Freedom of expression under threat following US election, caller fears

14 November 2020, 15:40

Caller describes how identity politics are taking over in US

This caller told Maajid Nawaz that freedom of expression is coming under threat in the aftermath of the US election.

Maajid Nawaz shared during his show that he is being targeted online for pointing out that the US election is not yet won, and argued that through this, the pursuit of truth in politics is being threatened.

Caller Kate joined Maajid and shared her point of view: "I think we are past the point of not being able to have diverse opinions, it's about what kind of signalling you give off to other people."

She went on to tell LBC that her brother, who lives in New York, was kicked out of a restaurant on the night that some media outlets called the election, simply because they didn't cheer Joe Biden's victory.

"Their crime was not giving off the impression to everyone else that they were overjoyed," she noted.

Maajid wanted to know why this is happening, when the caller told him that "people are so uncurious about what's going through the minds of everyone else."

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Kate told Maajid that the political and media landscape has changed, pointing out that when she was a child "when someone came on the television to tell you what's going on, you believed it," but the situation is now far more tribalistic.

She argued that when some left leaning people express their own desire for the truth "what they mean is is the truth as filtered through their own agenda."

"If there's no such thing as the pursuit of truth and the truth itself," Maajid said, "and everything is relative and all that remains is attaining power...if there's no truth all that remains is tyranny."