Censorship, abortion and the ‘threat within’: what a free speech expert thinks of J.D. Vance’s remarks to Europe
Professor Eric Heinze has penned an opinion piece for The Conversation about US Vice President’s remarks to European leaders at the recent Munich Security Conference.
J.D. Vance took to the stage at the conference to berate Europeans for their apparent failings to free speech and democracy, despite the US recently falling 10 places World Press Freedom Index. In the piece, Eric Heinze, Professor of Law and Humanities at Queen Mary University of London, discusses one of Vance’s key claims for the decline of free speech - Scotland’s Safe Access Zones Act.
Professor Heinze says: “We can debate the rights and wrongs of the Scottish law, but any suggestion that it seriously abridges free speech – when compared to the kinds of incursions Trump himself wages – would be farcical.”
He goes on to look at restrictions on free speech elsewhere in Europe, mainly Hungary under Viktor Orbán, and raises concerns about the stifling of opinion on the left.
Read the full piece on The Conversation.