The second Trump administration may presage the significant retrenchment, if not collapse, of what critics call the censorship-industrial complex, a symbiotic and sometimes coercive relationship among the U.S. government, private researchers and Big Tech to suppress disfavored narratives and political movements such as populism.
But the ascendance of former censorship targets into top posts, especially Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary and Jay Bhattacharya as National Institutes of Health director, has not appeared to diminish the appetites of international leaders for further crackdowns on expression that runs afoul of governments.
"United in Peace: Restoring Trust, Reshaping the Future – Reflecting on Two Decades of Dialogue for Humanity" was the theme for the 10th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, a three-day gathering of heads of state, youth, civil society and religious leaders in Cascais, Portugal, last week.
Government leaders unanimously adopted the Cascais Declaration, which binds them to "stress the importance of combatting disinformation, misinformation and hate speech, while strengthening information integrity," without defining any of those terms or laying out methods.
