by Dr.Harald Wiesendanger– Klartext
What the mainstream media is hiding
The human right to freedom of expression is in extreme danger. The “Westminster Declaration” urgently warns against this, signed by 137 personalities from science, culture, and the media.
The right to freely express one’s own opinion and disseminate it unhindered is a cornerstone of democracy. But he falters. Governments, authorities, secret services, international organizations such as the UN, WHO, and the World Economic Forum, social media companies from Meta to Google, universities, and non-state actors such as billion-dollar foundations are no longer just working in totalitarian countries like Red China to monitor citizens and to deprive them of their voice, to sweep dissenting viewpoints under the carpet, to prevent discourse, to defame and silence critics – under the pretext of protecting ourselves from “fake news.”
Their primary sources include those who call the loudest for censorship. They prove that they are not interested in the truth but instead in a monopoly on being right by suppressing information even if it is true but could be “harmful” – harmful to their interests. They used the corona “pandemic” to accelerate this disastrous development. The “Westminster Declaration,” signed by 137 well-known personalities: journalists, artists, writers, scientists, and political activists, urgently warns against its excesses. Your public appeal is so apt, groundbreaking, and significant that KLARTEXT reproduces it in its entirety – line by line, it speaks for itself. The English original can be found here. How far must the Western world have strayed from its ideals for such declarations even to be necessary? What does it say about the “new normal” that almost all mainstream media sometimes ignore this text in silence and sometimes denigrate its authors as “whispering conspiracy theorists”?
At least there are still glimmers of hope here and there. On September 8, 2023, the Fifth Circuit of Appeals, an appeals court for three southern US states, gave the “swearers” an unexpected victory. It ruled: The White House, the FBI, and the CDC violated the Constitution by encouraging and coercing social media companies to suppress free speech. “The officials launched a broad pressure campaign to force social media companies to suppress speakers, viewpoints, and content disapproved of by the government,” a three-judge panel ruled in the Missouri case against US President Joe Biden. “The harm caused by this behavior extends far beyond the plaintiffs and affects every social media user.” In its opinion, the court traces efforts by federal agencies to silence critics of the White House’s Covid policies and deny Americans the right to hear other viewpoints – efforts they describe as “disproportionate pressure” that appears to have “had the intended result of suppressing millions of protected free expressions of American citizens.” The Fifth Circuit has issued a preliminary injunction barring the Biden administration from taking any action “to compel or substantially encourage social media companies to remove posted social media content containing protected free speech, “delete, suppress or restrict, including by changing their algorithms.”
In such a dramatic constitutional crisis, where is a similarly self-confident third power in Europe – in Karlsruhe and The Hague, for example?
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The Westminster Declaration
“We write as journalists, artists, authors, activists, technologists, and academics to warn against increasing international censorship that threatens to undermine centuries-old norms of democracy.
We come from the left, the right, and the center. We are united by our commitment to universal human rights and freedom of expression, and we are all deeply concerned about attempts to devalue free expression as “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and other ill-defined terms.
Misuse of these terms has led to censorship of ordinary people, journalists, and dissidents in countries around the world.
Such interference with freedom of expression suppresses legitimate discussions on matters of urgent public interest and undermines the fundamental principles of representative democracy.
Across the world, state actors, social media companies, academia, and non-governmental organizations are increasingly working to monitor citizens and deprive them of their voice. These large-scale coordinated efforts are sometimes referred to as the “censorship industrial complex.”
There are also clear and robust international protections for freedom of expression. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was written in 1948 in response to the atrocities of World War II. Article 19 of the UDHR states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; This right includes freedom to express opinions without hindrance and to seek, receive and disseminate information and ideas through any media and without regard to frontiers.” It may be necessary for governments to regulate some aspects of social media, such as, for example, through age restrictions. But these regulations should never violate the human right to freedom of expression.
As Article 19 clarifies, the right to freedom of expression is linked to the right to information. In a democracy, no one has a monopoly on what is considered true. Rather, the truth must be discovered through dialogue and discussion – and we cannot discover the truth without allowing for the possibility of error.
Censorship in the name of “protecting democracy” turns the system of representation, which should be a bottom-up system, on its head – and turns it into a system of top-down ideological control. This censorship is ultimately counterproductive: it sows distrust, promotes radicalization and delegitimizes the democratic process.
Throughout human history, attacks on freedom of expression have always been a precursor to attacks on all other freedoms. Regimes that have undermined freedom of expression have always inevitably weakened and damaged other core democratic structures. In the same way, the elites who push for censorship today are also undermining democracy. What has changed, however, is the extent and technical means with which censorship can now be exercised.
We believe that freedom of expression is essential to ensuring our security from state abuses of power – abuses that have historically posed a far greater threat than the words of individuals or even organized groups. For the sake of the well-being and development of humanity, we call for the following three actions.
We call on governments and international organizations to live up to their responsibilities towards people and to comply with Article 19 of the UDHR.
We call on technology companies to commit to protecting the digital public in accordance with Article 19 of the UDHR and to refrain from politically motivated censorship, censorship of dissenting voices, and censorship of political opinions.
Finally, we call on the general public to join us in the fight to uphold the democratic rights of the people. Changes in legislation are not enough. We must also create an atmosphere of free expression from the ground up, rejecting the climate of intolerance that encourages self-censorship and causes unnecessary personal problems for many. Instead of fear and dogmatism, we must allow questions and debates.
We advocate for your right to ask questions. Heated debates, even if they cause unrest, are far better than no debates at all.
Censorship robs us of the richness of life itself. Free expression is the foundation for meaningful lives and a thriving humanity – through art, poetry, drama, stories, philosophy, song, and more.
This statement is the result of an inaugural meeting of freedom of expression advocates from around the world who met in Westminster, London, at the end of June 2023. As signatories of this declaration, we have fundamental political and ideological differences. But only by uniting together can we defeat the invading forces of censorship so we can continue to discuss and challenge one another openly. In the spirit of disagreement and debate, we sign the Westminster Declaration.”
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Photo credit “Censored” motif: rawpixel.com/Freepik
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