Collapsing Western Civilization?

One Authoritarian Step at a Time

This is another installment in observations from WEF-Davos 2025.

At Davos, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez gave a special address regarding the EU and the future of social media and the digital economy. Mr. Sánchez is a proud socialist/progressive and President of the Socialist International. As only a good socialist could, Mr. Sánchez takes a few grains of truth and twists them to support a shift towards more government digital control over citizens under the guise of “protecting democracy”.

Mr. Sánchez’s special address first points out that social media has trade-offs – yes, there’s increased communication between individuals from across the world with few constraints from government; social movements were able to mobilize support for various social causes like gender equality and climate change. However, with freedom of speech and communication there comes the downside of joining an echo chamber, deplatforming (cyberbullying), and being confronted with speech we don’t like. As long as people were supporting progressive causes, then Mr. Sánchez seems to have supported the proliferation of social media use. Not so any longer.

Based on his comments, it seems that Mr. Sánchez supported the shadow censorship of social media platforms because it kept alternative viewpoints challenging progressive ideas and policies from the marketplace of ideas that social media platforms were supposed to be cultivating. But now that this shadow censorship has been exposed and some platforms are opening up to free speech once again, Mr. Sánchez wants to see a government crackdown on social media activity.

Having a few tech billionaires control social media platforms seems to have been acceptable as long as they toed the progressive line. But not so now. His biggest beef is that in his view social media platforms puts power into the hands of a few tech billionaires who can’t be trusted because they’re undermining liberal democracy:

“Now we know that far from bringing humanity together and “empowering the people”, these platforms have resulted in a concentration of power and wealth in the hands of just a few. All of this at the cost of our social cohesion, our mental health, and our democracies.”

Here, again, he offers a few nuggets of truth: public debate is oversimplified on social media and is a tool of reaction rather than reflection; misinformation circulates more easily on social media than it used to in traditional newspapers when they used to verify sources; the proliferation of bots on social media can sway public opinion by adding “likes” to controversial comments that can give a sense of normalization for someone who doesn’t realize that the results are being skewed by bots.

Ok. Some of these points are of legitimate concern. These are the nuggets of truth. It’s at this point that the special address becomes an anti-capitalist pro-statist authoritarian manifesto. I suppose that’s not surprising given that it’s coming from the president of the Socialist International.

First, Mr. Sánchez deliberately takes out of context a 2009 quote from libertarian Pay Pal founder Peter Thiel. In complaining about the growth of social democracy and the welfare state Peter Thiel stated that he

“no longer believes freedom and democracy are compatible….The great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms — from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called “social democracy.” The critical question then becomes one of means, of how to escape not via politics but beyond it.”

This is where Mr. Thiel suggests three ways to “escape” beyond politics to establish a libertarian society: cyberspace, outerspace, and living on the sea.

But Mr. Sánchez deliberately misunderstands what Mr. Thiel was talking about and declared that Mr. Thiel and by proxy all tech billionaires

“are no longer satisfied with holding nearly total economic power: now they also want political power in a way that is undermining our democratic institutions.” He then segues to this: “What truly limits democracy is the power of the elites. It is the power of those who think that because they are rich, they are above the law and can do anything. That is why, my friends, that is why the tech-billionaires want to overthrow democracy.”

See that? He went from criticizing social media platforms to the accusation that all tech-billionaires want to overthrow democracy based on a deliberate “misunderstanding” of a statement made 16 years ago. That’s quite the leap.

But what is his solution? He has a three-point plan
1. End social media anonymity. He would “force all these platforms to link every user account to an European Digital Identity Wallet…[so that] in the case of a crime, public authorities would be able to connect those nicknames to real people and hold them responsible.” You see, it’s for the safety and protection of children and society:

“One social media user, one real ID. This is the only way to really ensure that minors do not access inappropriate content, that people who commit crimes are banned or prosecuted from social networks, and that the millions of fake profiles that exist and influence the public conversation are removed.”

2. All social media algorithms must be made public. They will then be subject to “Safeguards like content moderation and fact-checking are both legal and moral requirements that must be followed by all.” A government entity called the European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency will be the overseer to “inspect the functioning of social networks without any limitations.” See, it’s for our “safety”.

3. Hold social media owners personally responsible and liable for any infractions on their platforms: “Social media tycoons should be held responsible if their algorithms poison our society.” Funny how politicians never seem to be held personally responsible for their poor policy decisions except to get voted out.

Normally, I wouldn’t dwell so much on what the Prime Minister of Spain has to say, except today the Financial Times ran an article supporting this creeping totalitarianism.

According to Martin Sandbu, the Financial Times’s European economics commentator, in an article titled, "The EU needs the courage to imagine a different digital economy", the European Union (EU) has an opportunity to differentiate itself from the United States (US) in the area of the digital economy.

Mr. Sandbu agrees wholeheartedly with the Spanish Prime Minister’s three-point plan and supports the call for the EU to go full China-totalitarian with respect to the internet and social media.

Mr. Sandbu goes a step further and holds up Brazil as an example to emulate in pushing back against American social media companies like X:

"But, as recently demonstrated by Brazil (with X) and indeed the US itself (with TikTok), governments can actually shut down social media without the sky falling in. The EU may want to prepare itself for life without some of the most problematic services, just in case." [emphasis added]

Let this all sink in. The Prime Minister of Spain and a Financial Times author are advocating for EU governments to essentially collect and perhaps even monitor every European user on the internet. You know, to make sure people aren't breaking the law and to protect the children. Oh, and fine or jail the heads of social media companies when breaches are found.

This sounds a lot like China's social credit system. Now add to this the UK government's demand of Apple to grant the UK government access to all Apple users' cloud data everywhere in the world, and you have a significant undermining of core tenets of western civilization.

China must be laughing at the slow western slide towards social credit – it won’t need to be imposed by China as part of its 100 Year Marathon because so many western leaders are voluntarily moving in that direction. If people think the European Digital Identity Wallet won’t be abused by governments, then they haven’t been paying attention to Europe’s history.