Telegram CEO’s prison sentence reveals Europe’s true totalitarian colors

French-Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov founded Telegram in 2013, following Russia’s 2011 crackdown on pro-democracy protests. Now one of the world’s largest communications tools, Telegram uses encryption similar to Signal to prevent bad actors — be they individuals or corrupt governments — from monitoring your communications. Telegram is central to daily life in countries like Russia, Ukraine, and India. Russia even had a problem with the app because Ukrainians were using it for military communications. That’s how secure its encryption is.

You might expect that societies that claim to champion freedom of speech and privacy would embrace this app, while totalitarian governments that want to control their citizens’ private communications would do everything they can to ban it. Yet it wasn’t Russia, Iran, or China that targeted Durov — it was France.

They’re coming for Musk, they’re coming for Rumble, and they’re coming for you. This isn’t about your digital security. It’s about their quest for power.

Authorities arrested Durov earlier this week at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport. The Russian embassy in Paris demanded an explanation from the French government. In response, the French government said Durov was “detained by the National Anti-Fraud Office for allegedly facilitating various crimes, including terrorism, drug trafficking, drug trafficking and fraud.” They further accuse him of “having caused an incalculable number of offenses and crimes to be committed” on Telegram “for which he did nothing.” In short, they accuse Durov of being complicit in the crimes that others committed while using his app.

In the United States, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects social media companies from being accused of being complicit in most crimes committed on their platforms. While French and European laws do not fall under Section 230, their double standards for platforms that comply with their censorship campaigns are clear. For example, “60 Minutes” reports that the New Mexico Attorney General is accusing Meta and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg of facilitating child sexual abuse and human trafficking on its sites. According to the Attorney General’s undercover investigation, Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms created a marketplace for child sexual exploitation, and Meta allowed adults to find, message and seduce minors by soliciting them to sell photos or participate in pornographic videos.

Will France hold Mark Zuckerberg accountable for enabling child pornography on his platform? Why was Durov arrested for crimes that Meta has repeatedly proven to facilitate? Could it be because Durov’s product counters government censorship, while Meta has openly complied with it?

Europe has quickly become a global center for censorship, and the EU’s Digital Services Act was the final nail in the coffin of what was left of free speech on the continent. George Washington University legal scholar Jonathan Turley rightly called the Digital Services Act “one of the greatest threats to free speech that we have anywhere in the world today,” forcing social media companies to flag and report content that the EU deems harmful.

The Digital Services Act, couched in bland, bureaucratic language, gives the EU’s globalist government the power to censor any speech it sees fit. It emboldens people like Margrethe Vestager, a Danish politician who serves as the European Commission’s executive vice-president for “A Europe fit for the digital age,” to threaten Elon Musk’s X with fines for refusing to comply with censorship disguised as EU “guidelines.”

Durov’s arrest has spooked the CEOs of other pro-free speech platforms, and rightly so. Rumble founder and CEO Chris Pavlovsky said: “I’m a little late to this, but for good reason: I just left Europe safely. France threatened Rumble and now they’ve crossed a red line by arresting Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, allegedly for not censoring speech.”

“Rumble will not tolerate this behavior and will use all available legal means to fight for freedom of expression, a universal human right,” Pavlovsky added. “We are currently fighting in the courts of France and we hope for the immediate release of Pavel Durov.”

Elon Musk is also concerned. “It is vital to supporting free speech that you forward X messages to people you know, especially in countries with heavy censorship,” he posted on X (formerly Twitter). He says that X messages will be hidden in countries like France, and the only way you can see them is if someone in an uncensored country sends them to you directly. Will Facebook be held to this standard of censorship as well?
Alexander Vindman, who was a key witness against Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial, said the following following Durov’s arrest:

While Durov is a French citizen and has been arrested for violating French law, this has broader implications for other social media, including Twitter. There is a growing intolerance for platforming disinfo (and) malign influence (and) a growing hunger for accountability. Musk should be nervous.

That’s a threat, and it’s coming from a Democratic candidate for Congress.

Is there really a growing intolerance for platforming “disinformation”? Perhaps within the ruling class elite, but not among the American people.

This year at Blaze Media we are breaking multiple records in the history of our company. We are having a bigger impact now than when I was at Fox News. This is especially astonishing given our Facebook numbers. We can’t get a handle on Facebook, but this is not a new battle. It always silences our voices and your vote, during an election time. And it’s only going to get worse.

Durov’s arrest is not an isolated incident. We’ve been feeling the rumblings of Europe’s seismic shift toward censorship for years, but Durov’s arrest is the first major crack in the ground. The ruling elites want you to slip through the cracks, just like he did, until they and their cronies are the only ones left above ground. They’re coming for Musk, they’re coming for Rumble, and they’re coming for you. This is not about your digital security. It is about their quest for power.

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