Written By: Justin K.P.
The EU has officially ruled that it is a criminal offence for a blogger to post clips or content from RT, the Russian state broadcaster, no matter what the content is or how newsworthy it is.
In 2023, German authorities seized the independent website Traugott Ickeroth and accused its founders of “violating economic sanctions” because the blog “shared RT videos on three occasions in 2023”.
As journalist Matthew Petti reported, “The Saarbrücken District Court sent the case up to the European Union’s Curia earlier this year, asking whether authorities could really treat a repost on a free-to-read private blog as a sanctions violation. Now the Curia has answered: The sanctions law ‘must be interpreted’ to include a citizen ‘who operates a website by broadcasting on it content originating from’ sanctioned entities and receives ‘only income from voluntary contributions from third parties.’The case will go back down to the German courts—which now have a mandate to prosecute bloggers for reposts.”
The ruling defined the meaning of “operator” in reference to sanctions on Russia that make it illegal for an “operator” to broadcast content from RT. According to the ruling “its usual meaning in everyday language, the term ‘operator’ designates, amongst other things, any natural or legal person operating equipment or a particular piece of equipment or responsible for carrying out certain technical operations. Applied to the field of communication and the broadcasting of media and digital content, that term refers to any natural or legal person directly or indirectly responsible for making available or transmitting that content to the public.”
It also ruled that even if a blogger or journalist is not being paid by RT, it is still a sanctions violation to share content from RT, ruling, “It follows that that term covers natural or legal persons responsible for broadcasting the content referred to in that provision, irrespective of whether or not their activity is economic in nature.”
In other words, even sharing any content from RT, without any finical benefit, can be a criminal offence and sanctions violation in EU countries.
The EU court of justice publicly boasted after the ruling , “The ban on broadcasting the content of the Russia Today channel also applies to a website accessible free of charge to the public”.
Analyst Arnaud Bertrand called this ruling “quite literally the worst example of censorship I’ve ever heard of anywhere”, writing:
… the most insane aspect if that it does NOT matter if the information relayed is accurate or not. It just matters that it originates from RT or other media outlets banned in the EU.
In other words, truth isn’t a defense anymore in the EU, it literally doesn’t matter. It’s purely based on the identity of the speaker.
The ruling is actually explicit about this: the regulation, quoted by the Court says that the prohibition applies to “any content,” and they draw no distinction based on what the content actually says. If it originates from banned outlets, it’s banned.
It is, quite simply, a complete unraveling of the entire post-Enlightenment legal and philosophical project where entire generations of Europeans fought to move from “who says it” to “is it true” as the operative question.
Think about the absurdity of it: if RT publishes a video saying the sky is blue and you share it on a publicly accessible website in the EU, you’d fall within the scope of this ruling, making you liable to criminal prosecution.
Completely and utterly absurd. But that’s the EU today for you.
This is far from the first time the EU has used Russia-related sanctions to silence free speech domestically.
In December of last year, the EU placed sanctions on the retired colonel in the Swiss army, Jacques Baud, accusing him of being “a mouthpiece for pro-Russian propaganda” who “makes conspiracy theories”, simply because he has provided a counter-narrative in his analysis of the EU proxy war in Ukraine.
The Wall Street Journal noted, “Sanctions are designed to target state actors and their agents, yet Mr. Baud isn’t accused of being a Russian agent. No one has presented evidence of Moscow funding. He’s a private citizen who wrote books and gave interviews critical of Western policy on Ukraine. For that, the bloc has restricted his travel across its 27 countries and frozen all of his ‘funds and economic resources’ in the EU, effectively prohibiting him from doing business there. All without a trial.”
Last year, the EU also sanctioned the German-Turkish journalist Hüseyin Doğru over his criticism of NATO and Israel and for covering pro-Palestine protests.
Yet again, the EU uses its proxy war against Russia to target, sanction and silence critical domestic voices.
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Just highlighting this for the sake of completeness - The article describes Hüseyin Doğru as German-Turkish. In a recent interview with Chris Hedges, Hüseyin stated that he isn't a citizen anywhere else outside of Germany. (I believe he said he was born in Germany). I was not familiar with him or his case prior to that interview. The sanctions against him should be concerning for anyone who cares about the right to speech, political opinion, and civil liberties more broadly anywhere. The very right to dissent and to oppose government actions is under attack, one part after the other.
What are the frightened of , the truth .