The video of the FSU’s most recent in-person Speakeasy – ‘Disinformation, Misinformation and the Freedom to Dissent’ – is now available in full on our YouTube channel. It was a terrific event, with more or less a full house at the Art Workers’ Guild in London, and over 500 people joining us online via Zoom.
So-called disinformation and misinformation have been singled out by many governments, institutions, charities and commercial businesses as a threat to democracy, requiring widespread censorship. Is this a genuine concern, or just an excuse by the authorities to suppress dissenting points of view on issues like the lockdowns, mRNA vaccines, the war in Ukraine and climate change? And even if the threat is real and the concern genuine, how can we trust these agencies to accurately identify disinformation and misinformation?
To discuss these issues, we brought together a fantastic panel of experts, including Silkie Carlo of Big Brother Watch, writer and broadcaster Timandra Harkness, and two of the people recently identified by a British Army 77th Brigade whistleblower as having been monitored by the secretive unit for criticising the government’s pandemic response – the journalist Peter Hitchens and myself.
As the Twitter Files have made clear, the weaponisation of concepts like ‘misinformation’ and ’disinformation’ by Big Tech (and Big Government) is one of the most pernicious threats to free speech that we currently face – so if you weren’t able to join us for the live event, this video is well worth a watch. The link is here – and don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel while you’re there.
