Social media censors are using ‘disinformation’ claims to silence free speech, 136 academics, historians and journalists have warned Rishi Sunak. The Telegraph has the story.
Social networks, Government officials, universities and NGOs are attempting to label legitimate opinions as fake news, according to the group of influential thinkers.
Figures from all sides of the political spectrum, including comedian John Cleese, author Jordan Peterson and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, raised concerns over the “censorship of ordinary people, journalists and dissidents” in a statement delivered to the Prime Minister.
Their intervention comes after the Telegraph revealed that a secretive Government unit was flagging criticism of lockdown as Covid “disinformation”.
The Counter Disinformation Unit, which operated out of Whitehall, worked with intelligence agencies to monitor the online posts of journalists and members of the public.
At least three people whose legitimate opinions about Covid were flagged by Government monitors have co-signed the statement sent to Mr. Sunak, which warned that labels such as ‘disinformation’ were being abused.
Their ‘Westminster Declaration’ said: “We are all deeply concerned about attempts to label protected speech as ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’ and other ill-defined terms.
“What’s more, time and time again, unpopular opinions and ideas have eventually become conventional wisdom. Free speech is our best defence against disinformation.
“By labelling certain political or scientific positions as ‘misinformation’ or ‘malinformation,’ our societies risk getting stuck in false paradigms that will rob humanity of hard-earned knowledge and obliterate the possibility of gaining new knowledge.”
The signatories expressed alarm over the widespread use of such terms, adding: “We do not want our children to grow up in a world where they live in fear of speaking their minds.”
Journalists Julia Hartley-Brewer and Peter Hitchens, and free speech activist Toby Young – all of whom signed the statement – were flagged for Covid disinformation by Government units.
Ms. Hartley-Brewer was referred over a conversation about vaccine passports, whilst Mr. Hitchens had shared an article suggesting the data used to justify lockdown were incomplete.
The 136 signatories also included the writer Richard Dawkins, the historian Robert Tombs and the American whistleblower Edward Snowden, who warned of “increasing international censorship that threatens to erode centuries-old democratic norms”. They said this included “visibility filtering, labelling and manipulation of search engine results” as well as “deplatforming and flagging” of controversial content.
“Social media censors have already silenced lawful opinions on topics of national and geopolitical importance,” they wrote.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Michael Shellenberger and the team at Public have featured the declaration, stating: “One hundred and thirty-eight artists, public intellectuals, and journalists demand governments dismantle the Censorship Industrial Complex.”
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Censorship has been rife in the decadent West for some 20 years or more.
With the Rona fascism and the Medical Nazism plandemic it was blindingly obvious and could no longer be ignored. Fake News is controlled by a handful of corps and they have their yearly jamborees to coordinate messaging (climate, Event 201, G20 et al as a template)
‘The West’ has nothing to do with freedom or free speech. It is a manipulated plutocracy.
Censored, deplatformed, de-certified, de-credentialed, de-banked…..It is a called a pattern (of totalitarianism).
‘The West’ is a ruin and a lie of what it constantly pronounces. Rona, Muslims, Queers, Trannies – we all know the protected species and cults you can’t criticise. As bad as ancient flocking Rome where you could be executed for not sacrificing a pigeon to Jupiter.
wink
He knows. That’s what his handlers want.
Who would have guessed? Surely not in the “Free” Western World. After all we are not the Soviet Union are we? Are we not all “Free”?————Well are we? ——–A government department of misinformation sounds very Soviet to me. It reminds of Frank Zappa and his “Central Scrutinizer”. But that was meant to be funny. There is nothing funny about government hijacking truth and enforcing that. Once you have government-imposed truth about climate, covid, gender, race, equality, diversity and the rest of the clutter then the freedom party is over.
What is this use of the phrase ‘legitimate opinion’ doing in an article about free speech? What is an illegitimate opinion? And what is the difference between the two? It’s where someone else has drawn the line of acceptability for you. The phrase is utterly contradictory to free speech.
Excellent point. It also uses the phrase “lawful opinion” to which similar considerations apply. Some speech is unlawful – libel and slander are correctly IMO unlawful. Sadly there are opinions that when expressed are probably unlawful in the UK and other countries, though IMO I don’t favour any restrictions on the expression of opinions.
We have more than sufficient law to take action against speech which needs to be dealt with.
How much longer will we be able to post what we like on here? They’ll be watching us for sure, just like they do on TCW and many other sites plus all the Stands in the Park, World Council for Health events etc. They probably class us as low-threat terrorists. However, I would hazard a guess that there are possibly millions who think like us but most of them are not aware of sites like this and quietly seethe alone. Isn’t that just so ridiculous to think that the security services possibly regard a large part of the UK population as a sort of Homeland Security threat!!! You gotta laugh.
“…the security services possibly regard a large part of the UK population as a sort of Homeland Security threat!!!”
That’s it exactly Aethelred. We are a threat.
Nut zero has retrospectively undermined the C1984 Scamdemic massively. The vast majority of my associates, no longer qualifying as friends, have seen through the climate crap and the sweet spot from our perspective has been motoring. Nobody wants to give up their cars. The questioning of the narrative is blending and people are looking backwards. Of course there are plenty still trying to pretend the last three plus years didn’t happen but there are also many now questioning the world we live in.
Much as I detest JSO they are actually a useful gang of idiots for our side. Nobody wants to see people being blocked from earning a living or getting to hospital and the scruffy non-working layabouts doing the blocking just enrage ordinary people. There will be a growing tide of disbelief as the blatant lies and falsehoods are ramped up. The Israeli debacle has certainly divided opinion. Of course divide and conquer is part of the Davos Deviants strategy but once people come over to the Conspiracy Realist side they never go back. Society is collapsing but there is no guarantee that the re-build will go the way the DD’s anticipate.
The world still has far too many intelligent stupids and our job remains to remove that stupid element, difficult I know but some of us have to at least try.
I heard a lovely phrase about crossing over to this side.
To get here one has to go through a one way permeable membrane. Once crossed, there is no going back.
This is what the parasite class are so frightened of.