Four months before the elections, representatives of Slovak NGOs and official institutions traveled to Brussels to warn the EU and NATO about the victory of Smer and its allies. In the same spirit, representatives of the then Czech government openly expressed their support for the progressives.
But what happened in Brussels at that time is not publicly known. A recently published report from Washington provides some clues. In it, the House Judiciary Committee discusses how the European Commission has been pressuring American social media owners over the past ten years to censor political content that Brussels considered undesirable.
Slovakia within the perimeter
The Slovak elections have a special place in this report. These were the first elections after the Digital Services Act came into force, giving the Commission extensive censorship powers. Whereas previously the Commission had enforced "voluntary" cooperation on platforms such as Google, YouTube, Facebook, X, and TikTok in censoring political speech, this measure gave it real power.
Under threat of draconian fines, it can force them to censor "populists," "Islamophobes," and critics of mass migration, gender experiments, and other progressive issues. In this regard, Fico's Smer party met most of the criteria of a party whose victory was undesirable in Brussels. The report from Washington covers only a small part of what they did there to avert Fico's rise. Small, but telling.
Two months before the elections, the Commission organized a meeting of representatives of internet platforms with the Slovak representative of the Media Services Council, who explained the seriousness of the situation to those present. He recalled that a month earlier, the council in Slovakia had called on Facebook, Google, and TikTok to eliminate "conspiracies" and "false narratives" because Slovak voters are easily influenced by them and then vote accordingly.
The American report pauses to reflect on how unkindly the Slovak representative speaks about the citizens of his country, but this is nothing unusual for progressives who live under siege from "conspiracy theorists and other misfits." It would be interesting to know whether the unidentified council official is still working or has moved to a non-governmental organization.
Although TikTok consistently censored content during the campaign, the commission did not consider these efforts sufficient. Four days before the election, it sent the platform a list of sixty-three accounts that it wanted to remove or hide. Some of them had more than 100,000 followers. What did the commission reproach them for?
The list itself sufficiently illustrates the attack on legitimate political expression in the election campaign. The culprits were accused of deepening distrust in institutions, and although they comply with community rules, they are aggressive, focus on entertainment, and spread misinformation about migrants and Covid. They support Putin, spread conspiracy theories, talk about Slovak politics in a misleading way, discredit government officials with conspiracies, and link vaccinations to the deaths of celebrities.
Given how the censors handled the terms "misinformation" and "conspiracy," these could have been entirely factual posts.
Two genders as offensive content
Let's add that if someone wrote on TikTok, for example, that there are only two genders or that gender ideology should not be taught in schools, they were automatically censored because, according to TikTok's "community guidelines," such speech is offensive.
Only those accounts that did not violate these community censorship rules but were simply politically objectionable were included on the European Commission's list.
Of course, there was no mention of the misleading and vulgar labeling of national conservatives by progressives. Of the 63 accounts requested, the platform ultimately deleted 19 before the election.
To whose benefit?
The report says nothing about how the list of unwanted accounts was actually created. However, it is quite clear from other parts of the report where the commission obtains such information. It funds dozens of censorship NGOs across Europe that present themselves as "fact checkers."
In reality, however, they do not verify facts, but rather compliance with Brussels ideology, and they examine their enemies through this lens.
The list was apparently created in Slovakia by NGOs associated with Progressive Slovakia, which hoped to gain a few points by involving Brussels. Given the relatively decent election results of the progressives in otherwise rather conservative Slovakia, it can be said that, despite their defeat, they succeeded [PS remained in opposition after the elections, editor's note].
The European Commission, in turn, tested how to prepare for similar challenges. It certainly learned from its mistakes. The Commission subsequently faced "populists," or the democratic will of the people, in Romania and Moldova with greater confidence and determination.
In the future, however, much will depend on what American platforms are willing to tolerate from Brussels. The Commission is now punishing Musk's company X (formerly Twitter) in an exemplary manner. In December, it fined the company €120 million for non-compliance with the Digital Services Act.
The Trump administration is not happy about this at all. It will also depend on European voters. Will they watch the dispute between Washington and Brussels with indifference, or will they decide that it actually concerns them a little?