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The thing about Europe: it's the actual land of the free now

(www.economist.com)
160 points cruzcampo | 2 comments | 11 Apr 25 08:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.798s | source
1. gampleman ◴[11 Apr 25 08:57 UTC] No.43651813[source]▶
> Europe’s universities never became hotbeds of speech-policing by one breed of culture warrior or the other. You can express a controversial view on any European campus (outside Hungary, at least) without fear of losing your tenure or your grant.

Well, according to the Academic Freedom Index [1], there are 2 countries that have worse academic freedom than the US: Hungary (as mentioned) and Greece. The UK, Portugal, the Netherlands, Serbia and North Macedonia are broadly comparable.

> No detention centres await foreign students who hold the wrong views on Gaza.

In the UK, we do have terror legislation that allows us to detain journalists who talk about Gaza for 48 hours and confiscate their devices indefinitely (and no, we don't have free speech protections allowing us to not divulge passwords to these devices) [2].

> news outfits are not sued for interviewing opposition politicians

We do like to put them into prison though [3].

[1]: https://academic-freedom-index.net [2]: https://scottishpen.org/statement-on-detention-of-author-and... [3]: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/04/pers-a04.html

replies(1): >>43651832 #
2. unconed ◴[11 Apr 25 09:00 UTC] No.43651832[source]▶
>Europe’s universities never became hotbeds of speech-policing by one breed of culture warrior or the other. You can express a controversial view on any European campus (outside Hungary, at least) without fear of losing your tenure or your grant.

This is just wrong. People have been fired for expressing opinions related to COVID, to ethnical tension, islamisation, and so on. Woke in Europe has a lag time of a few years, but the bohemian bourgeoisie is present in full force.

Not only is academic and intellectual freedom under threat, but the danger and persecutions are very very very very obviously being applied with massive political double standards. If you're on the left and you spout narratives that subsidized institutions and lobbying groups agree with, you won't get penalized. If you're on the right, a meme posted by someone else can get your rights suspended.