The EU's demands for social media sites to block comments it deems "disinformation" is a new McCarthyite purge, a pundit has warned.
Last week Thierry Breton, the EU Commissioner for Internal Markets, claimed Twitter had pulled out of the EU's voluntary anti-disinformation Code of Practice.
He publicly warned Twitter owner Elon Musk that censorship of speech deemed misleading by Brussels would be outlawed from August 25 under the EU-wide Digital Services Act legislation, threatening that "you can run but you can’t hide."
On Monday, French Digital Transition and Telecommunications minister Jean-Noel Barrot also threatened Musk with legal action under the bloc's new law.
Angelo Giuliano told Sputnik that as a child of the Cold War he found it ironic that it was the West that was building walls and censoring free speech.
"What an irony that people, my friends, are starting to defect to Russia these days," Giuliano said. "I have to go on the Russian channels media to be heard. It is exactly the opposite, what is happening now is actually they are building a wall and they are isolating themselves."
The finance consultant said 28 years living in China had opened his eyes. "I would never think I would say this one day, but I feel in some ways more democratic and more free when it comes to freedom of speech."
He argued the West had fallen back into the McCarthyite purges of political undesirables
"Just think about what they did in the US. It used to be called McCarthyism. Why? Because they had some ideas of socialism or communism. It was a purge," Giuliano stressed. "Why do you think that now in the US there is no communism then? I mean real socialists? All because it was a purge."
The commentator said he was cnfident Musk would "stand by his principles" of free speech for all sides of the political spectrum.
"This is the last platform which is quite influential. I think it's all about interpretation," Giuliano said of the EU's threats. "They want to let us know what is fake news, what is not. He wants us to have those fundamentals of freedom of expression."
He said the outcome of Musk's legal battle with the EU was crucial for more than just how he ran the social media site.
"This is actually one of the pillars for democracy, because once you manage to have your hands to control the media, then nothing is left," Giuliano said. "You control the brain of people and it's gone. The freedom that we are advocating is going to be completely gone."
"It's bits by bits, it's just salami slicing, bits by bits," he warned. "Every single day they are taking away freedom from us."
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