The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy 2.0

The arrest of comedian Graham Linehan for tweets critical of transgenderism demonstrates how far Britain has departed from its traditional commitment to free speech and democratic norms.

The crackdown by allegedly “liberal” democratic governments in the West against political views they dislike is gathering steam.

The European Union has began aggressive implementation of the Digital Services Act (DSA), an Orwellian legal regime that compels platforms to swiftly remove vaguely defined “illegal content” across all member states, which includes speech merely considered “insulting” in some countries.

Critics warn this grants the EU broad censorship powers, risks “shadow banning,” and incentivizes global content moderation that can suppress lawful dissent.

Not to be outdone, the United Kingdom under Prime Minister Keir “Two-Tier” Starmer is now strictly enforcing its Online Safety Act, obliging platforms to rapidly remove “illegal” or “harmful” content, under threat of large fines.

Although designed to fight online harms, rights groups and legal scholars warn this enables pre-emptive or excessive removal of lawful speech, especially political or controversial views.

Several European countries — including Denmark, which reintroduced a blasphemy ban in 2023 after decades — broadened hate speech and offense laws in 2025.

These are used to police “insulting” speech and have a chilling effect on critics and journalists, as seen in the prosecution of Italian journalist Roberto Saviano merely for criticism of political leaders.

Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen was subjected to years of criminal prosecution — pending final Supreme Court appeal in 2025 — merely for sharing Bible verses and questioning her church’s support for a Pride parade.

The case is seen as a landmark test of Europe’s rapidly expanding hate speech legislation, which critics argue targets lawful, peaceful expression.

New obligations under the DSA and national laws now force internet service providers and social media firms to “fact-check” and remove content flagged as “disinformation,” which is largely any information that embarrasses politicians or with which they disagree, with minimal transparency and little recourse for appeal.

Critics in the European Parliament warn this hands too much power to bureaucrats and algorithms to stifle dissenting opinions

These incidents indeed represent a crossing of the Rubicon, the end of free speech as western societies have understood it for centuries.

It turns out that self-proclaimed “liberal” democracies are every bit as willing to practice censorship and engage in mass propaganda as other forms of government, such as right-wing dictatorships or Communist tyrannies.

Liberal democracies always claimed to be different.

They’ve always congratulated themselves on their commitments to certain fundamental principles — of which freedom of speech, religion and association were paramount.

Now it seems some liberal democracies, such as Canada in North America and some states in the EU, have abandoned those principles.

They are increasingly hostile toward traditional religious belief and reject outright, in many cases, the notion that free individuals may associate with whom they choose.

The Authoritarian Drift Under Two-Tier Starmer

A striking example of this authoritarian drift occurred in September 2025 when British comedy writer Graham Linehan was arrested at Heathrow Airport by five armed police officers.

Linehan, known for creating acclaimed television comedies like "Father Ted" and "The IT Crowd," was detained and questioned about three tweets in which he had criticized transgender ideology and questioned whether biological males should have access to women's bathrooms.

As satirist Konstantin Kisin observed with dark humor, the "criminal mastermind" was arrested for “writing some of the best comedy shows in English-language history and being critical of transgender ideology,” highlighting the absurdity of treating social media commentary as serious criminal activity worthy of armed police intervention.

The circumstances of Linehan's arrest underscore the increasingly draconian nature of Britain’s approach to policing thought and speech.

According to columnist Rod Dreher, who documented the incident extensively, Linehan “offered no resistance” to the heavily armed officers and was subsequently placed in a police cell before being hospitalized when his blood pressure spiked from the stress of his detention.

Dreher noted that Linehan was later “released on bail” but prohibited from tweeting pending his trial, effectively silencing a prominent critic of transgender ideology through the judicial process itself.

This case exemplifies what Dreher and others describe as “soft totalitarianism” coming to Britain and some EU states, drawing parallels to the experiences of Soviet-era dissidents.

In his analysis, Dreher quotes Eastern European émigrés who fled communist regimes and now see disturbing similarities in Western liberal democracies: “Elites and elite institutions are abandoning old-fashioned liberalism, based in defending the rights of the individual, and replacing it with a progressive creed that regards justice in terms of groups.”

These observers warn that “you can never be sure when those in power will come after you as a villain for having said or done something that was perfectly fine the day before.”

The Linehan arrest demonstrates how far Britain has departed from its traditional commitment to free speech and democratic norms.

While the comedian faces potential criminal prosecution for expressing views that were mainstream just years ago, the same legal system appears to apply different standards to different groups.

As Kisin sarddonically noted, “Ricky Jones, a Labour councillor who called for far-right activists’ throats to be cut at a public rally has been found not guilty of incitement to violence,” illustrating what critics describe as "two-tier justice" under Two-Tier Starmer, where the enforcement of speech laws depends heavily on the political alignment of the speaker and their targets.

Silent Prayer Now Illegal In Starmer’s Britain

Another well-known case in the UK involves Adam Smith-Connor, a British army veteran who was convicted in October 2024 for silently praying outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth, Dorset.

Smith-Connor said he was praying for his unborn son who died by abortion 22 years earlier.

He stood with his head bowed and hands clasped in a designated “buffer zone”—an area around abortion clinics where all forms of protest, including silent prayer, are prohibited by local regulations.

Smith-Connor did not interact with anyone entering or leaving the clinic and was not holding any signs. Nevertheless, he was approached by authorities and, after refusing to leave when asked, was prosecuted for violating the buffer zone order.

He received a conditional discharge and was ordered to pay over £9,000 in costs.

The judge ruled that even though he was only engaged in silent prayer and not confronting anyone, his presence could still “cause detrimental impact” to clinic users.

This case drew attention from both UK and international political figures, who highlighted concerns about the implications for freedom of thought and expression.

Legal guidance since then clarifies that silent prayer in itself is “not necessarily” a crime within buffer zones, but prosecutions can still occur if authorities deem the conduct “overt” or likely to influence clinic clients.

In July 2024, one notorious enemy of free speech, the EU’s so-called “Digital Commissioner” Thierry Breton, actually tried to forbid Elon Musk from interviewing a then-candidate for president of the United States, Donald Trump, on his social media platform, on the grounds that such an interview might spread “disinformation” that the EU’s autocrats might dislike.

As the far-left Washington Post observed:

“While freewheeling internet companies have long clashed with authoritarian regimes — Google in China, Facebook in Russia or pre-Musk Twitter in Turkey — Western governments until recently generally did not regard social media and the vision of free speech they promoted as being fundamentally at odds with democracy. Politicians and regulators recognized there was bad stuff on the internet, decried it and sought ways to mitigate it. But banning entire social networks or arresting their executives simply wasn’t something liberal democracies did. Now, for better or worse, it is.”

Make no mistake: the battle over control of the Internet will end up being the defining struggle of our era.

Western governments are, in many cases, siding with the Communist government of China in cracking down on unauthorized ideas.

This battle thereby pits the authoritarian oligarchs that control western governments and media against their own people.

US Vice President Highlights European Crackdown on Dissent, Urges Defense of Free Expression

JD Vance, Vice President of the United States, pointed all this out in his now-famous speech in February 2025, at the 61st Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany.

Vance’s speech was a sweeping attack on what he called the “backsliding” of European democracies with regard to free speech and democratic legitimacy. He contended that the “greatest danger to European democracy” was not outside threats like Russia or China, but rather “the threat from within” — specifically, the erosion of basic freedoms by European governments.

“European leaders use ugly, Soviet-era words like ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ to hide entrenched interests against alternative viewpoints that might express a different opinion, or, God forbid, vote a different way—or even worse, win an election,” Vance declared.

He criticized EU “commissars” for threatening to shut down social media during unrest, framing the Digital Services Act and related laws as preemptive censorship.

As these so-called liberal democracies continue to devolve into new forms of post-Stalinist tyranny, the people in these nations will have no choice but to rise up and take back control of their governments .

This is what is happening right now throughout western Europe and North America.

Brexit, the rise of populist parties in France, Germany, Italy and even Denmark and Sweden, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and his reelection in 2024, the push-back against lunatic “diversity” mandates and climate control initiatives — all these are signs of a massive populist rebellion against liberal autocracy.

If they are not careful, the western oligarchs trying to squelch free speech may find themselves going the way of the Communist dictators of the late 1980s and early 1990s, driven from power and tried for human rights violations.

The Thierry Bretons and Keir Starmers of the world should meditate long and hard about what happened to fellow autocrats such as Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu, the tyrants who once ruled the “democratic” government of Romania.

People will only tolerate assaults on their freedom for so long.

Eventually they will use peaceful means, as they did in Eastern Europe, to drive the tyrants from power.

Robert J. Hutchinson is the author of numerous books of popular history, including Searching for Jesus: New Discoveries in the Quest for Jesus of Nazareth (Thomas Nelson), The Dawn of Christianity (Thomas Nelson), The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible (Regnery) and When in Rome: A Journal of Life in Vatican City (Doubleday). Email him at: roberthutchinson@substack.com