In this episode of Deep Dives, Dr Norman Lewis, visiting fellow and author of the new report “A Shield Against Democracy”, joins John O’Brien to expose how the European Union’s latest project to “defend democracy” is, in fact, undermining it.
Lewis argues that the EU’s so-called Democracy Shield—presented as a tool against disinformation and foreign interference—is really designed to insulate Brussels from its own citizens. With unelected “fact-checkers” and “trusted flaggers” funded by the Commission itself, the system gives bureaucrats and NGOs the power to decide what Europeans are allowed to say, read and even think.
He warns that initiatives such as “pre-bunking” and classroom “civic education” are transforming free debate into managed consent, and free speech into approved speech. Recent elections in Romania and Moldova, Lewis explains, reveal how this censorship apparatus can be weaponised against political outsiders—an ominous precedent for Hungary and beyond.
Read Norman Lewis’s full report via MCC Brussels.
https://brussels.mcc.hu/publication/a-shield-against-democracy-how-the-democracy-shield-protects-the-eu-from-the-electorate
🎙 Hosted by John O’Brien, Head of Communications, MCC Brussels.
0:00 – Intro: Disbelief, Not Disinformation
03:28 – Orwellian Language: Truth, Trust, Pluralism
06:55 – Flaggers vs Fact-Checkers
12:14 – Pre-bunking: AI to Police Thought
17:48 – Who Builds the Shield?
25:31 – How to Fight Back: Free Speech
Credit to : MCC Brussels