136 Journalists, Scientists, Intellectuals and Others Sign “Westminster Declaration” for Free Speech

The ability to express ideas openly has been a staple in democracies for centuries.  Free Speech is, of course, a First Amendment Right in our own Constitutional Republic.  However, over the last several years, that right has been quickly eroded as social media and other Big Tech firms have obfuscated people from this right.

The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft is one of the plaintiffs in Missouri v Biden, a case currently Supreme Court-bound making that argument.  In that case, a shocking discovery was made that the government deems your thoughts “cognitive infrastructure” and suggests their right to control it.  Since the censorship machine has been spun up, The Gateway Pundit has suffered losses resulting from bans and censorship on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.  We are still banned from the former.

Missouri v. Biden Lawsuit Discovery: Biden Regime Designates YOUR THOUGHTS as Part of Government Infrastructure – They Call It “Cognitive Infrastructure” and They Believe It Is Their Right to Control It

As discovered in the #TwitterFiles, governments, including our very own, have found a way to subvert that right.  By opening up backdoor channels and comms with social media conglomerates and non-profits, they censor Americans for what they deem to be “mis- or disinformation” regarding elections, COVID-19 and the ensuing vaccines, and other contentious topics.

Whether it be the relationship between the Department of Homeland Security and a non-profit known as the Center for Internet Security to both shore up security for elections and flag posts for censorship in the lead up to and aftermath of the election, or removing people for being skeptical about a vaccine utilizing new technology with no long-term testing conducted, censorship has been a hotly contested topic since the 2020 lockdowns.

Now, a group of 136 of journalists, intellectuals, scientists, and others have signed The Westminster Declaration which calls on government to uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and to refrain from censoring politically motivated speech, dissenting voices, and political opinion.

Signers include journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, Wikileak’s Julian Assange, actor Tim Robbins, whistleblower Edward Snowden, Jordan Peterson, and professor Jay Bhattacharya.

Julian #Assange and I are signatories of the #WestminsterDeclaration, which launched today. Thread.#FreeSpeech = #FreeAssange https://t.co/LEyFggZFrM pic.twitter.com/cbQRldxhPL

— Stella Assange #FreeAssangeNOW (@Stella_Assange) October 18, 2023

The Westminster Declaration, in part, reads:

Across the globe, government actors, social media companies, universities, and NGOs are increasingly working to monitor citizens and rob them of their voices. These large-scale coordinated efforts are sometimes referred to as the ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex.’

This complex often operates through direct government policies. Authorities in India[1] and Turkey[2] have seized the power to remove political content from social media. The legislature in Germany[3] and the Supreme Court in Brazil[4] are criminalising political speech. In other countries, measures such as Ireland’s ‘Hate Speech’ Bill[5], Scotland’s Hate Crime Act[6], the UK’s Online Safety Bill[7], and Australia’s ‘Misinformation’ Bill[8] threaten to severely restrict expression and create a chilling effect.

But the Censorship Industrial Complex operates through more subtle methods. These include visibility filtering, labelling, and manipulation of search engine results. Through de-platforming and flagging, social media censors have already silenced lawful opinions on topics of national and geopolitical importance. They have done so with the full support of ‘disinformation experts’ and ‘fact-checkers’ in the mainstream media, who have abandoned the journalistic values of debate and intellectual inquiry.

As the Twitter Files revealed, tech companies often perform censorial ‘content moderation’ in coordination with government agencies and civil society. Soon, the European Union’s Digital Services Act will formalise this relationship by giving platform data to ‘vetted researchers’ from NGOs and academia, relegating our speech rights to the discretion of these unelected and unaccountable entities.

…

There also exists a clear and robust international protection for free speech. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)[11] was drafted in 1948 in response to atrocities committed during World War II. Article 19 of the UDHR states, ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’ While there may be a need for governments to regulate some aspects of social media, such as age limits, these regulations should never infringe on the human right to freedom of expression.

Censorship in the name of ‘preserving democracy’ inverts what should be a bottom-up system of representation into a top-down system of ideological control. This censorship is ultimately counter-productive: it sows mistrust, encourages radicalization, and de-legitimizes the democratic process.

The Declaration calls on governments to:

• We call on governments and international organisations to fulfill their responsibilities to the people and to uphold Article 19 of the UDHR.

• We call on tech corporations to undertake to protect the digital public square as defined in Article 19 of the UDHR and refrain from politically motivated censorship, the censorship of dissenting voices, and censorship of political opinion.

• We call on the general public to join us in the fight to preserve the people’s democratic rights. Legislative changes are not enough. We must also build an atmosphere of free speech from the ground up by rejecting the climate of intolerance that encourages self-censorship and that creates unnecessary personal strife for many. Instead of fear and dogmatism, we must embrace inquiry and debate.

The following are the signers of the Declaration:

• Matt Taibbi, Journalist, US

• Michael Shellenberger, Public, US

• Jonathan Haidt, Social Psychologist, NYU, US

• John McWhorter, Linguist, Columbia, Author, US

• Steven Pinker, Psychologist, Harvard, US

• Julian Assange, Editor, Founder of Wikileaks, Australia

• Tim Robbins, Actor, Filmmaker, US

• Nadine Strossen, Professor of Law, NYLS, US

• Glenn Loury, Economist, USA

• Richard Dawkins, Biologist, UK

• John Cleese, Comedian, Acrobat, UK

• Slavoj Žižek, Philosopher, Author, Slovenia

• Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University, US

• Oliver Stone, Filmmaker, US

• Edward Snowden, Whistleblower, US

• Greg Lukianoff, President and CEO Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, USA

• Stella Assange, Campaigner, UK

• Glenn Greenwald, Journalist, US

• Claire Fox, Founder of the Academy of Ideas, UK

• Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, Psychologist, Author, Canada

• Bari Weiss, Journalist, USA

• Peter Hitchens, Author, Journalist, UK

• Niall Ferguson, Historian, Stanford, UK

• Matt Ridley, Journalist, Author, UK

• Melissa Chen, Journalist, Spectator, Singapore/US

• Yanis Varoufakis, Economist, Greece

• Peter Boghossian, Philosopher, Founding Faculty Fellow, University of Austin, US

• Michael Shermer, Science Writer, US

• Alan Sokal, Professor of Mathematics, UCL, UK

• Sunetra Gupta, Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology, Oxford, UK

• Jay Bhattacharya, Professor, Stanford, US

• Martin Kulldorf, Professor of Medicine (on leave), Harvard, US

• Aaron Kheiriaty, Psychiatrist, Author, USA

• Chris Hedges, Journalist, Author, USA

• Lee Fang, Independent Journalist, US

• Alex Gutentag, Journalist, US

• Iain McGilchrist, Psychiatrist, Philosopher, UK

• Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Human Rights Activist, Author, Netherlands

• Konstantin Kisin, Author, UK

• Leighton Woodhouse, Public, US

• Andrew Lowenthal, liber-net, Australia

• Aaron Mate, Journalist, USA

• Izabella Kaminska, Journalist, The Blind Spot, UK

• Nina Power, Writer, UK

• Kmele Foster, Journalist, Media Entrepreneur, USA

• Toby Young, Journalist, Free Speech Union, UK

• Winston Marshall, Journalist, The Spectator, UK

• Jacob Siegel, Tablet, US/Israel

• Ulrike Guerot, Founder of European Democracy Lab, Germany

• Heather E. Heying, Evolutionary Biologist, USA

• Bret Weinstein, Evolutionary Biologist, USA

• Martina Pastorelli, Independent Journalist, Italy

• Leandro Narloch, Independent Journalist, Brazil

• Ana Henkel, Independent Journalist, Brazil

• Mia Ashton, Journalist, Canada

• Micha Narberhaus, The Protopia Lab, Spain/Germany

• Alex Sheridan, Free Speech Ireland

• Ben Scallan, Gript Media, Ireland

• Thomas Fazi, Independent Journalist, Italy

• Jean F. Queralt, Technologist, Founder @ The IO Foundation, Malaysia/Spain

• Phil Shaw, Campaigner, Operation People, New Zealand

• Jeremy Hildreth, Independent, UK

• Craig Snider, Independent, US

• Eve Kay, TV Producer, UK

• Helen Joyce, Journalist, UK

• Dietrich Brüggemann, Filmmaker, Germany

• Adam B. Coleman, Founder of Wrong Speak Publishing, US

• Helen Pluckrose, Author, US

• Michael Nayna, Filmmaker, Australia

• Paul Rossi, Educator, Vertex Partnership Academics, US

• Juan Carlos Girauta, Politician, Spain

• Andrew Neish, KC, UK

• Steven Berkoff, Actor, Playright, UK

• Patrick Hughes, Artist, UK

• Adam Creighton, Journalist, Australia

• Julia Hartley-Brewer, Journalist, UK

• Robert Cibis, Filmmaker, Germany

• Piers Robinson, Organization for Propaganda Studies, UK

• Dirk Pohlmann, Journalist, Germany

• Mathias Bröckers, Author, Journalist, Germany

• Kira Phillips, Documentary Filmmaker, UK

• Diane Atkinson, Historian, Biographer, UK

• Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics, Birkbeck, University of London, Canada

• Laura Dodsworth, Journalist and Author, UK

• Nellie Bowles, Journalist, USA

• Andrew Tettenborn, Professor of Law, Swansea University,  UK

• Julius Grower, Fellow, St. Hugh’s College, UK

• Nick Dixon, Comedian, UK

• Dominic Frisby, Comedian, UK

• James Orr, Associate Professor, University of Cambridge, UK

• Brendan O’Neill, Journalist, UK

• Andrew Roberts, Historian, UK

• Robert Tombs, Historian, UK

• Ben Schwarz, Journalist, USA

• Xavier Azalbert, Investigative Scientific Journalist, France

• Doug Stokes, International Relations Professor, University of Exeter, UK

• James Allan, Professor of Law, University of Queensland, UK

• David McGrogan, Professor of Law, Northumbria University, UK

• Jacob Mchangama, Author, Denmark

• Nigel Biggar, Chairman, Free Speech Union, UK

• David Goodhart, Journalist, Author, UK

• Catherine Austin Fitts, The Solari Report, Netherlands

• Matt Goodwin, Politics Professor, University of Kent, UK

• Catherine Liu, Cultural Theorist, Author, USA

• Stefan Millius, Journalist, Switzerland

• Philip Hamburger, Professor of Law, Columbia, USA

• Rueben Kirkham, Co-Director, Free Speech Union of Australia, Australia

• Jeffrey Tucker, Author, USA

• Sarah Gon, Director, Free Speech Union, South Africa

• Dara Macdonald, Co-Director, Free Speech Union, Australia

• Jonathan Ayling, Chief Executive, Free Speech Union, New Zealand

• David Zweig, Journalist, Author, USA

• Juan Soto Ivars, Author, Spain

• Colin Wright, Evolutionary Biologist, USA

• Gad Saad, Professor, Evolutionary Behavioral Scientist, Author, Canada

• Robert W. Malone, MD, MS, USA

• Jill Glasspool-Malone, PhD., USA

• Jordi Pigem, Philosopher, Author, Spain

• Holly Lawford-Smith, Associate Professor in Political Philosophy, University of Melbourne, Australia

• Michele Santoro, Journalist, TV host, Presenter, Italy

• Dr. James Smith, Podcaster, Literature Scholar, RHUL, UK

• Francis Foster, Comedian, UK

• Coleman Hughes, Writer, Podcaster, USA

• Marco Bassani, Political Theorist, Historian, Milan University, Italy

• Isabella Loiodice, Professor of Comparative Public Law, University of Bari, Italy

• Luca Ricolfi, Professor, Sociologist, Turin University, Italy

• Marcello Foa, Journalist, Former President of Rai, Italy

• Andrea Zhok, Philosopher, University of Milan, Italy

• Paolo Cesaretti, Professor of Byzantine Civilization, University of Bergamo, Italy

• Alberto Contri, Mass Media Expert, Italy

• Carlo Lottieri, Philosopher, University of Verona, Italy

• Alessandro Di Battista, Political activist, Writer, Italy

• Paola Mastrocola, Writer, Italy

• Carlo Freccero, Television Author, Media Expert, Italy

• Giorgio Bianchi, Independent Journalist, Italy

• Nello Preterossi, Professor, University of Salerno, Scientific Director of the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies, Italy

• Efrat Fenigson, Journalist, Podcaster, Israel

• Eli Vieira, Journalist, Genetic Biologist, Brazil

• Stephen Moore, Author and Analyst, Canada

The post 136 Journalists, Scientists, Intellectuals and Others Sign “Westminster Declaration” for Free Speech appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.