by Doug Casey, Gold Seek:
International Man: Under the previous administration, we saw an aggressive push against so-called “disinformation”—fact-checkers, censorship, and suppression of views outside the mainstream narrative. At the same time, there was a strong focus on social justice, gender ideology, and migrant protection.
What’s your perspective on that era and its impact on free speech?
Doug Casey: It’s no longer okay to have a difference of opinion in politics and academia. Not so long ago, it was possible to have a polite discussion and ask Socratic questions to determine what’s right or wrong. Not anymore.
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Free speech is one of Western Civilization’s most important contributions to the world. Throughout history, of all the world’s cultures and civilizations, only the West made free speech and free thought into cultural icons. Free speech is a major reason why the West—with all its flaws—has always been not only different from but objectively better than any other. Incidentally, just saying that can now get you canceled or even prosecuted in some places.
Without free speech, it’s very hard to have free thought because if you’re forced to keep concepts within the confines of your own mind, it’s very hard to explicate, expand, and concretize them. What’s going on now is extremely dangerous. It amounts to putting tariffs on others’ ideas so they can’t enter your brain.
Europe and the Anglophone world—Australia, New Zealand, England, the US, and Canada—are turning into police states where thought crime is a real thing that can be prosecuted. It’s not 1984 yet, but things are rapidly moving in that direction.
One of the most perverse aspects of the trend is that universities have become the center of this anti-freedom groupthink. They once were— and should be—centers of discussion, debate, and free thought. That’s no longer true. They’ve become institutionally corrupt. They’re no longer even places to hang out, party, and pick up a few idle facts while delaying the onset of maturity. They’ve mutated into something destructive and dangerous, as illustrated by the recent scandals at Colombia, Harvard, and Penn.
95% of American universities have become indoctrination centers. It’s quite amazing. Most of the teachers and administrators are Woke or Marxist and actively destructive to young minds. The schools are scams, losing money even with tuitions crowding $100,000 per nine-month year. They’ve become self-licking ice cream cones mainly benefitting the staff.
International Man: Now, under the new Trump administration, those left-leaning agendas seem to have fallen out of favor.
Has the pendulum swung the other way?
Doug Casey: I can only say that as bad as things look today, they would have been much, much worse if Kamala Harris had been installed as the US President. But we should take a moment to comment on Trump, who currently bestrides the world like a colossus.
