “When it comes to the Americans, they do what they want,” she said. “They can mock, but we are not like this. These are our values. This is who we are. When they say we are losing our identities, they shouldn’t forget that Trump, basically, is from German descent.” (Trump’s mother was born in Scotland, and her first language was Gaelic. Trump’s paternal grandparents were German immigrants.) Republicans have taken action against Europe’s growing censorship of online speech. Last year, a report from Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee found that the Digital Services Act, an EU regulation requiring online platforms to censor speech deemed unlawful, “compels censorship and infringes on American free speech.” The members accused the EU of using the Digital Services Act as “a censorship tool” to require social media platforms to silence “core political discourse in Europe, the United States, and around the world.” In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa restrictions on “foreign nationals who are responsible for censorship of protected expression in the United States.” Former EU commissioner Thierry Breton, who had a role in the creation of the Digital Services Act, was among those blocked from entering the U.S., as were the directors of the European censorship activist organization HateAid, Josephine Ballon and Anna Lena von Hodenberg. HateAid demands “[s]tate recognition of the particular seriousness of insults on the internet” and “[e]asier prosecution” of those who engage in online “hate speech.” As the EU continues to engage in this scheme of prosecuting people for online speech, it will become clear that targeting everyone who insults someone over the internet will be impossible. Instead, certain viewpoints — particularly those that are conservative — will be targeted because they are politically disfavored. A regime of ideological silencing will take over, and prosecutions will become a means of forcing conformity on the public. READ MORE from Ellie Gardey Holmes: An AI Bubble Could Pop Newsom Mamdani Appoints ‘Black Liberation’ Activist Afua Atta-Mensah After Accusations of Black Exclusion Carney Cozies Up to China