A new tool in the fight for free speech
Today we launch the Westminster Declaration, a statement opposing the cynical use of “countering disinformation” as a tool for censorship, and the coordination between government, media, NGOs, academics, Big Tech, and philanthropy that is enabling it.
The statement includes many high-profile signatories including Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Nadine Strossen, Slavoj Žižek, Oliver Stone, Tim Robbins, John Cleese, Jonathan Haidt, John McWhorter, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Jordan Peterson, Yanis Varoufakis, and many more.
The signatories come from both the left and the right (however much those labels make any sense), and reflect the makeup of the meeting convened by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and myself in London in June this year (hence “Westminster”). It was that group that developed the declaration and then worked for many months to build the impressive list of signatories.
You can read the announcement by Public below.
In many ways the declaration is the crystalisation of the #TwitterFiles and other recent anti-censorship initiatives into a movement.
I don’t subscribe to all the views of everyone on the list. I say not to throw anyone under the bus and shield myself, but because that is precisely the point. The declaration is a call to renormalise free speech (and constructive differences of opinion) as both a left and right norm (however much we fell short in the past).
In recent times it has been the left who cast out that norm. In recent days it has been some on the right.
With the horrific conflict raging in Israel and Gaza, we pondered if now was the right time for the declaration, and quickly concluded that it was exactly the right time. The new War on Terror is further accelerating the authoritarianism unleashed by War on Terror 1.0, which flowed into “countering violent extremism”, and then into the repressing anti-elite dissent more broadly.
That authoritarianism is putting enormous strain on our societies.
The cure is more conversation, more dialogue, not less.
The first step towards that dialogue is to stop the censorship collusion between Government, media, NGOs, academia, Big Tech, and philanthropy, and dismantle the Censorship Industrial Complex.
