Recently United States Vice President JD Vance gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference.1 Depending on whether you were following American or European media reports, Vance’s remarks were either hailed as championing the shared values of freedom of expression and internal threats facing European democracies2 or condemned as a tirade against Europe’s supposed deterioration of democracy for refusing the rise of dissenting far-right extremist views to see the light of day, while ignoring foreign threats against the continent.3 The stark contrast in response between the sides of the Atlantic Ocean shows how both sides have very differing positions on what a free expression in a democracy looks like.
Transcript of JD Vance's Remarks at the Munich Security Conference
Here’s a full transcript of the speech that JD Vance gave at the Munich Security Conference this afternoon.
One of the things that I wanted to talk about today is, of course, our shared values. And, you know, it’s great to be back in Germany. As you heard earlier, I was here last year as United States senator. I saw Foreign Secretary David Lammy, and joked that both of us last year had different jobs than we have now. But now it’s time for all of our countries, for all of us who have been fortunate enough to be given political power by our respective peoples, to use it wisely to improve their lives.
And I want to say that I was fortunate in my time here to spend some time outside the walls of this conference over the last 24 hours, and I’ve been so impressed by the hospitality of the people even, of course, as they’re reeling from yesterday’s horrendous attack. The first time I was ever in Munich was with my wife, actually, who’s here with me today, on a personal trip. And I’ve always loved the city of Munich, and I’ve always loved its people.
I just want to say that we’re very moved, and our thoughts and prayers are with Munich and everybody affected by the evil inflicted on this beautiful community. We’re thinking about you, we’re praying for you, and we will certainly be rooting for you in the days and weeks to come.
We gather at this conference, of course, to discuss security. And normally we mean threats to our external security. I see many, many great military leaders gathered here today. But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine – and we also believe that it’s important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defence – the threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values: values shared with the United States of America.
I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.
Now, these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years we’ve been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defence of democracy. But when we see European courts cancelling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. And I say ourselves, because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team.
We must do more than talk about democratic values. We must live them. Now, within living memory of many of you in this room, the cold war positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. And consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that cancelled elections. Were they the good guys? Certainly not.
And thank God they lost the cold war. They lost because they neither valued nor respected all of the extraordinary blessings of liberty, the freedom to surprise, to make mistakes, invent, to build. As it turns out, you can’t mandate innovation or creativity, just as you can’t force people what to think, what to feel, or what to believe. And we believe those things are certainly connected. And unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the cold war’s winners.
I look to Brussels, where EU Commission commissars warned citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest: the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be ‘hateful content’. Or to this very country where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of ‘combating misogyny’ on the internet.
I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago, the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Quran burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder. And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden’s laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant – and I’m quoting – a ‘free pass’ to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.
And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs. A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Conner, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an Army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 metres from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own. After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of his unborn son.
He and his former girlfriend had aborted years before. Now the officers were not moved. Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new Buffer Zones Law, which criminalises silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 metres of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.
Now, I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off, crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person. But no. This last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe.
Free speech, I fear, is in retreat and in the interests of comedy, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation. Misinformation, like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leaked from a laboratory in China. Our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth.
So I come here today not just with an observation, but with an offer. And just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite, and I hope that we can work together on that.
In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town. And under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer them in the public square. Now, we’re at the point, of course, that the situation has gotten so bad that this December, Romania straight up cancelled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbours. Now, as I understand it, the argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections. But I’d ask my European friends to have some perspective. You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage, even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.
Now, the good news is that I happen to think your democracies are substantially less brittle than many people apparently fear.
And I really do believe that allowing our citizens to speak their mind will make them stronger still. Which, of course, brings us back to Munich, where the organisers of this very conference have banned lawmakers representing populist parties on both the left and the right from participating in these conversations. Now, again, we don’t have to agree with everything or anything that people say. But when political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them.
Now, to many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election.
Now, this is a security conference, and I’m sure you all came here prepared to talk about how exactly you intend to increase defence spending over the next few years in line with some new target. And that’s great, because as President Trump has made abundantly clear, he believes that our European friends must play a bigger role in the future of this continent. We don’t think you hear this term ‘burden sharing’, but we think it’s an important part of being in a shared alliance together that the Europeans step up while America focuses on areas of the world that are in great danger.
But let me also ask you, how will you even begin to think through the kinds of budgeting questions if we don’t know what it is that we are defending in the first place? I’ve heard a lot already in my conversations, and I’ve had many, many great conversations with many people gathered here in this room. I’ve heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from, and of course that’s important. But what has seemed a little bit less clear to me, and certainly I think to many of the citizens of Europe, is what exactly it is that you’re defending yourselves for. What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important?
I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people. Europe faces many challenges. But the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making. If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump. You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years.
Have we learned nothing that thin mandates produce unstable results? But there is so much of value that can be accomplished with the kind of democratic mandate that I think will come from being more responsive to the voices of your citizens. If you’re going to enjoy competitive economies, if you’re going to enjoy affordable energy and secure supply chains, then you need mandates to govern because you have to make difficult choices to enjoy all of these things.
And of course, we know that very well. In America, you cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail. Whether that’s the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like, who gets to be a part of our shared society.
And of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration. Today, almost one in five people living in this country moved here from abroad. That is, of course, an all time high. It’s a similar number, by the way, in the United States, also an all time high. The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone. And of course, it’s gotten much higher since.
And we know the situation. It didn’t materialise in a vacuum. It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent, and others across the world, over the span of a decade. We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions yesterday in this very city. And of course, I can’t bring it up again without thinking about the terrible victims who had a beautiful winter day in Munich ruined. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and will remain with them. But why did this happen in the first place?
It’s a terrible story, but it’s one we’ve heard way too many times in Europe, and unfortunately too many times in the United States as well. An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-20s, already known to police, rammed a car into a crowd and shatters a community. Unity. How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilisation in a new direction? No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants. But you know what they did vote for? In England, they voted for Brexit. And agree or disagree, they voted for it. And more and more all over Europe, they are voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration. Now, I happen to agree with a lot of these concerns, but you don’t have to agree with me.
I just think that people care about their homes. They care about their dreams. They care about their safety and their capacity to provide for themselves and their children.
And they’re smart. I think this is one of the most important things I’ve learned in my brief time in politics. Contrary to what you might hear, a couple of mountains over in Davos, the citizens of all of our nations don’t generally think of themselves as educated animals or as interchangeable cogs of a global economy. And it’s hardly surprising that they don’t want to be shuffled about or relentlessly ignored by their leaders. And it is the business of democracy to adjudicate these big questions at the ballot box.
I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections or shutting people out of the political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy. Speaking up and expressing opinions isn’t election interference. Even when people express views outside your own country, and even when those people are very influential – and trust me, I say this with all humor – if American democracy can survive ten years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.
But what no democracy, American, German or European will survive, is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief, are invalid or unworthy of even being considered.
Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There is no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t. Europeans, the people have a voice. European leaders have a choice. And my strong belief is that we do not need to be afraid of the future.
Embrace what your people tell you, even when it’s surprising, even when you don’t agree. And if you do so, you can face the future with certainty and with confidence, knowing that the nation stands behind each of you. And that, to me, is the great magic of democracy. It’s not in these stone buildings or beautiful hotels. It’s not even in the great institutions that we built together as a shared society.
To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice. And if we refuse to listen to that voice, even our most successful fights will secure very little. As Pope John Paul II, in my view, one of the most extraordinary champions of democracy on this continent or any other, once said, ‘do not be afraid’. We shouldn’t be afraid of our people even when they express views that disagree with their leadership. Thank you all. Good luck to all of you. God bless you.
Views on Freedom of Expression
On the one hand we have the United States of America, where freedom of expression is one of the core tenets underpinning the society. Freedom of expression is enshrined in the Constitution in the First Amendment. The United States has a conviction that only by freely expressing differing ideas society can prosper. The marketplace of ideas holds that the truth will emerge from the competition of ideas in free, transparent public discourse and concludes that ideas and ideologies will be culled according to their superiority or inferiority and widespread acceptance among the population, similar to how a free market economy operates. This also means allowing opposing viewpoints to enter the public discourse, or as Evelyn Beatrice Hall famously wrote in her book The Friends of Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.
On the other hand we have the various democratic countries in Europe. While the exact laws and regulations vary between European countries, they all share a similar essential belief: The freedom of expression of one citizen ends once it starts to threaten the freedoms of another citizen. This idea flows forth out of the belief that allowing extreme beliefs and political views could have devastating consequences, as was evidenced during the atrocities committed under the Nazi regime during World War II. This sentiment was recently echoed by German Chancellor Scholz in response to Vance’s remarks, stating “Never again fascism, never again racism, never again aggressive war. That is why an overwhelming majority in our country opposes anyone who glorifies or justifies criminal National Socialism”, referring to the controversial right-wing political party Alternative for Germany (AfD).4
From an American perspective, Vance’s remarks are seen as a warning to Europe: censoring opposing ideas is dangerous and antithetical to the democratic values that underpin both societies. If the ideas these parties hold are as dangerous as they are purported to be, then we trust that through open dialogue these ideas will be exposed as such. Condemning these views by labeling their proponents as fascists or extremists will most likely have the opposite effect, especially when these parties are simply disregarded without properly addressing any real societal problems these parties might address. In the case of the AfD, one such issue would be excessive, unvetted immigration and the resulting fallout, as was evidenced by the attack of an 24-year-old asylum seeker who drove a car into a trade union demonstration in Munich mere days before the Security Conference took place, injuring 30 and killing at least two.5 AfD wasted no time claiming the attack resulted from the failing immigration policies of the current administration. It would be in the best interest of the other parties to properly address German voter’s concerns before the looming elections next Sunday. Merely labeling the AfD as fascists and extremists, while disregarding valid concerns is not going to cut it.
Dangers of Availability Cascade
Over the last decade I have noticed a significant increase in the frequency and seeming acceptably of labeling any dissenting political view as fascist. This became most apparent to me during the 2016 United States presidential elections, where any Republican viewpoint expressed on social media would be quickly find many accusing retorts, claiming the poster to be fascist. I always found these accusations ironic, considering the same elections had accusations of wide-spread Russian interference, which historically were not the biggest fans of fascism.
The view that any expression of a right-wing viewpoint is immediately fascist is something I attribute to the effect of availability cascade. Availability cascade describes a form of availability bias, where a collective idea is reinforced by repeating it continuously. This is also the effect that explains the formation of echo chambers.
Availablity Cascade
An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing cycle that explains the development of certain kinds of collective beliefs. A novel idea or insight, usually one that seems to explain a complex process in a simple or straightforward manner, gains rapid currency in the popular discourse by its very simplicity and by its apparent insightfulness. Its rising popularity triggers a chain reaction within the social network: individuals adopt the new insight because other people within the network have adopted it, and on its face it seems plausible. The reason for this increased use and popularity of the new idea involves both the availability of the previously obscure term or idea, and the need of individuals using the term or idea to appear to be current with the stated beliefs and ideas of others, regardless of whether they in fact fully believe in the idea that they are expressing. Their need for social acceptance, and the apparent sophistication of the new insight, overwhelm their critical thinking.
The effects of a decade of the repeating the belief that any right-wing expression is inherently fascist, especially in mainstream media, was recently on full display during CBS Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio responds to the claim made by the host about free speech in Germany:
“he [VP Vance] was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide”.6
If you haven’t been paying attention to American mainstream media for the past decade, these words might surprise you, perhaps even disturb you. Free speech was not the driving force behind the atrocities of the Holocaust. In fact, it is quite the opposite, as the nation-wide burning of “disreputable” and non-German books started as early as May 1933,7 over 6 years before the first invasion by Nazi-Germany took place.
Looking at these remarks on national television, as well as the backlash from European leaders to the vice president’s words, makes me wonder: have we forgotten what fascism truly entails?
What is Fascism?
According to Robert Paxton, Mellon Professor Emeritus of Social Science in the Department of History at Columbia University and historian specializing in fascism and Europe during the World War II era, fascism is defined as:
[Fascism is] a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
Which can be summarized as:
- Desire to end democracy
- Purges and ethnic cleansing
- Aggressive foreign expansion
- Collaboration with established elites
- Compensatory cultures of unity, energy and purity
- Obsession with victimhood and community decline
- Mass-based party of committed nationalist militants
- Redemptive violence without legal or moral restraints
Looking at the these definition and values, I’d argue that the overwhelming majority of both American and European citizens does not support nor hold any of these values. Likewise, I’d argue that the overwhelming majority that calls their fellow citizens fascists does not actually believe that they support these described values either. This is ultimately the largest problem with calling dissenting opinions fascist: you risk enabling actual fascists. If want to stop fascism, stop calling everyone you disagree with a fascist. Then, through the free exchange of ideas, let the actual fascist expose themselves to the public by allowing them to freely express their despicable beliefs, and watch as their public support plummets. After all, never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.8
That is the American view on free speech, and thank God for that.
Footnotes
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Vice President JD Vance Delivers Remarks at the Munich Security Conference, Munich, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCOsgfINdKg ↩
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Vance Tells Europeans to Stop Shunning Parties Deemed Extreme, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/world/europe/vance-europe-immigration-ukraine.html ↩
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Wut statt Politik, der Spiegel, https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/muenchner-sicherheitskonferenz-j-d-vance-nutzt-rede-fuer-wut-statt-politik-a-c130deb8-cf64-45e1-9358-0dcadfbb0e19 ↩
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Scholz rebukes Vance, defends Europe’s stance on hate speech and far right, Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germanys-scholz-rebukes-vance-defends-europes-stance-hate-speech-far-right-2025-02-15/ ↩
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Driver who hit union rally in ‘suspected attack’ in Munich is Afghan asylum seeker, police say, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/13/vehicle-driven-into-group-of-people-in-munich ↩
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Marco Rubio, Rep. Jamie Raskin and more | “Face the Nation” Full Broadcast - Feb. 16, 2025, fragment from 13:55, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXyPyZ2Udg8 ↩
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The burning of books in Nazi-Germany, 1933, Museum of Tolerance, https://www.museumoftolerance.com/education/archives-and-reference-library/online-resources/simon-wiesenthal-center-annual-volume-2/annual-2-chapter-5.html ↩
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1852 January, Lives of the illustrious: (The Biographical Magazine), “Marshal Soult, Duke of Dalmatia”, Page 28, J. Passmore Edwards, London. http://books.google.com/books?id=Kh6J4i8Ex8IC&q=%22false+movement%22#v=snippet& ↩