German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s recent attack on online anonymity exposed a widening disagreement between Europe and the United States over what freedom in the West should mean. 

Earlier this month, a young German researcher asked Merz what a pending digital ID law would mean for whistleblowers and investigative journalists. The Chancellor responded: “Please, nobody come to me with free speech.” 

He added that the debate over this law had nothing to do with free speech, and described the concept as a libertarian US export. 

Understandably, the Chancellor’s rejection of free speech incited a wave of backlash both domestically and abroad. Placing it on the other side of the Atlantic not only pushes the already-tense partners further apart, but suggests a historically revisionist idea that free speech is somehow alien to Germany. 

Certainly, the First Amendment creates strong protections around speech. But the intellectual origins of free expression do not begin at Ellis Island.