The Bleating of the Watchdogs

The Jacques Baud affair has an ad personam dimension—and another that reaches far beyond the man himself. The two are inseparable: without the wider purpose, the “lesson” meted out to an individual would never be amplified into a collective warning. It would land like a damp cartridge. Splat.

To strike at a retired Swiss colonel—author of numerous books and a prolific producer of geo-strategic analysis, particularly active in interpreting the war in Ukraine—is to strike at anyone who speaks outside, and in spite of, the schoolbook version of events. It is also to threaten the spread of ideas, reflections and information that no longer need to queue up for an audience with the traditional media. That may be a technological revolution, but it is hardly new in history.

The EU’s ad personam sanctions are designed to discredit anything that slips free of the official narrative’s yoke. They are extrajudicial political measures—steps individual states would rarely dare to take in their own name. The EU is delegated the role of banishing critical, independent thought to the realm of illegality, then pursuing it arbitrarily with measures of reckless force. No one is jailed—but lives are ruined all the same.

That this is possible today owes everything to the servility of Europe’s mainstream press (Swiss outlets included), which repeats the official line verbatim—and at times even helps draft it, or steer it. This is true of the Russia–Ukraine war (which is not only Russia–Ukraine), but not only of that war. The watchdogs are toothless now. They no longer bark: they bleat.

Brussels’ decision blooms in a climate of obsessive “fake news hunting” that has hardened over the past few years. The protagonists of this hunt are the mainstream/official media—public and private—who have appropriated it and appointed themselves its interpreters. What a mistake.

Why do they do it?

Because in this “mission” they think they have found a way to recover an authority the internet has taken from them. Yet nothing was stolen. What the web revealed—loudly—was a counterfeit authority: one they never truly possessed, merely enjoyed by default when no viable alternatives existed.

A lack of critical spirit, independence and freedom of thought has driven many minds to publish their reflections online. To suffocate the echo of those ideas, the monster of “fake news” was invented. Fake news has existed since human beings first began to speak. To fight it, it would be enough to give room to every opinion—and to show curiosity and intellectual courage. Journalism is a simple profession.

In this regard, it is telling that among the voices raised in Baud’s defence are those appealing to his seriousness and to personal acquaintance. Fine—but it says a great deal about certain “pleas.”

If he were unknown to those defending him, if he were not Swiss, if he were not an ex-colonel, if his ideas were less agreeable—would the same voices rise?

A dangerous misunderstanding is circulating about freedom of expression—one that mirrors, tragically, the prevailing European Union definition: freedom applies to those who think like us.

No. Freedom applies always, and to everyone—even, I would say especially, to those who talk nonsense, of whatever kind, whatever its provenance, and whatever its aims.

A society is truly free only if it has the strength to let the best ideas prevail—by proving their solidity in open contest with all the others.

The moloch of a perfectly correct society, supposedly improved at last by education imposed from above (by whom?), is an invention of dictatorships.

We are free when we are conscious that we are only human.

(gianluca grossi)