This has been a long held "western" value. Especially in the context of West vs Russia Iran North Korea etc. this rapid increase over the past few years in draconian enforcement of absurd thought control can not be explained away by such a shallow statement. ESPECIALLY the uk. Most of the American bill of rights and early constitutional amendment where based on centurys old English common law values just as much as they took inspiration from the Roman republics.
Hate speech has not been tolerated in the U.K. for many years. Other subversive speech hasn’t been tolerated in many counties, from nazi worship to glorifying terror, from obscenity to copyright.
America bans Harry Potter, in the past The U.K. banned Lady Chatterly, Germany bans nazi worship but America is quite happy with it.
Just because an american view on what is and isn’t acceptable exists doesn’t mean others have that same view.
Too much to address here and I don't have the time. But you are jumping around a lot and conflating culture war nonsense with legal enforcement. While also implying huge swaths of people are right wing nazis....
Harry potter has never EVER been banned in the USA and to say that with a straight face means we are in completely different universes and further engagement is pointless.
Many groups may have lobbied a retailer or a local school or library to voluntarily remove it. Even just to avoid drama/pr. I personally vehemently disagree with this type of censorship... But it is absolutely not what we see in the UK. The US equivalent would be federal terrorism charges for having harry potter. Absurd.
That jhst highlights the difference. In Europe people are concerned about whether something is available. They aren’t interested if the book was banned by a federal government or a school librarian, it’s still banned.
American view is that private companies banning something or spying on someone is fine as long as it’s not the government doing it.
It comes down to the accountability. Europeans tend to believe in the ability to hold large organisation to account via the ballot box, Americans prefer the free market.
What we see in the U.K. is a view shared by most people that incitement to violence, glorifying terror etc is illegal. Americans are happy to have Musk or Zuck do the censorship instead, with them being able to use their wallets to hold them accountable.
The narrowing of free speech and the declaration as hate speech, insanity or "backwardness" was a routine process in the USSR. You have private NGOs tracking and harassing speech that is still within the law in europe, while state actors support hate speech pushed by foreign actors. Its bad.
Take the use of taxes in fraud to buy votes en mass in michigan by the almost vice president. Or keir starmer just ignoring crimes comitted by his voting clientele. Its soviet block level bad out there.
