While America and Europe are two parts of one West, they have always treated the idea of “rights” differently. The former has long put a premium on individual liberties – the right to bear arms, for example – whilst the latter has long put a premium on collective rights, such as the right to healthcare. But both have always, in the modern age at least, claimed to have the individual right to the freedom of speech. However, across the continent of Europe, genuinely frightening cases of speech restrictions are becoming increasingly commonplace.

A 16-year-old was recently removed from her high school by police in Germany. Her crime? Reposting a pro-AfD video on TikTok involving the Smurfs (the populist-right party’s colour is blue). A woman in the United Kingdom was detained for silently praying outside of an abortion clinic: the land of George Orwell had someone arrested for a literal thought crime.

An Austrian woman was arrested for calling Muhammad, who married a nine-year-old girl, a paedophile. Another woman, this time in Germany, was fined €80,000 for making a Nazi salute. Again in Germany, an AfD politician was arrested and fined for claiming that migrants commit more gang rapes than German citizens do (the court did not dispute her facts, but said she was inciting hatred). The German government also recently shut down a popular right-wing news source over claims that it was extremist. And to top it off, Germany sought information from a popular social media website about a user who had anonymously posted a satirical image insulting a German politician by, among other things, calling her fat.

And that is just a small smattering of what has become a flood of cases. How did things get to this point?