U.S. Vice President JD Vance has criticized Germany’s free speech laws during an appearance at a conservative gathering outside Washington

U.S. Vice President JD Vance has criticized Germany’s free speech laws during an appearance at a conservative gathering outside Washington.

Concern is growing over the far-right Alternative for Germany party’s rise ahead of the German election. Its U.S. supporters include Elon Musk and JD Vance.

Then, in a speech in Munich last week, 10 days before Sunday’s vote, Vice President J.D. Vance attacked the so-called “firewall” Germany’s mainstream parties have maintained against the country’s far-right party,

From left, Activists wearing masks of AfD top candidate for Chancellor Alice Weidel, Elon Musk, US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and US Vice President JD Vance, protest

Robby Soave delivers radar on what he calls Germany's censorship regime that came to spotlight after Vice President JD Vance's speech in Munich. #Censorship #JDVance

German voters go to the polls Sunday for a rare snap election in which the stakes couldn’t be higher. Germany is the biggest economy in Europe and has taken in more Ukrainian war refugees than any of its neighbors,

Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech on February 14 at the Munich Security Conference—in which he criticized European nations for what he described as a “retreat” from free speech principles and an embrace of mass migration—drew disagreement and public rebukes from some foreign leaders,

Campaigning in Pennsylvania last September, JD Vance seemed to strike at an unlikely political foe: the besieged president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, who’d spent most of the previous two years being hailed by Western leaders as a hero.

The AfD’s appeal to Vance, Musk and others in President Trump’s orbit is its shared distrust of E.U. regulations, limits on speech as they apply to the far right, and, perhaps above all, the AfD’s signature opposition to immigration.

Vice President J.D. Vance called Germany’s free speech restrictions “Orwellian” and said Monday that other European countries should join the U.S. in rejecting such laws.

JD Vance, the U.S. vice-president, made a controversial speech at the Munich Security Conference that sent shockwaves through Europe and beyond. His address, although focused on the state of European and U.