Free speech is under threat as never before in the world’s democracies
by Andrew Neil, Daily Mail:
If we lose it, we won’t easily get it back.
We live in an age of authoritarians who have not only halted, so far, the spread of democracy in the 21st century but whose totalitarian methods and attitudes are now infecting and undermining the democracies themselves, especially when it comes to that most valuable of all rights – free speech.
The right to say or write what you want without fear of repercussions is, of course, the first right dictators snuff out when they grab power.
But free speech is now in retreat across the democratic world too, as governments, politicians, judges and powerful lobbies, intent on imposing their view of the world, increasingly seek to curtail or censor what we can say, see or hear.
Everywhere you look, free speech is in retreat. Last month, a Hong Kong court convicted two editors of a now-defunct independent news website of sedition for reporting China’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy dissent in the former British colony in 2020 and 2021.
Hong Kong was once a beacon of the free press in a part of the world where censorship was too often the norm. Now, when it comes to free speech, it has entered the dark ages with the rest of totalitarian China.
Also late last month – but closer to home – Pavel Durov, the Russian billionaire founder of Telegram, a secure messaging service with 50 per cent more users than X/Twitter, was arrested when his private jet landed in Paris.
French prosecutors have since indicted him on six charges of illicit activity on the platform.
Read here (£)
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