16 Dec 2025 | Americas, Europe and Central Asia, Hungary, News and features, United States
Much has been said about the US National Security Strategy, which leans hard into far-right talking points, arguing that Europe faces “civilisational erasure” because of migration and that the USA must “cultivate resistance” within the continent to “Europe’s current trajectory”. The strategy also references censorship.
Europe’s free speech record is a bugbear of Donald Trump and JD Vance’s. I’ve written about my thoughts from the perspective of the UK, arguing that they’re right. There are issues. Just not the ones they usually point to. And of course I’ve arguing about the chutzpah: a case in point being Wednesday’s announcement of plans to comb through US visitors’ social-media histories which we consider censorship pure and simple.
Here’s another story from the continent that won’t be flagged across the pond: a Hungarian rights campaigner, Géza Buzás-Hábel, has been placed under investigation and is facing potential criminal charges for organising a peaceful Pride march.
Back in March the Hungarian government, governed by Viktor Orbán – a “great leader” according to Trump – voted to ban Pride events. They still went ahead. In June tens of thousands of people marched in Budapest, which we reported on; in October some 8,000 attended Pécs Pride, organised by the Diverse Youth Network, which Buzás-Hábel runs. Days later Buzás-Hábel was summoned by police for questioning. His case was forwarded to the prosecutor’s office with a recommendation to press charges. Buzás-Hábel could face a suspended prison sentence of up to three years. He was recently dismissed from his state teaching job and from a music centre where he’d worked as a mentor.
This is an egregious free speech violation. But let’s be honest, it’s exactly what Trump and his cohort want. A Europe where minority voices – Buzás-Hábel is Roma as well as queer – aren’t free to organise peaceful protests and don’t have an equal voice.
One of the most important things that this moment demands is to not fall through the looking glass and land in a place where left means right and right means upside down. That’s sadly what is happening to free speech if you spend too long in the Trumpian vortex. At its heart free speech is about pluralism – the great marketplace of voices and ideas – which is the opposite of the ambition of the US’ National Security Strategy and Europe’s far-right parties. They are all adopting the idea of free speech in order to shut down every other voice except their own. By all means we should call out censorship as and when it occurs. But it is vital to do it across the board. After all, free speech isn’t worth a dollar if it only applies to one group and not another.
29 Nov 2025 | News and features, Spotlight
Tom Stoppard’s path to literary success is a story that would be worthy of the stage. Born in Czechoslovakia (as it was then known) as Tomás Straüssler in 1937, he endured a turbulent childhood before rising to fame as one of the great playwrights of his time. Known for his intelligent wordplay and intellectual prowess, Stoppard’s career spanned more than 60 years, across stage, screen and radio.
As well as being a literary great, he was also a staunch advocate for free speech. Although he often suggested that his works were not politically motivated, much of his writing centred around themes of censorship and human rights.
Stoppard joined the advisory board of Index on Censorship in 1978 and made several contributions to the magazine in defence of free speech, declaring in one interview that “free expression was what made all the other freedoms possible, so it was everything.”
Stoppard first rose to fame in 1967 with his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a tragicomedy revolving around the actions of two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which brought overnight success after its London debut at the Old Vic. The play was responsible for the first of his five Tony award wins for Best Play, a record unmatched by any other playwright. Other works to earn this accolade include his 1974 comedy Travesties, 1982 drama The Real Thing and his 2002 drama The Coast of Utopia.
The 1990s signalled a decade of unparalleled success for Stoppard. His services to literature were acknowledged with a knighthood in 1997, and he won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for his 1998 film Shakespeare in Love.
Age proved no barrier to the writer, who continued his work well into his 80s with his last play Leopoldstadt, a drama centred around a Jewish family in Vienna, which earned him his final Tony award for Best Play in 2023.
His achievements are perhaps even more impressive considering the challenges he faced in early life. Soon after he was born, his family, who were non-practising Jews, were forced to flee Czechoslovakia to escape the Nazis. After four years in Singapore, Stoppard once again found himself fleeing conflict. An invasion by Japan caused him to move to India with his mother and brother, while his father stayed behind and was killed at sea by a bomb dropped by Japanese forces. In 1946, Stoppard’s mother married a British army major who gave the family his name and moved them over to England.
These roots influenced his later role as an advocate for free speech. The authoritarian regime that engulfed his homeland of Czechoslovakia in the years between the Soviet Union invasion in 1968 until the fall of communism there in 1989 helped to shape his opposition to totalitarianism and media repression. After reading about Victor Fainberg’s experience of being detained in the USSR in an issue of Index on Censorship in 1975, Stoppard was inspired to write Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, a drama set in a Soviet mental hospital. He dedicated the play to Fainberg and Vladimir Bukovsky, another incarcerated dissident, and an excerpt was published in the magazine in 1978.
Stoppard worked as a journalist prior to his transition to the world of theatre. His early career influenced some of his later causes. For example, he voiced his support for Hacked Off’s campaign for a free and accountable press due to his belief that “free expression in the context of British journalism seemed to me to be about as important a subject for any kind of writing, including plays, as you would find.”
In his final interview with Index in 2021, he warned against the modern culture of intolerance, identity politics and cancel culture, declaring that “the danger to society of actual censorship has probably never been greater”. A year later he wrote playfully but seriously on identity politics.
Such talents as Stoppard come few and far between, and his contributions to both literature and the fight for free speech will be sorely missed.
7 Apr 2025 | About Index, Americas, Europe and Central Asia, France, News and features, Newsletters, Turkey, United States
The headline today is clear: lawyers need lawyers. It’s frustrating to focus on the USA given the constant coverage the country already receives, but it would be negligent to overlook this issue. President Donald Trump’s attempts to target law firms that oppose his administration’s agenda are deeply troubling. Lawyers should not have to fear government retribution simply because they represent clients or work with colleagues tied to the political opposition. This is a blatant threat to the rule of law, one designed to stifle free speech.
Politico offers a thorough breakdown of the situation, concluding that, for now at least, the practical consequences might seem relatively minor. The firms being targeted are so expensive that most people can’t afford their services. This isn’t necessarily a comforting thought. The flipside could be argued – that only the most financially robust law firms can afford to take on an expensive battle with Trump’s administration. Many smaller firms may quietly decline controversial cases, prioritising ease over principle, and thus further narrowing access to justice.
Over in France, a different kind of danger faces lawyers following Marine Le Pen’s conviction this week. It sparked a dangerous wave of threats against the judges involved, which were so severe that President Emmanuel Macron has been forced to publicly reaffirm the independence of the judiciary, and one of the trial judges has been placed under police protection.
It is, unfortunately, a sign of the times that bears repeating: lawyers represent clients, but they do not necessarily share their views. Yet here we are, facing the reality of a world where legal professionals are increasingly seen as extensions of their clients’ beliefs, rather than independent advocates of the law – a line trotted out for years in Iran, Russia and China and now finding a home elsewhere.
“As if the coup against democracy wasn’t enough, they cannot tolerate the victims of this coup defending themselves. They want to add a legal coup to the coup against democracy,” said Istanbul’s recently jailed Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu on the arrest of his lawyer. Mehmet Pehlivan has since been released. But as Pehlivan’s own lawyer poignantly remarked, his arrest was a “warning”. For Turkey’s autocratic leader, the message is clear: beware the clients you choose. For the rest of us, the takeaway is equally urgent: if we don’t stand firm in support of the defenders of justice, the very concept of justice itself could be dismantled.
13 Feb 2025 | Americas, News and features, United States
The second Donald Trump administration isn’t even a month old, and yet it seems as though the divisive president has already produced enough headlines to get us to the next election. With sweeping executive orders, massive cuts to federal departments and sights set on the contentious purchase of foreign lands, it’s hard to currently decipher the impact of his decisions and statements on the American people, and globally.
This is particularly true when it comes to one of the foundations of the USA’s Bill of Rights – the right to free speech.
Since his inauguration, there have been accusations of censorship and free speech violations levelled at Trump and his office. His threat to deport students with VISAs who display pro-Palestine views has rung alarm bells, and after the 47th President was credited with the reinstatement of social media platform TikTok in the USA, there were user reports of censorship around criticism of Trump, or pro-Palestine sentiment. There have also been major causes for concern among the LGBTQ+ community as one of Trump’s new executive orders threatens the self determination and self expression of trans people.
But is it all bad news when it comes to free speech? The USA-based non-profit organisation Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) keeps a close watch on how each president upholds freedom of speech according to the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Speaking to Index, members of FIRE’s legislative team explained how Trump’s first few weeks in office have impacted free speech in the USA, for better and worse.
Tyler Coward, lead counsel in higher education related government affairs at FIRE, has concerns about Trump’s threat against pro-Palestine foreign students. “There are mixed signals from some courts about what speech rights people have when they’re here on a temporary status, such as [on] visas, but FIRE’s position is that it’s a bad idea to create two classes of students on campus, some that can participate fully in campus advocacy or campus protests, and those who risk fear of deportation,” he said.
“There are students that can or have engaged in actual unlawful activity, including violence against other students, engaging in sanctionable civil disobedience, actual discrimination or intimidation, things that are generally not protected by the First Amendment,” he continued. “But we think it’s a bad idea to create a system where speech that would be protected for an American student, wouldn’t be for a student on a student visa.”
However, Coward believes that if Trump abides by the precedent set in his first term, the impact on free speech could be varied. “His (first) administration did some things on the campus side, some which were helpful, some which were not. First off, on the helpful side is that we in the United States have an anti-discrimination statute called Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, in education, in any entity that receives federal education dollars.
“The Federal Department of Education was interpreting that statute in ways that threatened free expression, particularly free speech, on sex and gender issues, and the first Trump administration passed rules that were very speech protective to allow for broader discussion and debate about these issues on campus… the Obama administration and the Biden administration both adopted rules that were harmful to free speech on those issues.”
But other executive orders implemented during Trump’s first term, and being continued into this administration, could have stretching powers that impact people’s right to protest and express views freely, Coward added.
For instance, Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act – which bans discrimination based on race, colour, or national origin in organisations that receive federal funding, such as universities – has now been extended to include anti-Semitism. While hate speech should rightly be tackled, the concern is that the order could be expanded beyond hate speech and used in such a way that stifles the free speech of those who oppose Israel’s policies.
“I suspect we’ll see a lot more enforcement and a lot of speech that is protected by the First Amendment, including criticisms of Israel, that will pressure educational institutions that receive federal dollars,” said Coward. “The institutions will be cracking down on this speech in ways that threaten free expression, and then the education department itself will start investigating institutions for failure to censor that speech.”
Carolyn Iodice, legislative and policy director at FIRE, also told Index about the threats that journalism in the USA could face as a result of Trump’s attitude to the media. The president has sued several media outlets and social media firms because of the way they have reported news about him, represented his opponents or moderated his speech, Iodice said.
“We would have normally expected that the entities – like CBS News, Facebook and ABC News – would fight that kind of lawsuit; because for one [Facebook], there’s no legal claim to be had against them, and two, with CBS and ABC, if you don’t defend your journalists it creates this chill about what they can and can’t say about the president.”
Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, is due to pay $25 million to Trump in a settlement, after Trump sued the Big Tech firm and its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg in 2021 over the suspension of his accounts following the 6 January 2021 Capitol riots. ABC has settled its defamation case for $16 million. CBS is also reportedly considering settling over a case involving an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, where Trump alleged that CBS had edited the show to unfairly cast Harris in a more favourable light.
“The concern there is that you now have, by virtue of these lawsuits, a multi-billion dollar incentive for companies to have their journalists shape their coverage in ways that won’t get them brought back to court by the president again and again,” Iodice said.
Regarding social media, despite anecdotal user reports of censorship on TikTok when it was first reintroduced in the USA, FIRE are generally positive about the steps Trump has taken towards reducing censorship on these platforms.
“The most promising thing so far,” Iodice said, “is that he issued an executive order that talked about, and was critical of, the practice of the government leaning on social media companies to coerce them to [censor] speech in ways the government couldn’t directly require them to do, because of the First Amendment. And we think that’s a very good thing, regardless of who does it.”
The second Trump Administration outwardly champions free speech for Americans, but the first weeks of government have not always represented this ethos. Those of us working against censorship around the world have looked on with trepidation at this new government, which looks set to overturn the applecart in all facets of government. One can only hope that the First Amendment isn’t flung to the wayside.
