During a speech in Berlin, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decried what she framed as the rise of authoritarianism in the United States, seemingly oblivious to the very real speech suppression happening all around her.
Speaking on March 18 at the World Forum on the Future of Democracy, AI, Tech, and Humankind — with the phrase “New World Order” conspicuously glowing behind her — Clinton lashed out at President Donald Trump, labeling him one of the world’s “autocrats” and warning of the “peril” democracy faces globally.
However, she made no mention of the German government’s deeply entrenched speech policing practices, including armed dawn raids on individuals for controversial internet posts. Her condemnation of American governance rang especially hollow in the context of her surroundings — a nation known for prosecuting its citizens over memes and critical commentary.
“There’s no way to explain it away, autocracy is on the march and we now have a government in the United States that has thrown in its lot with the autocrats,” Clinton declared.
Her rhetoric then turned to tech platforms, criticizing their role in amplifying information she deemed harmful. Clinton said they “have given enormous power to the men who control the information flow in our world, who have all pledged allegiance to the continuation of algorithms that not only addict us but poison us with hatred and fear,” urging greater urgency in addressing these forces.
Her comments came just months after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a rollback in platform censorship and a distancing from ideologically driven fact-checking operations.
Clinton’s statements follow a pattern of demanding tighter controls on online discourse, previously arguing that without strict content moderation, “we lose total control.” That perspective aligns neatly with the European Union’s aggressive Digital Services Act, which effectively coerces tech companies into silencing viewpoints deemed undesirable by regulators. Germany, a leading voice in this EU push, has already demonstrated how far it’s willing to go.
You may recall, in a revealing segment by CBS’s 60 Minutes, German prosecutors openly discussed their country’s expansive social media surveillance system. The episode featured footage of a pre-dawn raid in which six armed officers entered a man’s home and seized his devices — his crime: sharing a meme.
Despite this backdrop, Clinton’s speech contained no reference to these real and ongoing violations of civil liberties. Instead, she directed her ire toward her own country, accusing the US government of aligning with autocrats while offering no critique of the censorship and state surveillance taking place in her host nation.
The hypocrisy couldn’t be more striking: while railing against alleged threats to democracy at home, Clinton ignored the authoritarian tactics in plain view abroad. Her silence on German censorship contrasted with her alarmist warnings about American politics, raises troubling questions about the true target of today’s calls for “democracy” — and whether it’s freedom of thought and expression that’s really under threat.
