Pretend you are the European Union.

Russia is on your doorstep, side-eyeing its next annexation. Islam is creeping across the map thanks to an open invitation to the third-world issued by Germany. The money is gone because a whole stack of ideological zealots and snake oil salesmen used a fictional climate apocalypse to steal a trillion dollars and scuttle the Industrial Age. Your people are angry, poor, culturally dispossessed, and refusing to have children.

In this situation, you really really really need a friendly America to pick up the slack on defence, invest a few hundred billion dollars in trade, and clip the talons of the United Nations (which is acting like some psychotic pterodactyl on a meth binge tearing the heads off everyone’s peace doves).

America is not happy about your general arseholery. And let’s be honest, there is no one worse to deal with than the EU. You’ve been slapped with reciprocal tariffs and given a lecture from the Vice President about free speech and ominous totalitarian behaviour.

What’s your first move, as the European Union, to re-engage America, offer friendship, secure a defence partnership, and open the golden rivers of trade?

Do you use your executive body, the European Commission, to threaten a billion-dollar fine against Donald Trump’s loyal friend and Silicon Valley giant Elon Musk for breaking some nonsensical disinformation law…

What could possibly go wrong?

People talk about leading horses to water but the EU is the continent’s white elephant that has fallen down a mine shaft. Blind Freddie has better foresight.

There is nothing special about the content posted on X. All the Silicon Valley giants are roughly the same, except X facilitates more robust political conversations and that upsets the intolerant and paranoid European leaders.

The EU has made it clear that it will not tolerate a right-wing, free speech enthusiast at the helm of a social media company. Especially not one that criticises the EU’s behaviour concerning elections and lawfare.

X, or more correctly the ability for citizens to post on X, threatens the future of left-wing politics, which allows us to speculate that censorship has become an integral part of holding onto power. No wonder the European Commission has made policing people in other countries its chief concern. Instead of fixing domestic problems, it is much easier to monetise the endless revenue of dissent. Almost as easy as taxing carbon, the chief building block of life.

In doing so, the EU have proven Vice President JD Vance correct.

There is no chance that Elon Musk will hand the arrogant European Union a billion dollars for a law they conjured out of thin air.

Remember Thierry Breton’s heated online battle with Musk? After threatening Musk with fines under the Digital Services Act, Musk replied, ‘We look forward to the very public battle in court, so that the people of Europe can know the truth.’ To which Mr Breton said, ‘Be our guest, Elon Musk.’

The EU needs to be really careful because they are in the wrong and Donald Trump’s response could easily be have fun with Nato…

Remember, the Digital Services Act is completely unenforceable and designed with the purpose of political censorship and revenue raising. It has been laughed at many times before and rightly ignored. There is no pretence of applying it fairly across all digital platforms. Not only would it be impossible, the EU would be immediately banned from social media rather than the other way around.

Currently, the EU is rubbing its greedy little globalist paws together and working out if it can base Musk’s fine on 6 per cent of the global revenue from all his companies. Make it 100 per cent. Make it 1,000 per cent. They will never see a cent and the more they grasp, the harder they’ll smack their heads against reality.

As the X team wrote in reply:

If the reports that the European Commission is considering enforcement actions against X are accurate, it represents an unprecedented act of political censorship and an attack on free speech. X has gone above and beyond to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act, and we will use every option at our disposal to defend our business, keep our users safe, and protect freedom of speech in Europe.

Australia, and its eSafety Commissioner, are on the same track as the European Union – and it is the wrong spiritual path.

Censorship is a political weapon and those governments who endorse it signal their weakness and fear of public opinion. Which in Australia’s case includes the Coalition who created it and the Labor Party who are keen to empower it.

In the meantime, the EU is doing its member nations a massive disservice and placing some of them in very real danger.

If it all goes horribly wrong, and the French storm the Bastille over X, blame the bureaucrats. This is their mess.

Flat White is written by Alexandra Marshall. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.