The West is wilfully abandoning its world-conquering principles

As historical ironies go, this one takes some beating. At the precise moment when the Free World – as we must call it once again – has become more confidently united than it has been for a generation, it seems to be wilfully giving up on freedom. Just when the conviction and mutual support of the democratic nation states looks most formidable, and the importance of what they have in common should be unmistakable, the populations of those nations are writhing in self-doubt and remorse.

Could there be a more absurd paradox? The global struggle between liberal democracies and totalitarian societies has not been this stark since the end of the Soviet Union. Indeed, even before the final collapse of Russian communism, the thaw had begun. It really started with Gorbachev’s reforms in the USSR. Perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) combined with his plan for ending the arms race to make it appear that the Cold War could be wound down without Communist rule being officially removed.

Then the Berlin Wall fell. Gorbachev, the last nominally Communist Soviet leader, was ousted and discredited in his own land – and so the great European divide was definitively over. Or so we thought. The Warsaw Pact countries were liberated and, with memories of their failed uprisings against the Kremlin still fresh, they gravitated toward the West – and famously to Nato for protection. Russia fell into lawless kleptocracy and corruption on a scale that drove much of its young educated population into exile. What the political leadership of Russia (and, depressingly, much of its remaining population) concluded was that the attempt to adopt freedom and Western-style democratic government had been a mistake. Better to revive the medieval mission of Peter the Great and let the Motherland claim its holy destiny, seizing back those lands to which it had a historic claim. This is where we are. But bizarrely, even many of those in the West who can see that the new Russian political fixation must be at best delusional and at worst utterly evil, seem not to appreciate the value of those principles that are so impressively lining up against it.

Even as the democratic governments of the Anglosphere and (with slightly more ambivalence) Europe take their stand against the revanchist imperialism of Putin’s authoritarian regime, they obsess at home about how much, and in how many myriad ways, they can constrain the liberty of their own populations. In the name sometimes of a belief in inherited guilt (which is almost as mystical as Russia’s new-found belief in historic identity) and at other times in a weird narcissistic obsession with personal feelings, the Free World clamps down on the very thing that is the secret of its success. What is it, after all, that makes, and keeps, a people free? The absolute, unfettered right to argue (often heatedly), to dispute, to debate, to criticise ideas and theories, to attack (often vituperatively) the established interpretation of facts, to form rival camps on social issues, to critique official accounts of reality.

This is the world-conquering advantage that permitted the West to invent the version of modern life that most people want to live – with its tireless quest for constant improvement through argument and public discourse. Which is why it is particularly disturbing that most of the agitation for the repression of unacceptable speech is coming from people who call themselves “progressive”: without disagreement and disputation there can be no progress of any kind. Advances in social attitudes, scientific theory and economic policy would all be inconceivable without the possibility of challenging accepted beliefs and assumptions. All of this is now in question in those nations whose founding principles once enshrined it as the most fundamental basis for liberty. And now this will no longer simply be the rather slap-happy, informal cancellation by ostracism of individuals with unfashionable beliefs (in biological fact, for example).

We are, apparently, about to enshrine in law the concept of unacceptable opinion. The Online Safety Bill – which the unelected, unaccountable owners of social-media companies will be obliged to enforce on penalty of prosecution – will aim to prohibit “disinformation”. Who will decide what constitutes disinformation? (Answer: the social-media bosses.) The word is intended to mean the purveying of deliberate untruths with the intention of misleading and doing harm – as opposed to “misinformation”, which could be accidental or innocent, but might also be outlawed. But even this distinction does not clear up the dangerous ambiguities. Would the prohibition have applied, for example, to those who criticised the government’s lockdown policy during the pandemic? (In practical terms, it certainly did: most of the broadcast news organisations refused airtime to such critics, even when they were reputable scientists.) Now that the unacceptable effects of lockdown are being openly discussed, how does that reflect on the definition of “disinformation”, or “misinformation”, that prevailed at the time?

The meaning of these words can obviously change with perspective and standards of evidence. How many accepted views and entrenched notions have needed to be revised in the face of new knowledge or fresh understanding? Yesterday’s disinformation can easily be tomorrow’s truth. But even if “disinformation” is precisely what it now appears to be – deliberately false and pernicious – prohibiting it is dangerous and wrong. What you need to defeat malicious lies and deceit is to confront them with truth, or if there is no clear way of establishing objective truth, you need to argue and criticise, to persuade and convince, to appeal to reason. In the course of doing that you will educate your audience and yourself. That is the whole point of opposition and dissent in a democracy, whose function is not to prevent disagreement, but to make good use of it. It is what makes governments electable and what keeps them accountable. For the foreseeable future, it will be the critical difference between ourselves and our global adversaries.

To defend liberty around the globe, the Free World must cherish the very values that are the secret to its success

The absolute, unfettered right to argue against the established interpretation of facts is vital to keep us free