I have always had a problem with that phrase. Most of the time, it simply isn’t true. In Germany, you can say a great deal. You can criticize the government, argue about immigration, say you think the energy transition is misguided, debate gender politics, or openly declare that you want nothing to do with any of it. The Basic Law is still in force. And yet, it would be far too easy to leave it at that. Because there is a difference between saying, “I am allowed to say this,” and feeling, “I can actually say this.” That gap seems to have widened in recent years.
For decades, the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research has asked Germans a fairly simple question: Do you feel you can express your political views freely, or is it better to be cautious? In 1991, 78 percent said they felt free to speak their minds. Only 16 percent thought it was better to be careful. By 2025, just 46 percent still said they felt able to express their political views freely. That is obviously not proof that Germany has suddenly become a censorship state. Of course it hasn’t. But a drop from 78 to 46 percent is not something that can simply be shrugged off as statistical noise. Something has clearly changed. Perhaps less in our laws than in our heads. When people express a political opinion today, they often do not first ask themselves whether it is legal. They ask what might happen afterward. How will colleagues react? What will the employer make of it? What happens on X, Facebook, or LinkedIn? Will one sentence be pulled out of a much longer conversation? Will it resurface five years from now? The internet, as we know, forgets very little. People, on the other hand, sometimes forget context. That creates a peculiar kind of caution. People do not necessarily stay silent because someone has forbidden them to speak. They stay silent because it is easier. And perhaps that is what makes the current debate about free speech so interesting.
Many people still imagine censorship as a government official sitting next to a printing press with a red pencil. In authoritarian states, that is sometimes still more or less what it looks like. In free societies, social pressure works differently. It does not necessarily require bans. Sometimes the prospect of an online pile-on, trouble at work, or being publicly pushed into some political category is enough. That does not mean criticism itself is censorship. Anyone who speaks publicly has to accept disagreement — even harsh disagreement. That, too, is part of free speech. But at some point, a society should still ask whether disagreement has begun to turn into deterrence. And perhaps this creates a second problem, one that receives far less attention.
When more and more people feel they have to be careful about expressing their own views, they may also become more sensitive to what the other side says. People begin to see themselves as constrained while at the same time becoming quicker to interpret statements from political opponents as unacceptable or beyond the pale. That creates a strange situation. Both sides can become convinced that they are the ones who are no longer allowed to speak freely. And at the same time, both sides become increasingly outraged by what the other side says. A cycle begins. Less trust leads to greater caution. Greater caution deepens political tribalism. And the stronger those political camps become, the more quickly a statement is perceived not merely as a bad argument, but as an attack on one’s own group. At some point, the question is no longer whether someone is right or wrong. The question becomes who is still allowed to speak without someone immediately demanding consequences.
And this problem is not limited to Germany. A 2024 Knight Foundation study of American college students produced a striking result. Roughly two-thirds said they had self-censored in class on at least one commonly debated issue. About two-thirds also believed that this self-censorship undermined valuable conversations on campus. That is absurd. A university should be precisely the place where a young person is allowed to voice an unfinished thought. Maybe it is wrong. Maybe it is naïve. Maybe it would not survive five minutes of serious debate. So what? That is exactly what a university is for. What I find even more remarkable, however, is how accustomed we have become to sorting the issue along political lines. For a while, the story seemed simple: the left restricts speech, the right defends it. Cancel culture, universities, speech codes — the familiar debates.It is no longer that simple.
Right-wing governments can also put pressure on the media, politicize institutions, or try to intimidate voices they find inconvenient. Anyone who discovers the importance of free speech only when their own side is affected is not really defending free speech.
Internationally, the broader trend is troubling as well. In its 2026 Democracy Report, the V-Dem Institute concluded that freedom of expression has come under greater pressure worldwide than any other democratic indicator it tracks. In 44 countries, freedom of expression deteriorated significantly over the previous decade, while only eleven countries recorded improvements. One of the most common developments identified by the researchers was increasing government pressure on the media. It would be absurd, however, to conclude from this that countries such as Germany, Denmark, or Canada have somehow become comparable to authoritarian states. They have not. The West has not become unfree. But perhaps it has become a little less relaxed about disagreement.
To me, that is the more interesting finding. We tolerate dissent less comfortably than we once did. Political camps increasingly judge the moral character of the person making an argument instead of engaging with the argument itself. A wrong opinion quickly becomes an unacceptable position, and an unacceptable position quickly becomes proof that the person holding it is somehow unacceptable as well. That does not improve debate. It makes people more cautious. And it leads to a paradox: a society can remain highly free in legal terms while more and more of its citizens experience the public sphere as increasingly narrow. Perhaps we should therefore stop ending every discussion about free speech with the sentence: “But you’re allowed to say that.” Of course you are. The more interesting question is this: Why do fewer and fewer people believe they should?
Geopolitically, this is not a side issue either. Societies that no longer trust themselves to argue openly — and, at times, fiercely — become more vulnerable to outside influence. That is precisely where modern information operations find their opening. They deepen existing social divisions, erode trust, and push political camps further apart. NATO now explicitly treats such influence operations as a security concern because social resilience is directly connected to a country’s political and strategic ability to act.
For the West, freedom of speech is therefore far more than a liberal principle we take for granted. It is also a geopolitical asset. Because when certain arguments go unspoken for fear of the reaction they might provoke, the risk increases that political decisions will be made on a narrower and therefore less rational foundation.