There is not a single country on this planet that has no legal consequences for free speech and it would be ridiculous to claim that should be the standard. For one, and I feel kind of pedantic for pointing this out, but that kind of policy would preclude any obviously consequential statements made in court proceedings, for example pleading “guilty”, lying under oath, and confessing. Less pedantically, even in a version of the US where their so-far mythical conception of free speech was actually achieved, legal consequences are assigned to direct, material threats and attempts to cause panic. You’d be pretty hard pressed to claim these exceptions are unreasonable, and I’d go further to say that malicious attempts to incite hatred against a group should be included in unprotected forms of speech. It already is in many countries.

Maybe The Economist thinks these kinds of exceptions are ineffective but, personally, I enjoy living in a nation where people can’t legally spew hatred at my face because the bible told them my life is wrong. I feel safer knowing that people throwing Nazi salutes during national holidays are prosecuted. I think it’s quite interesting that the Economist feels the need to point the finger at Europe and call for “noisy disagreement” where “people should tolerate one another’s views” when the United States has pursued this exact policy and it has lead to little more than them being one of the leading contemporary examples of how an advanced democracy and economy falls into fascism and mass disenfranchisement.

This is an oddly condescending comment for someone who doesn’t really understand that him attempting to get “back in” can also be described as attempting to “re-enter”

You assume that just because you and your country is so ignorant to the rest of the world that we too are ignorant to you.

We experience your country and its citizens everywhere, all the time, constantly. You come to our cities without even learning how to pronounce their name. You get confused when we don’t know your local terms for food, drinks, podunk towns, etc. Your discourse consumes the internet, colonialistically driving all analysis through a purely “American” lens. At this point you’re so used to this digital status quo that I am regularly assumed to be American by default, even on local discussion boards. My news feed is filled with articles about your despotic leader and increasingly radicalized population, as they speculate whether this spur of the moment decision will crash our economy or totally collapse the world order. And then I’m told by you (not literally you) that “this is not who we are”, despite the fact that a majority of your voting population asked for this. Asked for persecution of your most vulnerable populations and cheered on as it was enacted.

I understand that the negative associations do not apply to all Americans. For one, obviously near half of the voting population did not vote for your current largest liability and are also horrified by his actions. My point is that you’re failing to recognise how omnipresent your culture and politics have been on the global stage for decades, along with your literal presence in our conversations. A lot of these “stereotypes” are formed from personal experience.

Literal fascist rhetoric