{"id":616727,"date":"2026-06-11T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T07:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=616727"},"modified":"2026-06-11T07:30:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T07:30:00","slug":"merkel-receives-the-first-european-order-of-merit-award-repeats-call-for-crackdown-on-free-speech-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=616727","title":{"rendered":"Merkel Receives The First European Order Of Merit Award, Repeats Call For Crackdown On Free Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Merkel Receives The First European Order Of Merit Award, Repeats Call For Crackdown On Free Speech<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Jonathan Turley,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The European Union recently announced the first recipients of its new\u00a0European Order of Merit,<\/a>\u00a0the organization\u2019s highest award.<\/strong> The headliner was Angela Merkel, former Federal Chancellor of Germany, who indeed personifies the European Union for both her fans and her critics. For many years, some of us have criticized Merkel as one of the leading forces behind European censorship efforts that have eviscerated the\u00a0\u201c<\/em>Indispensable Right.\u201d<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, Merkel called for more censorship and attacks on free speech to a thrilled audience of EU bureaucrats and globalists.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In one of the most ironic moments, Merkel declared, \u201cEurope was not handed to us. It was built treaty by treaty, crisis by crisis and by people who chose solidarity over division and cooperation over self-interest.\u201d<\/strong><\/em> Indeed, it was not handed to them.<\/p>\n

As I discuss in my new book,\u00a0\u201c<\/em>Rage and the Republic,<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>the EU was formed by design to incrementally get citizens in Europe to give up their national identities and rights:<\/p>\n

\n

The EEC worked to remove barriers to trade and coordinate national regulations to achieve greater uniformity. As nations conformed to such transnational standards, the final step toward transnational governance became less of a conceptual barrier for citizens, particularly younger citizens\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2026The evolution of the EU is a cautionary tale. It began with assurances of marginal coordinating bodies and policies over areas like nuclear power and scientific research. Through this planned incrementalism, each insular move was defended on its narrow purpose while dismissing objections as nationalistic or conspiratorial. That planned incrementalism worked brilliantly in getting citizens to accept transnational governance.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Merkel was critical in that effort. She is blamed for opening the borders to a flood of undocumented immigrants that has caused rising violence and protests throughout Europe<\/strong>. However, her crowning jewel was the crackdown on free speech. She can honestly claim that Germans (and Europeans as a whole) have fewer rights after her public service. She increased the power of government, stripped away free speech rights, and reduced national identities without firing a shot.<\/p>\n

Merkel consistently opposed free speech, <\/strong>building a censorship system that gave the government ever greater control over speech. Her\u00a0decision to first apologize to authoritarian Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan for a satirical poem and then approve the prosecution of the comedian is a shocking and chilling disgrace.<\/a>\u00a0Now, she is\u00a0throwing her support behind a crackdown on \u201chate speech\u201d on social media\u00a0<\/a>like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube \u2014 radically expanding the already broad scope of government regulation of speech.<\/p>\n

Merkel declared, \u201cI support efforts by Justice Minister Heiko Maas and Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere to address hate speech, hate commentaries, devastating things that are incompatible with human dignity, and to do everything to prohibit it because it contradicts our values.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Merkel was a driving force in using such subjective standards as \u201ccompatibility with human dignity\u201d as a foundation for government-imposed speech controls.<\/p>\n

Merkel also\u00a0threatened social media companies<\/a>, warning they would face a government crackdown if they failed to get rid of \u201cfake news.\u201d\u00a0Merkel insisted that such postings must be dealt with by the companies or the government will step in.<\/a><\/p>\n

In her speech in May to the EU, Merkel doubled down on her attacks on free speech as a threat to the world order. She called for the prosecution of\u00a0 American companies for spreading \u201cdisinformation\u201d and \u201chate\u201d online.<\/strong><\/p>\n

She denounced the \u201cso-called social media\u201d platforms as still not facing \u201caccountability for lies.\u201d She added, \u201cI can only encourage you to continue regulating social media.\u201d<\/p>\n

I could think of no better recipient for the first European Order of Merit. No one better sums up EU values than Angela Merkel and her unrelenting campaign against free speech. For globalists who have called for \u201cA New World Order with European Values,\u201d Merkel is the perfect personification of a globalist dream of a world of regulated speech and transnational government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nThu, 06\/11\/2026 – 03:30<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Merkel Receives The First European Order Of Merit Award, Repeats Call For Crackdown On Free Speech Authored by Jonathan Turley, The European Union recently announced the first recipients of its new\u00a0European Order of Merit,\u00a0the organization\u2019s highest award. The headliner was Angela Merkel, former Federal Chancellor of Germany, who indeed personifies the European Union for both… Continue reading Merkel Receives The First European Order Of Merit Award, Repeats Call For Crackdown On Free Speech<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":616724,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,10,21,12,11,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-616727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cancel-culture","category-censorship","category-civil-liberties","category-election-integrity","category-equal-justice","category-free-speech","category-religious-freedom","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=616727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/616724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=616727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=616727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=616727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}