18 Jun 2025 | Americas, News and features, United States
For many casual listeners, Bruce Springsteen’s song Born in the USA sounds like a glorious patriotic celebration of being American.
Yet listen beyond the upbeat chorus and you discover the dejected life story of a Vietnam veteran who has returned from the war and found it difficult to fit in, readjust to home life and find work.
You can assume that President Donald Trump hadn’t previously picked up on these nuances but now that someone has pointed it out to him, he’s mad as hell.
Born in the USA came out in the middle of 1984 – the year that the eyes of the world were on the country for the Olympics Games in Los Angeles.
It seems that former President Ronald Reagan and his campaign team misinterpreted – either inadvertently or otherwise – the meaning of the song. Reagan name-checked Springsteen on the campaign trail but the rocker later distanced himself from the Republicans.
Springsteen has since used his music to focus on the struggles of the working class and has been more closely aligned with the Democrats, throwing his support behind John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Whether President Trump was aware of the song’s meaning or not, he did not fail to understand the meaning of the comments the Boss made during his current world tour, which opened in Manchester this month.
Introducing his 1999 song Land of Hope and Dreams in Manchester, which he had previously played at the inauguration of Joe Biden, he said: “In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration. Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring!”
If that message wasn’t clear enough for Trump, he carried on ahead of playing the song House of a Thousand Guitars.
He told the crowd: “The last check on power after the checks and balances of government have failed are the people, you and me.”
“It’s in the union of people around a common set of values now that’s all that stands between a democracy and authoritarianism. At the end of the day, all we’ve got is each other,” he said before launching into a stripped-down version of the song on acoustic guitar and harmonica.
Before launching into his song My City of Ruins, a paean to his home town of Asbury Park In New Jersey, he said that the norms of democracy were being eroded. “There’s some very weird, strange and dangerous shit going on out there right now.”
“In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent,” he said. “This is happening now.”
He went on: “They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that has led to a more just and plural society.
“They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands.
“They are removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centres and prisons. This is all happening now.
“A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea for what it means to be deeply American.”
He signed off with a message of hope: “The America l’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real and, regardless of its faults, is a great country with a great people. So we’ll survive this moment. Now, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, ‘In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.’ Let’s pray.”
Trump had certainly got the message by this point. He took to his Truth Social platform to call Springsteen “highly overrated”.
“Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy – Just a pushy, obnoxious JERK, who fervently supported Crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent FOOL, and our WORST EVER President, who came close to destroying our Country,” he posted.
He then went on to threaten Springsteen.
“This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country…Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”
So much for the “free speech” that Trump can’t stop talking about.
Volume 53, Issue 4 of the print edition of Index on Censorship looked at how musicians are raising their voices against oppression. Read more about the issue here. The issue was published on 12 December 2024.
25 Apr 2025 | Algeria, Americas, Canada, Europe and Central Asia, Hungary, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela
In the age of online information, it can feel harder than ever to stay informed. As we get bombarded with news from all angles, important stories can easily pass us by. To help you cut through the noise, every Friday Index will publish a weekly news roundup of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression from the past seven days. This week, we cover El Salvador’s plan for a prisoner swap and look at how Hungary has been placed on an EU watchlist.
Political prisoners: Bukele condemned by families of American deportees for Venezuela swap plan
Last week, the Donald Trump administration once again made headlines for wrongfully deporting Maryland resident Kilmar Ábrego García to a jail in El Salvador, and failing to facilitate his return. The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has become a prominent figure in this story, aligning himself with Trump and stating that he “does not have the power” to return Garcia to the USA – a claim that experts say is false.
Now, Bukele has proposed a deal to send 252 Venezuelans incarcerated in El Salvador (following deportation from the US) back to their home country, in exchange for Salvadoran “political prisoners” currently held in Venezuela. President Nicolas Maduro has stated that the Venezuelan nationals held in Salvadoran prisons were “kidnapped”, while Bukele has accused Maduro of imprisoning political opponents and activists.
These Venezuelans, many of whom are believed to have no criminal background and were deported on evidence as spurious as having tattoos, have now become pawns in a game of politics – which both their families and human rights groups alike have denounced. Nelson Suárez, whose brother is among those Venezuelans imprisoned in El Salvador, told The Guardian that he feels his brother is being treated “like political merchandise”.
Under surveillance: Hungary clashes with EU over use of facial recognition tech for LGBTQ+ Pride attendees
Last month, Hungary passed a law that banned LGBTQ+ pride marches in the country, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stating that he “won’t let woke ideology endanger our kids.” This move sparked outrage, with opposition leaders lighting flares in parliament and demonstrators taking to the streets of Budapest. Now, one aspect of the law has drawn further ire.
The new legislation allows the use of biometric cameras by police for facial recognition and tracking of LGBTQ+ demonstrators and those attending Pride gatherings, which Politico reports could be in breach of the EU’s newly adopted Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act.
The European Commission is currently investigating whether this is the case, which has increased existing tensions between the EU and Hungary’s leadership.
This is just the latest threat to democratic rights in Hungary – last week, parliament rushed through a bill to allow passports of dual citizens to be revoked if they are perceived to have acted “in the interest of foreign powers” and to have “undermined the sovereignty of Hungary”. The bill’s passing through parliament has drawn fears about how it could be abused to strip dissenters of their citizenship.
AI deep fakes: False videos of James Bulger circulate on social media
While AI is being used against the public in Hungary, closer to home in the UK, public-generated AI videos have taken a concerning new turn – social media content creators are using AI to create “avatars” of murder victims describing their own deaths.
One harrowing example includes depictions of James Bulger, the two-year-old boy who was abducted and murdered in 1993. Fake videos are being generated that portray Bulger himself describing the details of the crime – content which Bulger’s mother, Denise Fergus, has described as “absolutely disgusting”.
Fergus is pushing for a new law to be passed that would prohibit the creation and sharing of this sort of AI content. Such videos are becoming increasingly prevalent online, with some accounts creating likenesses for multiple murder cases.
Index’s CEO Jemimah Steinfeld spoke to the BBC this week, stating that these videos already break existing laws, and that there is a concern that further regulation could restrict legitimate, legal content.
Steinfeld said that while we should “avoid a knee-jerk reaction that puts everything in this terrible box”, she sympathises with Fergus. “To have to relive what she’s been through, again and again, as tech improves, I can’t imagine what that feels like.”
Imprisoned for a hashtag: Algeria clamps down against peaceful online activism
Amnesty International has condemned the Algerian government for its continued moves to repress online activism within the country.
The organisation reports that at least 23 activists and journalists have been arrested and convicted for human rights activism and protests over the past five months, with a focus on the use of the hashtag “Manich Radi” (“I am not satisfied”), which first came to prominence in December 2024.
The hashtag started being used after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, with many Algerians reportedly drawing similarities between the situations in Syria and Algeria and becoming hopeful of a fight for democracy in their nation.
But Algerian authorities responded to this with swift arrests, and have continued their campaign against those posting the hashtag. Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said of the online movement: “Let no one think that Algeria can be devoured by a hashtag”.
Academic asylum: American professors seek refuge in Canada
Hundreds of Canadian professors have urged the Canadian government to open its doors to “academic refugees” from the USA amid President Trump’s attack on universities and education.
CTV News reported this week that more than 500 Canadian university faculty members had signed an open letter calling for greater funding to Canada’s higher education system and programmes to allow more foreign professors and academics to resettle in the country, to fight the “rising anti-intellectualism” in the USA.
This follows a continuing stream of reports of American academics looking to seek exile in Canada as their professions come under fire by the Trump administration. Many US universities have seen increasing restrictions, most notably Harvard University, which is currently locked in a major funding dispute with the US federal government. The university’s president Alan Garber told NBC that he is “very concerned about Harvard’s future”.
University professors across the country are equally as concerned about the future of education in the USA. One such professor is Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University. Stanley, who has written multiple books about fascism, recently accepted a position at the University of Toronto. He told the Daily Nous that he was leaving the USA to “raise my kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship”.
24 Apr 2025 | Americas, Europe and Central Asia, News and features, Newsletters, United Kingdom, United States
The repercussions of Donald Trump’s tariffs continue to spiral with the escalating US-China trade war and the World Trade Organization warning of an impending sharp decline in global trade. But perhaps even more concerning is how the USA’s threats of taxation are increasingly being used to coax significant societal policy changes out of other governments.
Talks have intensified between the UK and US governments around tariffs, with US Vice President JD Vance reportedly putting pressure on UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to adopt the US administration’s anti-DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) agenda to secure a mutually beneficial trade deal.
A Washington source told The Independent that Starmer is being asked to repeal hate speech laws, particularly those which protect LGBTQ+ people and other minority groups, and online safety legislation in order to get a deal over the line with the USA and reduce the UK’s tariffs.
Trade wars have quickly escalated into culture wars. Of course, there are legitimate questions to be asked about the increasing scope of online policing in the UK. Earlier this year, we saw the UK government’s stealthy introduction of an order to create a “backdoor” to Apple’s encrypted data, which could have serious implications for users’ data privacy. Apple has since launched an appeal to the decision and Index, Big Brother Watch and the Open Rights Group have successfully argued that the case should not be heard in secret.
But as we well know, Trump is no bastion of universal free speech. His administration continues to crack down on and criminalise protestors, academics and journalists who do not align with its values, while legal and financial threats are being used to erode civil liberties and human rights. The recent demands on universities that they abandon their diversity programmes or face losing their federal funding, for example, further silences already marginalised voices. Meanwhile, ongoing threats to dismantle stalwart media institutions such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty speak volumes about the government’s attitude towards fair and objective reporting.
Pressure to adopt the US’s cultural ideology is not just coming from the government. Another story this week revealed how requests to remove books from UK libraries, particularly those containing LGBTQ+ themes, are on the rise, influenced by pressure groups in the USA who have advocated for book bans. This marries up with exclusive research that Index’s assistant editor Katie Dancey-Downs carried out last year, which found that 28 of 53 UK librarians polled reported that they had been asked to remove books from their shelves.
The influence of US cultural policy is both overt and covert. In the social media age, free speech is a complex and thorny issue that continues to evolve every day. But what is clear is that the USA is increasingly imposing its policies abroad – and ultimately this could hinder, rather than help, our ability to speak freely.
23 Apr 2025 | Americas, News and features, United States, Volume 54.01 Spring 2025
This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 1 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled The forgotten patients: Lost voices in the global healthcare system. Read more about the issue here. The issue was published on 11 April 2025.
Even before the Senate confirmed Robert F Kennedy Jr as US health secretary, the Trump administration was wreaking havoc with government agencies vital to medical research and equitable healthcare.
Ignoring Title IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, colour or nationality, the White House removed swathes of data from the websites of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) overnight, in an effort to purge the agencies of what Elon Musk has dubbed “the woke mind virus”.
Gone were vaccine guidelines for “pregnant people” and regulatory guidelines on increasing diversity in clinical trials. Even the Department of Veteran Affairs felt the impact of Musk and Donald Trump’s anti-DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) crusade, deleting advice on LGBTQ+ veteran care.
This was followed by a 90-day freeze and stop-work order on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), jeopardising the lives of millions of people around the world who depend on its programmes for the prevention of diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.
How precisely this will make America – or the world – “healthy again”, to quote the slogan of Kennedy’s MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement, is a question that he may now wish to ponder. In his new role as director of Health and Human Services – a $1.7 trillion agency with 80,000 employees – Kennedy will be responsible for everything from medical research and pandemic prevention to regulating the cost of medicine and health insurance for the poorest Americans.
On the campaign trail, Kennedy also promised to lift safety regulations on unpasteurised “raw” milk – a potential source of bird flu – and take a “break” from infectious disease research (including for Covid-19) by having the National Institutes of Health (NIH) pivot to chronic diseases such as diabetes.
But it is Kennedy’s well-documented antipathy to vaccines that could have the most far-reaching impacts. Asked during the Senate Health Committee hearing whether he accepted studies debunking the theory that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine caused autism – a theory he has supported – Kennedy promised to be “an advocate for strong science”, adding that “if the data is there, I will absolutely do that.”
But for those who have followed the activities of Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defence non-profit closely, his efforts to roll back on previous anti-vax statements are not to be trusted. Indeed, even as Kennedy was testifying, a lawyer for Informed Consent Action Network – a non-profit whose founder is a close ally of Kennedy – was petitioning the FDA to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine. The vaccine is estimated to have prevented 20 million cases of paralysis globally and is widely regarded as one of the greatest achievements of US medicine.
Nor would Kennedy agree to sever his stake in ongoing litigation on behalf of people claiming to have been damaged by Gardasil, the Merck vaccine that protects against the human papillomavirus. According to financial disclosure documents filed ahead of his confirmation, Kennedy’s arrangement with law firm Wisner Baum guarantees him 10% of payouts from successful Gardasil settlements – an arrangement from which he has earned more than $2.5 million in the past two years.
Ascertaining what Kennedy believes and understands by “science” is a fool’s errand. As the editorial board of the New York Post concluded when it met him in May 2023, when it comes to medical issues his views are “a head-scratching spaghetti of what we can only call warped conspiracy theories”.
The Committee to Protect Health Care, a pro-patients doctors’ group, agrees. In a letter opposing Kennedy’s nomination, it said that, as health secretary, his policies would hit vulnerable communities particularly hard, putting millions of lives at risk.
Kennedy is reportedly considering axing or changing a key vaccine advisory committee – a move that could prompt healthcare providers to offer fewer jabs to children and inspire states to repeal recommended vaccination schedules. According to the CDC, over the past 30 years childhood vaccines have prevented an estimated 1.1 million deaths and 32 million hospital admissions in the USA. The fear is that disruption to these schedules could harm community immunisation levels, which are already down on pre-pandemic numbers.
Just as worrying is Kennedy’s record of aligning himself with propaganda films such as Medical Racism: The New Apartheid, which specifically targeted Black Americans to discourage them from getting vaccinations. In the past, Kennedy has suggested that Black people do not need to follow the same vaccine schedule as white people “because their immune system is better than ours” – a view that drew a stinging rebuke from Angela Alsobrooks, the Democrat senator from Maryland, during cross-examination.
Equally dangerous is Kennedy’s record of intervening in public health crises. In 2018, he flew to Samoa to support a campaign that falsely suggested the MMR vaccine was unsafe. Several months later, a massive measles outbreak hit more than 5,700 people in Samoa and left 83 dead, most of them young children.
And during the Covid-19 pandemic he reportedly suggested that the coronavirus could have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people – a claim that is both antisemitic and scientifically highly implausible.
During the hearings, Kennedy displayed a tenuous grasp of Medicaid and other US federal healthcare programmes he would oversee. In particular, he didn’t seem to understand the role of community health centres, where many low-income Americans receive care, or that cuts to Medicaid would be particularly harmful to Black and Hispanic people, who are more likely than white people to be uninsured.
But perhaps the most revealing exchange came when Bernie Sanders, the independent senator for Vermont, asked Kennedy whether he agreed that healthcare was a fundamental human right. Kennedy’s response that healthcare should not be treated the same way as free speech and that long-term cigarette smokers were “taking from the [insurance] pool” tells you everything about his eugenicist and libertarian mindset.
Listening to Kennedy’s often-incoherent replies, it is hard not to conclude that he is someone who has studied a little medical history but has failed to absorb the lessons of germ theory or the role of social and economic conditions in determining health. Along with antibiotics, vaccines have saved more lives than any other technology in medical history. And while Kennedy’s desire to wean Americans off processed foods would no doubt go some way to addressing chronic conditions such as obesity, his plan to remove fluoride from community water would not be helpful. On the contrary, his claims that fluoridation is connected to lower IQs is based on very flawed science.
Indeed, fluoridation is one of the most beneficial public health interventions in history. Prior to its introduction in the 1940s, Americans suffered from high levels of tooth decay. For those who cannot afford fluoride toothpaste or regular visits to the dentist, de-fluoridation would likely result in a surge in dental cavities. Not so much MAHA then as MATA – Make America Toothless Again.
See also
