Konstantin Kisin vs. Entire Audience at Doha Debates

Every great civilization advances through conquest. When people talk about colonialism and complain, all I hear is losers complaining about losing. As for slavery, well, if you want to go there, my friend, let's go there. Native Americans had slaves. Ottomans had slaves. Africans had slaves. Everybody had slaves. The reason there is no slavery in the world today—I mean, there's a lot of slavery in the world today—but in the parts of the world where there's no slavery is because the British Empire ended it. That's why there is no slavery.

If you look at Russia on the map, it's the biggest country in the world. That didn't happen by holding hands and singing "Kumbaya." I thought you were all about free speech. How about you let me finish my point?

Hello and a warm welcome to our Doha Debate Town Hall, in partnership with Bradford Literature Festival. I'm your host, Ramona Ali. We're here today at the University of Bradford for a timely and crucial discussion on the power of Western narrative building. On stage, we have some brilliant students and recent graduates from campuses across the Gulf and the UK who will help guide and enrich our conversation. And we're also honored to be joined by three expert guests. Fatima is a novelist and author, most recently of "New Kings of the World: Dispatches from Bollywood, Dizzy and K-Pop." She's also a social and political commentator, writing in publications like The Guardian and Zeto, where she is a contributor. Steve Clemens is a journalist who has served as editor-at-large at Seymour, The Hill, and The Atlantic. He hosts "The Bottom Line" on Eliazar English and is the author of the political blog "The Washington Note." And we also have Constantine Kissen, who is a writer, comedian, satirist, social commentator, and host of the YouTube show "Trigonometry." He is also the author of "An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West."

Our town hall will explore whether Western media, politics, and public discourse shape, influence, and even control narratives about global justice and how that impacts free speech. For as long as many of us can remember, the greater part of the century has seen conversations and definitions of global justice be steered and dominated by the West. It has long claimed to act in the name of democracy, equality, and freedom. But some wonder whether the West always, always lives up to its own ideals, and whether that applies universally in a world mired in conflict and injustice. In places like Ukraine, Yemen, Sudan, and Israel-Palestine, the stories we hear and share have real-world consequences. As George Orwell said in his cautionary tale "1984," "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." It's a pertinent reminder, given that we're here at Bradford Literature Festival, that words and narratives have the power to shape our perceptions and our lives.

Let's take a look at how some of those narratives are created and how that can impact political dissent. The ACLU filed suit today, claiming that federal phone surveillance goes far beyond the limits of the Patriot Act. J. Assange has been charged under the U.S. Espionage Act. The UK's broadcast regulator has revoked the license of the Russian government's RT channel. A motion in the Senate opposing the use of the pro-Palestine phrase "From the River to the Sea," waving a Palestinian flag, could in some cases be considered a criminal offense. Wait, what's going on here? Is the West, which touts itself as a proponent of global justice, closing down avenues of free speech? A recent review of 22 democracies found that 78% of major speech-related laws aimed to limit expression. This kind of erosion of free speech continues today. Certain types of pro-Palestine expressions are now being suppressed or restricted across the West. Meanwhile, a compliant press and other Western leaders have repeated unverified and ultimately false claims made by the Israeli government.

The Western media traditionally has played a very important role in mediating the conflict. They operate as the lens through which many constituents in Europe and the U.S. view the crisis. And if that lens only really presents a particular side of the story, then people in democracies are going to consume an inherently pro-Israeli narrative. We've seen this kind of narrative control before. In the buildup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Western political leaders spun lies that were uncritically amplified by major media, tying Iraq to Al-Qaeda's 9/11 attacks and warning of their secret stash of weapons of mass destruction. "Iraq is a part of the war on terror. Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country." Turns out, none of it was true. And it's an old pattern. For decades, Western TV broadcasters referred to the African National Congress as terrorists in apartheid South Africa. Similarly, Western media helped ferment fear and nationalism during the Cold War. And today, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has resulted in a tightening of press freedoms. The same kind of censorship is happening with Al Jazeera in Israel.

There's a term for all of this: "manufacturing consent," a concept originally introduced by journalist Walter Lippmann in 1922. It's also the title of Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky's 1988 book, which lays out how powerful people use media to promote their own private interests over public welfare. There's a playbook for how manufacturing consent works: weaponize passive voice, use leading terms, stoke fears, and perpetuate false narratives. Historian Assad shows what some of that can look like in a single headline.

Meanwhile, people who believe in the Western project tell a different story. "The West has produced things that work. We've produced the only political system that gives personal liberty to everybody in the society." They point to moments in history when the West defeated fascism and led the charge to create the United Nations. They also remind us that Western media is the fourth estate. It holds the powerful to account. And when it gets the story wrong, it admits fault. Whatever you believe, it's more important than ever to understand who controls the narrative. With its extensive influence, can we count on the West to promote global justice and free speech as it claims to, or is it just furthering its own interests? Some thought-provoking stuff there.

And now it's time to hear from our speakers. I'll pose to you first, Fatima. Thank you, Ramona. Um, no, we can't count on the West to promote global justice because the West has only ever promoted its own interests, often at the cost of global justice. And I'll just give you a few examples from this past month. Just a few weeks ago, the Biden administration announced that the Azov Brigade, a Ukrainian military unit, could now receive American weaponry and training. And Biden's administration told us that the Azov Brigade is very, very different than the older Nazi Azov Battalion. But the unit themselves say that they're exactly the same thing, just with a slightly different name. Recently, as well, a federal appeals court dismissed a lawsuit asking for the U.S. Senate Select Committee's Torture Report to be made public. So, what that means is that CIA abuses that were carried out during the war on terror will continue to remain a secret. It bears repeating, I know we don't talk about this very often, but of the 780 people who were detained at Guantanamo since 2002, only eight men were ever convicted of any crimes, and of those eight cases, four were reversed. Muhammad al-Gharani, a 14-year-old boy, was the youngest person to be detained at Guantanamo, where he was held for seven years, tortured, before he was released without charge. 90% of Guantanamo detainees were released without trial. But the real reason why the West cannot be relied on to promote global justice is because the West—and I mean all of the West, I mean Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, all of Europe—have given billions of dollars, weapons, diplomatic cover to Israel, always, but especially over the last nine months while it has been committing genocide. Israel destroyed the healthcare infrastructure. They are starving people. They have killed tens of thousands of children. And so to say that the West is somehow responsible for global justice is—it's a beautiful story, it's just not true. It is, if anything, a threat to global justice. Thank you so much.

And now I'd like to pass to Steve Clemens for your introductory remarks. Fatima really gave us a provocation there, and I'm going to, you know, take some shades of gray difference when we sort of think about the West. I think we make a mistake if you try to amalgamate governments and media and institutions for education. You know, the West and each of these nations is comprised of a lot of different institutions. And the fact is that in this institutional amalgam, we're right now, particularly in the United States, but I think throughout Europe, experiencing a lot of stress. And if you want to look at the habits and norms and behaviors of a political system, even of journalism, because I'm here to talk today about Western journalism for the most part, it's best to look when it's cloudy, when it's a messy time, not when it's, uh, uh, when everything is going well. And right now, you see a lot of factors that are undermining journalism and Western journalism from playing the role that I think it should play on basically trying to promulgate the values of critical thinking, of trying to define what truth is, of looking at what civil rights and civil justice mean. Are there moments and are there times when that system has gotten it very wrong? Absolutely. And I have been in the middle of a number of those storms myself individually. But I think it's very important to realize that the values and norms that Western journalism attempts to be about are quite worthy for any system around the world. And I think it, those values can be, be those that other, other political systems take on for themselves, even as the United States or the West falters in some of that. So I'll make that my provocation, that I think that that Western values and journalism can play an important role. We're under stress right now. We have to look at the factors that are out there, but I don't believe that we are completely indifferent to the rest of the world, because so many of the issues, even Fatima, you mentioned, are clearly reported and known and are palpable in parts of the American media. Thank you so much, Steve.

And now I'd like to pass to Constantine for your opening remarks. Well, thank you. First of all, it's a miracle that I'm here for two reasons. First of all, I took the train here this morning, and those of you who are not British, you know, but whenever there's a catastrophe like light rain, some leaves on the tracks, the high-speed thing shuts down. So I barely made it. And the other reason, and by the way, I was going to come up here last night, but I Googled where, where is a good place to have breakfast in Bradford, and it said Leeds. So I thought, I thought I wouldn't come. But the other reason, it's a miracle. I wrote a book a couple of years ago called "An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West," in which I made many of the same criticisms that we've already heard, that the West is abandoning the values on which it's built, it's abandoning its core principles. And I encouraged people to not do that and to stick to the things that made the West great. The only objection I will offer to the entire conversation and the entire framing of this discussion is a phrase that we in Russian use very often, which is that everything is understood in comparison. So while we can lament the fact that the West is failing to live up to its commitments on things like free speech, and we saw during the pandemic the absolutely catastrophic decisions by government to prevent people from expressing their concerns about government policy, and Julian Assange, and Guantanamo Bay, and the war in Iraq, and all of these things that I've always opposed from the get-go, we have to remember that these values that we're not living up to as well as we should be are only considered values within our own civilization. If you go to China, it's perfectly normal to lock up a million Uyghurs in concentration camps. If you go to Russia, it's perfectly normal to do all sorts of terrible things. And the idea that a critic of the government like Julian Assange would be persecuted under the law is completely preposterous, because in Russia, those people are murdered. Thank you, Constantine.

That's some, some thought-provoking thoughts from all of you. And now I'd like to bring the onstage audience into this. And some responses. Hands are already going up. I will throw first to Rod. So, hi. First of all, my name is Rod Assad. I'm a rising fourth year at Georgetown University in Qatar. And I would like to begin this debate by saying that there is no uniform Western narrative. When people like Fatima come up today and talk about how the West is a uniform monolith going out there spreading a narrative, she's misleading us. Which, in reality, there are multiple different narratives in the West that compete with one another. For example, I assume Fatima's narrative right now is more so a postcolonial, postmodern narrative that critiques the West and says the West is an oppressor, and a binary oppressor-oppressed binary. However, the problem with that narrative is that it's also a Western narrative. It is, in fact, using critical theory. It is using Nietzsche. It is using a lot of different thinkers from the West to critique the West. So the thing about these sort of narratives is that there is no uniform Western narrative. The narrative that Constantine or someone like Douglas Murray will advance is a Western narrative, in the same way that Fatima's narrative is also a Western narrative. And in the way that I imagine people who support President Biden and people in the central left of the United States of America would also advance a certain narrative. So it's important to preface that there is no uniform master narrative, and we must keep that in mind when we discuss this debate today. I didn't mention Nietzsche, of course.

So let's go to the, to the left now to Isra. And just keep the microphone as close as possible to you. Um, hi. I'd firstly like to thank all our guests. I think that a lot of the points that I'll be bringing up, uh, resonate with what you said. But I'd like to also touch on a point that Rod also raised. I think that, um, when Fatima mentioned "all the West, all of Europe," I'm from Albania. And I think that the umbrella term of "Western narrative" sort of makes the other communities and the other narratives within the West get lost. This year marks the 180th anniversary of the genocide committed by Greece on Albanian people, which is another Western genocide happening in Europe. And using the term "Western narrative" and "all the West" and "all of Europe," do you think that sort of emphasizes and adds to that narrative that "us versus them," West versus the rest? I mean, I'm curious, Ramona, just to ask both of you, what would you prefer? I mean, how do you see things? So I view narratives as a pluralistic thing. So in the sense that rather than a top-down sort of, you know, power drives everything sort of postmodern way of thinking, I think that the way narratives are created are, in fact, not created by a manufacturing, consenting elite, but rather by multiple different people in society. Very pluralistic, as I said earlier. The way that Constantine will view the West is different than how you would view the West. However, you're both subscribing to Western ways of thinking when you critique the West or support the West. So when you say the West can't support global justice, not only are you assuming that there is such a thing as a West in an air sense, which again isn't true, because the interests of the United States and France are completely different, and the values of the United States and France are different as well, but you're also assuming a global South, which doesn't exist either. Because there's no uniform consent between China, the Middle East, and Africa. They have no common interest or value system together. In fact, you're orientalizing both the West and the East by creating the sort of terms. So that's how I view this sort of debate today. I think we can go home then. But I want to bring in some more voices. Let's go to the back to Emma. M, sorry.

Hi, my name is Emma McCary, and I am a student at Georgetown University. And I would kind of just like to raise a different point. I feel like I don't necessarily view or kind of pinpoint the Western narrative or, you know, the West, but rather that states, whether that be in the East, are always working to promote their own, uh, justices, not even their justices, but their own self-interests. And you mentioned a lot that we can actually rely on the West. But for me, the way that I view it as a Sudanese woman is, number one, we view, you know, for instance, within the region, this kind of pan-Arab or pan-African brotherhood. And when I'm looking at states such as the United Arab Emirates, who there have been claims in which I truly believe that they are funding our militia currently, who is in a war against the Sudanese Armed Forces. So when you have things such as the United Arab Emirates, who are working within their own state's interest and kind of going on the media and saying that they're, you know, investing in Sudan, and then also having countries such as China, who are building a lot of bridges, and, you know, now we're having this loan debt. So if we can't, you know, rely on the West, then who can we rely on? Can we rely on the East? Because in the end of the day, I view both the fact that there is a Western narrative, but there's also an Eastern narrative. So do we depend on dependent journalists? Do we depend on, you know, the people on, um, you know, civic organizations? Who do you want us to depend on? It sounds to me like you're doing things right, which is you're making yourself aware of a lot of different elements of, of, you know, history and political events and news from around the world. Um, I'm going to reflect on the United States for a moment. 99.999% of people do not basically do what you do and trying to expose themselves. They depend upon structures to come in. And with all due respect to your wonderful, I love the thesis you have, but the practical experience is it's not correct. It doesn't align with the reality of the fact that there are moments of hysteria. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Hamas attack against Israel and the response then, you know, moments in American history where the bandwagoning effect, the Iraq, the invasion of Iraq would be another one of those for me, because I was very opposed to the Iraq War. I paid serious consequences for not being. I'm not a pacifist at all, but I raised serious realist issues for why that didn't make sense. And you get encircled. So there are moments of blind spots. And there are, so I would love to see that pluralism. It would be much healthier, and I actually would support your perspective greatly. But in actual fact, you do have moments, and it is one of the weaker spots when it comes to, you know, the blind spots that I think. And so it gets into the question of narratives and the power of them. America in particular, and the West, I would say the transatlantic, um, footings of of this, are very narcissistic. We don't care to be honest about most of the topics you just raised, except as how they affect us. So when I love the quote that you mentioned a moment ago about history and who controls history, you have to understand history is negotiated. Most people walk around with a gauzy idea that somehow there's some real truth of history. There's not. It's a power, it's a function of power relationships that's constantly negotiated. China is renegotiating its place in the world and how it's dealt with because it's become a powerful nation. The United States is seeing its power challenged. I just want to throw that out there. It's a much more dynamic system. And sometimes that system isn't, isn't pluralistic. Sometimes it all runs in a direction. Doesn't mean to say that there aren't other voices out there that are important, but it's very hard for them to get any oxygen. But Steve, with all respect to you, I mean, you're describing human psychology. Human beings are prone to panics and mass movements and delusions and whatever. But if you're challenging the young man's point about pluralism, where is this beautiful utopian pluralistic society out of the United States competitors? Are we talking about Russia or China or Gulf monarchies? Where is this beautiful pluralistic world to which we're all aspiring? May I bring in on stage audience? I'm joking. Yeah. No, I mean, you make a good point. But I mean, I agree. Let's bring in some more voices. Yes.

I'm Tamim Eunice. I'm a recent graduate from Northwestern University in Qatar. I really resonate with what Fatima said. And I think for the sake of this town hall, we are talking about the West. Obviously, there are issues with Russia and China, uh, and other places in the world with how they run things. But it's really important to recognize facts of what has been happening for decades in mainstream narrative, Western narratives. And this is where we really need to consider about counter-narratives, right? We talked about how, you know, it's the West by the West, but there were so many times where counter-narratives rose up, but they get silenced. And that's where power, imperialist powers put in what they do. You think of Julian Assange. And a case study that really resonates with me is Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, who's British-Palestinian, who saw the genocide taking place in Gaza. Went back to Europe, tried talking about it in Germany. They banned him. And then they banned him in France. They didn't allow him to talk to students. They attempted to do that virtually. If the West truly cares about what it claims to focus on, it wouldn't do that. And same happens in TV and everywhere. And we saw right now that when channels like Al Jazeera try to have a base within the settler-colonial Zionist regime, it doesn't. It gets banned. And people get silenced. And there are certain factions I can't even mention because I will be banned from this country. And that's the truth. These people are not being platformed. They have a side. They have been so stigmatized that we cannot even talk about it. Okay.

Thank you. Want to bring in Hannah. Hi, everyone. Um, my name is Hannah Shahabi. I'm a recent graduate from Georgetown University in Qatar. Um, Steve, I actually wanted to hone in on some of the points that you raised. I think I really appreciate the nuance you brought forward about, you know, the designations between institutions, states, nations. But I think in terms of the values directing the framing of the Western narrative and the media at large, the question is, who are these values for? So let's take an example of what's happening in Gaza, for instance. "40 beheaded babies" is falsified completely. No accountability on that front. The U.S. facilitates an Israeli-led operation in the Nuseirat refugee camp in June of this year, and that's framed as a rescue operation and not a massacre. In that sense, like, who are these values for? So who are these values for when it comes to the coverage? And in terms of the rest of the, the rest of the world outside of the West, you know, are these values applied there, or do they are they strictly confined to the West? Thank you.

Okay, thank you so much for those contributions. Do you have any responses from the speakers to what has been said? I would just say very quickly, your point, it's a, it's a very, very important point. And I think that the way look at that is the values should be ones that we struggle to apply globally. Uh, but it is not widely shared. I think the narcissism of the system is overwhelming. But I know in my case, when I'm reporting each week on Al Jazeera, and what's happening in Gaza, or what's happening in other parts of the world, or what happened during the Iraq War to certain areas and communities and far beyond that. I mean, I was very happy to hear about, you know, the Uyghurs in China, because we often don't really look at a broad template of what's going on and look at it in a fair and appropriate way. But while I, I completely agree with you, I think it's very important to know that there are heroes out there in Western journalism trying to do the right thing and trying to institutionalize. They're, they're swimming against the tide sometimes. But I think it's important not to overclassify that. That's getting me closer to his argument again, but, but, um, but I do think that there are heroes out there. ProPublica and others are trying to basically support the kinds of, when you ask the question, what values are for, it should be for everyone. The truth is, it's not, and we have to struggle with that. Okay.

Thank you, Constantine. Well, I just wanted to make the point that no country has an obligation to have enemy propaganda broadcast into it. It doesn't mean they don't believe in free speech. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union did not allow the American press into the Soviet Union, and America didn't allow the Soviet press into America. It's a pretty normal thing to do, because when you're at war, it's survival. And it's widely accepted that in a wartime, things are a little bit different. But again, I, I put the point to you, where is this, uh, society? Where is a society that practices free speech in the way that you'd like? Okay.

Tamim, yes. Yeah, I think we really also need to ask ourselves, who defines what that propaganda is, right? And it's not fair because we've seen it all the time in apartheid South Africa, and even segregation during the United States in the United States, and so forth. A lot of these voices were shut down. There was a time, right, when the Holocaust happened, that happened for a reason because people were shut up. That propaganda was so widespread. And you're saying just because these countries were at war, that somehow that justifies it? And the genocide against Gaza, is that really the war of the United States? What we could go into the obligation the United States feels towards justifying the genocide and the massacre of 40,000 Palestinians plus? It's absurd. My point is, you're sitting here in the West, and you're speaking freely. Where is the place that you think does it better than we do here? I think it's important to recognize that this, where is the place? I mean, it's a simple question. It's just the name of a country. I recognize the privilege I have of saying whatever I want in Qatar, right? So this is the best place in the world for speech. I don't know. That's my personal experience. Anyone said that, like, my experience, that's true. It depends on everyone's own personal experience. And in my case, that is, I was shut down so many times in the West. I feel I would feel afraid. We speak somewhere. Where is better to speak? We do a lot of these town halls in Qatar, and we say whatever we want. Okay. Yeah. I'm just telling you. So, so Qatar is better on free speech, you would say? What I have experience, right? And live in every single part of the world. That's because of what you're saying. Okay. But we're not talking about Russia, obviously. I recognize Russia has a lot of this problem. And like you said, China. But that's not the point of this town hall right now. I really would love to have a town hall focused on Russia and China and their imperialist and horrible crimes against humanity. But I think we don't have enough time for that. So let's not divert. Would you say that Usain Bolt is fast or slow? Sorry. Usain Bolt, the sprinter, is he fast or is he slow? He's fast. How do you know? By comparing him to other people, right? The same is true about speech. The same is true of everything. Everything is understood by comparing it to others. There are six great civilizations in the world: Western Christian civilization, Eastern Christian civilization, the two Islamic civilizations, the Chinese civilization, and the Indian civilization. In which of those civilizations would you rather live than the one that you are speaking in now? People, that's got nothing to do with the point about speech. Let's hold on to this, but it's good that we're getting a bit warmed up. I would say on the floor.

So as you saw in our video earlier, there are more restrictions on free speech in some parts of the West. Take, for example, Denmark, which has restricted religious speech in the name of anti-radicalization. According to a recent report, the UK's 2023 Online Safety Act could inadvertently suppress some kinds of lawful speech. Are there things that we shouldn't be allowed to say? Now, we asked our onstage audience for their opinions on limiting free speech, so let's take a look at what you all think. So there are some interesting findings there. Some of you are free speech absolutists, and quite a few of you actually lean, um, in that direction. But a couple of you, uh, see value in limiting some kinds of free speech. Uh, to the speakers, does any of that surprise you? Well, there's a thing economists call revealed preference versus actual preference. So, to the extent that this is true or not, we don't know until we test some cases, right? And I think we may find a different picture as we do. Yeah, I mean, I think I think it's interesting we're here talking about the West and all that we've done so far is to say, "Where's better?" You know, I think it's diversionary. I think it's distracting. We're not talking about the entire world. We're talking about the West right now. I thought it was hilarious to see Douglas Murray on stage. It's usually hilarious when you hear Douglas Murray, but I thought it was wonderful to hear him say, "The West is a place where everyone's personal liberty is respected," unless, of course, you say "From the River to the Sea," unless, of course, you talk about what is happening in Gaza and you don't frame it automatically as something that started immediately on October 7th. Unless, of course, you're in France and you happen to want to wear a kafia or a hijab. You know, free speech absolutists like Douglas Murray, I guess that's what he calls himself, have a great amount of freedom for themselves, but very little freedom for people who don't look, sound, and mimic them. It seems to me. I'm friends with Douglas. I've never heard him describe himself as a free speech absolutist. And as for your point about, and we saw it in the clips earlier, about you can't display a Palestine flag, I've been to several pro-Palestine protests, which are documented on our YouTube channel, with people saying whatever the hell they want, up to and including that October 7th was a false flag operation, etc. People are free to do so. I invite people to go to Russia and say that the invasion of Ukraine was a mistake, was wrong, or is immoral or illegal. They'll be immediately locked up. So it's not a distraction to say, where are these other societies? Everything is understood in terms of what is available to you, right? What is available to you in the spectrum of freedom? Where is better than the West? That's the question. Look, what we're arguing about is that with free expression is also coming a packaged intolerance for those that are aiding this. This gets into what's called the woke debate or being canceled. And I have to tell you, as someone who has a significant significant other in academia, how many academics today, even with tenure, in the so-called Western system, are scared for their jobs if they accidentally trip over an incorrect word? I think that's a problem. Sure, uh, because they, the debate is masked as one as free speech, but it's actually weaponized in a way to actually create significant consequences. So as you swim through that, we need to think, I think, more broadly, what kind of conversation opens people's aperture as opposed to narrowing the aperture? How do we have uncomfortable conversations as the norm, rather than comforting conversations that just buffet our own biases? That is really what we're talking about today. And free speech somehow becomes a weapon in that debate. And we have to look at what is the balance way for a social system to navigate something that doesn't create high consequences for those who do engage in free speech, but yet you still maintain sensitivities for those who have alternative views. And we've seen countries like Germany and France restricting pro-Palestinian protests. And we've also witnessed a wave of crackdowns on student protests across the U.S. and Europe. Can I just bring in, uh, some of the student voices now? I want to go to some of the free speech absolutists first, very briefly. Isra, just go ahead.

I just like to say that these kind of spaces are what make me a free speech absolutist because we see different opinions coming together. We see a sort of market of ideas where we're able to, um, see everything that is happening, understand it from each other's perspectives, and then at the end, we get to choose what we want to believe in and what we don't want to. And I think that, um, where, what we see now in Western societies, or let's say Western Europe and North America, is that during these past 10 months that the genocide in Gaza has been unfolding, we see that Western politics and Western media have had a very critical eye on the pro-Palestine views. However, the society itself has had a public opinion shift, where we see the biggest pro-Palestine protests happening now in the U.S. and UK. And I think that what I want to ask, uh, the guests today, is do you think that this shows that Western media has some sort of governmental agenda rather than merely reflecting the public opinion in it? Do I think Western media has some sort of governmental agenda? Um, no, I don't. On this particular, particular issue, I'm someone who's very pro-Ukrainian, for example, but I have to say that I think on that issue, Western media hasn't given the opposite view enough of a hearing for my liking, even though someone who disagrees with that point of view. I think on the Israel-Palestine thing, I can't turn on Piers Morgan's show without seeing someone shouting "genocide, genocide, genocide." The next day, it's someone shouting "Israel, Israel, Israel." I think the debate about Israel and Palestine has been pretty robust in the West, both in mainstream media and in new media. You know, I've had everyone from Norman Finkelstein to Bassem Youssef to all sorts of other people on my show, and pro-Israel voices as well. I think actually this particular issue has been well covered in Western media, in my opinion. I think the one exception though, that I would just respectfully raise, you know, for me, one of the, you know, the great ships of Western media and journalism is the New York Times. Although I can really pick it apart in a lot of things that's gotten wrong, but no, I, but it's just my own perspective. True. But for the New York Times editor to send out a framing document on what its editors can say and write about Palestine and what they can't, as a frame through which all of their journalism must flow, is something I've never seen the New York Times apply in any other case. You could also look at the Iraq War. When you talk about government, you know, one of the things we have to look at is governments have become very, very powerful, even in the West. I completely agree with the comparison issue, but governments spend a lot of money trying to infiltrate, trying to control their own press. They did that in the Iraq War. We saw that with the Pentagon. So when you write, when we're talking about the erosion of what I think is a very important global asset, which is Western values and ideals that hopefully others do, they're eroding in part because of very powerful states and controls and censorship that are eroding that territory.

Can I just bring in, uh, Hannah from the student audience? Thanks. Very briefly. I just wanted to add on to some of the points that, um, Steve raised. I think I just want to ask you to, like, look a little bit beyond things on an individual level and questioning whether individuals, whether individuals like, are able to exercise their right to free speech in different places around the world. And look at it top-down in terms of the institutions themselves and the power that they've managed to amass and the coverage they've managed to gain across the world. How are they using that responsibility to build narratives around other places in the world? Considering that the West is a self-proclaimed gatekeeper of democracy, human rights, and justice, how do these values operate in their coverage of other places in the world on a mass media level, rather than looking at the question of whether individuals are able to exercise their right to free speech in the West or in other places in the world? Well, if you're complaining about the West, the West being powerful, I understand your complaint because the West is powerful. But I'd quite like it to stay that way because I think our values are better. But, uh, not, not of agreement with with Steve. I, I agree with you. The New York Times has become trash. But the New York Times was always trash. The New York Times in the 1930s, while there was a deliberate famine in Ukraine committed against people like my ancestors, were whitewashing those crimes and saying that the Soviet Union was this great, brilliant society. So I've never taken them particularly seriously. And it's true. I mean, if you remember, the very first thing I said, I wrote a book criticizing the direction of travel in the West, and that's an era we can agree on. I don't approve of everything the West is doing. Wokeness is a terrible mind virus that is destroying the West from the inside. I completely agree with you there. But we have to fix the West because we recognize that the very core foundation of everything that is good in the last God knows how many centuries comes from our civilization.

Well, I know there are so many, so many hands up in the, in the onstage audience, but let's just, can I just come back to Steve? I want us to go back to our initial broader conversation about restrictions of speech in the West. The EU has banned Russia Today, and the U.S. has passed legislation that could ban TikTok. So are these examples of hypocrisy when it comes to Western notions of free speech? Of course, there are examples of hypocrisy to a point. But at the same time, I think it's important to realize that we're struggling with what data means and what our vulnerabilities are. And the biggest change, the biggest feature in the change in the way how we run economies, how we think about media, is the, and it's happened all around the world, is the national securitization of every debate. So you were looking at data from TikTok and through a national security lens. You're looking at whether you stimulate your economy and you invest in the chips industry through a national security lens. You know, if you listen to the transatlantic banking establishment, Christine Lagarde and others, they worry about the fact that all of these steps that we're taking are being done through a national security lens. And it was going to create a world that was trying to become a high-trust, connected world. That was what globalization was supposed to be: connect this all so that ideas, people, institutions, money could move more frictionlessly around the world. Guess what? We're a very connected world, but it's a high-fear world. We're now connected, we don't like each other, and we're trying to pull ourselves apart. And distrust is driving a lot of that. So yes, it's hypocritical. We have lots of hypocrisy built into the system. But I think it's a different way to look at it is, where is that line on censorship or, uh, uh, restricting free speech or media? Go. And I think it's a very, it's a very dangerous one because it takes you down the road where countries will begin doing it for other reasons than just protecting their audiences from hate speech.

I just want to say something real quick. If we look at the social media conglomerates in the United States, like Meta, Facebook, and so forth, they have, they have a lot of scandals and cases against them of mishandling data. And I think it's besides the point to, you know, say that somehow banning TikTok is justified when in reality, it's offering a more decentralized wave for people to choose to consume that media or not. The American people, like you say, people in the West, they're free as much as they want to use Facebook and not use TikTok. So banning it is besides the point. And what we've seen in protests in, uh, protests in the UK is that there were so many individuals who were highlighted by official accounts in the UK Home Office saying, "We're looking for this person." They were holding a poster that they didn't like, and they go to prison, they get questioned, they lose their jobs. We saw what happened with Julian Assange. The second someone tries to offer a counter-narrative to the crimes of humanity committed by the West in Iraq and so forth, they get ostracized for 14 years in prison, can't see their family. And so, and it leaves an example for future journalists, look at us, we were afraid to speak up. And that's what I believe.

Okay, let me just, yeah, can I start with Abdurrahman and then we'll come back to you? Abdurrahman, student of Bradford University. So I noticed a few things. I want to highlight a little bit here. You, your question is, where can you find a place that's better? Well, it depends. It depends on who you are and what do you want to talk about and where. The other thing, when we show the chart and we see that it is perfectly following the normal distribution, you had doubt on whether it's true or not. That's kind of an example of if I agree or disagree with something, I'll decide to believe it or not. In terms of values, the reason you were able to see differences in the Western values is because you are living there, you can see it. But from the rest of the world, who depend on some of the systems and technologies developed, some of the values do not overlap as much as in the Western world. So the divide to other countries might seem more clear to the, to the West. Inside.

Can I first bring in a voice that we haven't heard from yet? You, you go ahead and introduce yourself. Yeah, so my name is, um, Idris. I'm studying biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences at Leeds University. I mean, I think everybody's obviously making great points, but Constantine, I want to ask you about, you say how great the Western world is. So I was actually born here in the UK itself. The Western world is actually not that great because the reason being is what about slavery? Say, for example, obviously all the innocent people that are from different ethnic minorities are obviously being slave-driven and their voices are not being heard. So freedom of speech really doesn't exist, I don't think, in the Western world. What about slavery specifically? So, and I'm saying that I feel like as if freedom of speech doesn't exist in the Western world for everyone because for people that are ethnic minorities, their voice is actually not being heard. And obviously, we talk about, like, obviously, uh, we talk about the Western narrative. I want to see what actually is written in the Western narrative because I can't actually find it anywhere what the Western narrative is. So I feel like it's just made up as it goes along. Okay.

Quite a lot of points there. Yeah, there's, we have to do some very quick responses. Okay, very quick responses. So, aggregating the two points that you guys made. So first of all, we should define what we're talking about when we talk about free speech. The first point about free speech is the ability to criticize the government and the society in which you live. So when I say, where is a better place to be able to criticize your government, or let's say the dominant religion, right, in that particular society? You can criticize Christianity in the West.

Can criticize the British government, you can criticize the American government, and for by and large, you're going to be fine. I take your point, and I made of myself about Julian Assange. As for slavery, well, if you want to go there, my friend, let's go there. Uh, but not too far. Well, I mean, this is a conversation that is mind-boggling to me. In the West, let's be very clear, the reason there is no slavery in the world today—I mean, there's a lot of slavery in the world today—but in the parts of the world where there's no slavery is because the British Empire ended it. That's why there is no slavery. That is—well, look, the fact that you're uneducated about history doesn't mean it's funny. So let me educate you now. Let me educate you now. Let me educate you now.

I know that the woke narrative and the anti-Western narrative on slavery—oh, you're not practicing free speech very well, are you? You're not practicing free speech very well, are you? The moment I say something you don't like, practicing free speech very well, are you, sir? I thought you were all about free speech. How about you let me finish my point? Let's finish. Let's finish the point, and then I'm going to now, and then I will bring it to—and the anti-Western narrative on slavery is: there was no slavery, and then the British or the Americans came along, and they started slavery. Slaves were the first good that were ever traded between human beings, ever. They were the first good ever traded. Native Americans had slaves, Ottomans had slaves, Africans had slaves. Everybody had slaves. The reason there is no slavery in the West is the British Empire, having practiced slavery for a long time, like everybody else, ended it. Not only that, not only that, the British Empire then spent a tremendous amount of blood and treasure to force the Middle Eastern slave traders, with the Trans-Saharan slave trade being much worse than the transatlantic in terms of the number of people who were killed, constantly, in terms of how long it lasted, it was much worse. And we spent a tremendous amount of blood and treasure to stop it. That's the true history of slavery. That's not what the gentleman said. I heard what the gentleman said. I would like to come in and say, I think it's very, very important what you said because you said something that, in fact, is interesting. This goes to an uncomfortable conversation. When you look at, uh, the rise of Donald Trump and populism in America, why is that? Because you had a lot of people who felt threatened and demeaned and left behind in the success equation. They saw a Northeastern, mostly liberal establishment come in and screw them and basically say, you're left behind. What I heard you say is that minorities, in a system that supposedly pro-free speech, pro-civil rights, pro-democracy, they are left behind, harassed, and don't enjoy those benefits. Did I get that largely right about what you said? You did. Yeah, that's right. So I just want to say that's, that, that element that you talked about is driving this sense of humiliation and feeling demeaned that many communities around the world feel today. It's driving a lot of the hate. And what's different about the time we're in, and we're talking about journalism in part, is journalism is being asked to carry the load for that tension inside these societies when they're going through all of this. And it's very, very difficult, uh, uh, for them to do because those societies don't often want to stick together anymore. There's a concept, civitas. You struggle vigorously, Constantine, and I can struggle vigorously, but we know at the end of the day, we're on the same ship. There's mutual respect, even if we strongly disagree with each other. That is coming apart and is increasingly frayed in my country. And I got the sense from what you said, quite emotionally, that that's what you felt. That's right. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Thank you. I'm going to bring in Fitsum, just one more voice, and then we're going to have to move on, unfortunately. Okay, thank you. My name is Fitsum. I'm originally from Ethiopia, and I'm learning at the University of Bradford. I agree with what you have said because, uh, if it is not Western, who will take global justice? I agree with that because of this is overtaking the leadership of, uh, global power. So, my question is, what about the accountability? Accountability? Yeah. Because, uh, we have seen that, uh, every global justice, what currently Western take, depends upon their geopolitical interests. Because when the war started in the Palestine, and this trial, everything forgotten about Sudan. So, is it really feasible? And what, how can you see that?

No, my honest view, very, very quickly, is that we should stop pretending that anyone cares about global justice. Nobody does. Civilizations pursue their own interest as best they can. If China was the most dominant country in the world, they would pursue that. If Russia was the most dominant country in the world, they would pursue their own interest. The West is pursuing its interest. And, uh, if we want to stop being hypocritical, we should stop pretending that we're acting in the interest of global justice and say simply that we're acting in the interest of our own citizens, which is a perfectly legitimate thing to be doing.

So, I'm going to contradict myself and actually take two more voices because this is a really interesting point. So, Ma, would you like to go first? And then we'll come to Yassine. Uh, yes. My point is, um, number one, when we literally have a war going on in Sudan, that's called "The Forgotten War" because of the lack of coverage that we're having on it. I understand that we're here, and we're here to come talk about the West and atrocities that it's done, but at the end of the day, we're not going to mention—if we're not going to mention the largest displacement crisis in the world, in which number one, there are millions of people that, or not even millions, but a million people that are having to flee from their own countries, um, and that are getting a lack of coverage because of that. Then, of course, I'm going to mention that. And also, um, I don't really understand what your, your, your stance is completely on the West. I'm talking to Constantine, um, because you keep on mentioning how, you know, people are getting free speech, but what about again, those ethnic minorities? Where does the free speech come in for them? And I'm talking as an African-American, where I feel like my people have been completely, completely suppressed in the way that they're able to, to talk about their own issues and the issues that are, have, that are in our community. So, could you give some examples of what specifically you mean? For instance, the, the, the lack of education, we're talking about the, the, the prevalent drugs that is going on in our community. We've tried affirmative action, and we tried other kinds of solutions, but, you know, you keep on mentioning freedom of speech, and we keep on mentioning that, you know, the West is the best place to have it be, but what about the ethnic minorities? What about the immigrant, the, the immigrant, uh, citizens? Can you—

Well, can I just bring in Yassine and then we will do the responses and then move on? Hi, I'm Yassine Abaz. I'm a Qatar University graduate. And I think that your so-called free speech is basically an UNO card that you get to play whenever it suits you. Otherwise, there are suddenly guidelines. And hey, I'm a teacher, so I'm all about guidelines. But when it's the other side, these guidelines just become squiggly lines that go all around to where it suits you.

Can, can I, I, I would, thank you for that intervention. I think that's really important. And to your point as well, um, you know, Sudan, Gaza, these are not the first things that have been thrown to the wayside. There was a clip just recently, I think it was on the BBC, of, of the broadcaster talking, um, about some conflict. I can't remember which one now, and he said, "But these, you know, these are people, these are blonde and blue-eyed people that look like us." You know, saying the quiet bit out loud. I think there's a lot of quiet bits that have been said out loud. And part of the problem, for me at least, is that when we talk about free press, or we talk about the media, and where is the attention? We're just talking about four or five outlets, you and I, aren't we? We're talking about CNN, we're talking about the New York Times. That we're all unified on our criticism of, um, but these are no longer the centers of, of, of journalism. These are no longer the role models to look up to. We have alternate models. I think perhaps, weirdly, we might all agree on this, um, that there are new models of journalism coming up. There are new models of press. We may not agree on who those are, but I think the standard established press has failed. And it's failed considerably, whether we look at Sudan, whether we look at Gaza, whether we look at climate change. Uh, you know, it's the news brought to you by Shell and Exxon, and owned by billionaires, and it's completely unreliable. And I think that's the case across the board. And so what you do, Constantine, is you provide a different platform for people to get news and debate from, right? And that's one person doing it. What do we know about Gaza? We know almost exclusively from Gazan journalists. You know, we don't know anything about what's happening there from the BBC, you know, CNN, neither the New York Times. It's an abuse now, what they're doing to the English language to avoid reporting what is happening on the ground. And we're going to have to start getting our news from journalists in Sudan in the same way that we're getting it from the Middle East.

Would you like to respond to that? Well, just to, to your point, I think you make a good point that the African-American community is disadvantaged in the United States. I think that's a separate issue from freedom of expression. Uh, and you've got to keep those two things separate. But I, I wouldn't disagree with you. I think the African-American community is in a bad way, and it's partly because it has been disadvantaged historically, and that's why it finds itself where it finds itself. Um, but I, I, I was curious to hear an example about specifically restriction of speech because it seems to me that the debate around those issues in the US, and I'm there frequently, is pretty fierce, pretty intense, pretty broad. Everyone gets to say what they say. So I think we may be in danger of conflating disadvantage and not having equal opportunity, which I agree with. And by the way, just on affirmative action, it didn't work because affirmative action never works. But, um, you know, on terms of the speech side of things itself, I actually think on that issue, there's probably a robust debate, uh, would be my view.

And can I just bring in Huda now? Thank you. Thank you. Um, my name is Huda Watne, and I graduated from SOAS. Um, I think what is important to highlight here is the shift of power and influence between traditional media, so TV, radio, newspapers, and social media, where not only we see, uh, other narratives, uh, emerging, but also strong criticism over government or politicians, or even media outlets that we, when we think people are doing things wrong, and these other narratives or other opinions are not censored, or people are not necessarily persecuted. Like, there is a change happening, especially amongst the younger generation. We don't consume media, um, the way people used to do before. So, I think that's something we have to recognize, especially in the West. Like, this is something that has been possible here, um, and that we have to acknowledge.

Well, can, can I just respond very quickly to this? And the, it's a very, very important point you raised, but I think it's very important to understand that the, the China—I'm an active user of TikTok. If any of you are on there and want to friend me, please feel free. Um, I, I defend TikTok. I look at it as a free speech issue. That said, there is this notion that I think goes really deep in this: do we all have free will, or are we guinea pigs that can be manipulated by algorithms? So the fear on the national security side of TikTok is that algorithms can be controlled, moved up in different ways to actually control the way a society, uh, operates, to control the information feeds that he get, that they get. And if that is controlled by a foreign hostile government, it creates vulnerabilities. And we can have that debate, perhaps, in another Doha Debates show. But I think it's very important to realize that what's happening in these debates is that increasingly, uh, governments are acting as if, in my view, they need to be your nanny on all of this because they don't trust you to be critical thinkers and to be able to process that somehow the signals that you get, the data you get, will create behaviors in you like a guinea pig in a, in a cage. I think it's a very important debate and discussion to have. So as you look at the changing shift from traditional media to social media and the, and the, the sizzle about social media now, I think it's important to ask, what do we need to have an honest discussion about? What are the vulnerabilities? Are there some? Okay. So if we haven't already, I do want to roll up our sleeves and dig deeper into the role that the media plays in all of this. When it comes to trust in the media, the UK dropped her last in the survey of 28 countries. According to a 2024 report, just 31% of people surveyed in the UK said they trusted the media to do what is right. Trust in media is also declining in the US, Germany, and Sweden. As a journalist based in the West, I find that both discouraging and depressing. While I see genuine efforts to platform diverse voices within a media landscape that's more encompassing than many news stories might have you think. You know, as an observer of how Western media covers global events, I do get why people feel it's not doing a good enough job to represent the facts. Let's take a look at what American historian Assad is doing to correct media bias. One of the reasons I focus on rewriting mainstream media headlines is because so much of the way that people consume information and therefore shape their opinions about world events is based on mainstream media. Yeah, and a lot of times they're not even reading the entire article, they're just reading the headlines. And so that's why social media has been such an interesting component because it challenges what mainstream narratives are. It challenges this idea that the victor, the people in positions of power, they get to write the story. But because of social media, ordinary people can contribute to how that story is written. So in this headline, you see two issues. Number one is when Palestinians are referred to, they're referred to as Gazans. There's no reference to Palestine or Palestinians anywhere in this particular headline. On top of that, there's no reference to Israel, even though it's discussing a specific attack that was carried out by Israel. You know, why are, are Palestinians weeping and praying over their loved ones? Because they were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Specifically, this particular headline, uh, was quite egregious because it referred to an attack on a UN school as a "former school." It's a former school because of that war, because Israel has destroyed so many universities and schools within Gaza, but it is still a UN school. It's just being used as a shelter by civilians. For me, personally, it's about, you know, it's less about editing the headlines themselves and more about drawing attention to how these narratives are shaped and how small changes to the wording can change the way that you think about it. And so the importance of that is that people should be presented with the facts, and people should be presented with the truth in an unbiased way, and then, in doing so, can draw their own conclusions.

So now let's get some responses from our onstage audience. Israel had a hand up first, and they'll come to you later, Ron. Um, so I want to touch on some points that, uh, Steve and Fatma also made. I think it's really interesting how most of the news that we're getting from Gaza, we're getting it from journalists in there, and there is a significant absence of Western journalists, um, there to report on this conflict. Um, and we see the rise on social media of social media of this kind of mobile journalists telling us the news, and we're getting it from that social media. But again, Instagram, very, very recently, they had shadow banning where they didn't allow this sort of content to get to people. Um, and especially as an Albanian, I have noticed that a lot of people who do not have media literacy and depend on mainstream media, they do not even know the, the sort of, um, support that Palestine is getting right now, and they're stuck in this bubble. So my question would be, do you think that this bubble is being created by Western governments? And why?

Well, if I can respond. Israel is not letting Western journalists cover Gaza. Israel is also imposing a check and balance on CNN. CNN has to run whatever it's going to, to air, through the Israeli military before it takes it on air. That's extraordinary. You know, and how does Israel have all this power, um, over CNN? How does Israel have the support of, sorry, the entire Western world, world as it does this? How does it have it? Uh, it's, it's amazing that whenever there's some problem somewhere in China or somewhere, all of the Western world will say, "Oh, we're very concerned about freedom of speech in China." But Israel not allowing journalists in somehow doesn't raise an eyebrow from France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, England, Portugal. I mean, there are reasons behind this which contributes that bubble, right? It's not, I mean, it's not a bubble. What they're trying to do is an abyss of darkness and silence. And, you know, those headlines specifically are designed to be passive. You know, it's always a Hamas attack, but it's always Gazans weeping and praying, or, you know, Gazans losing will to go on as difficulties continue. No, it's called purposeful starvation. It's not difficulties continue. You know, this is, this is very much deliberate, and it's not being pushed back on by, um, any of these countries that have freedom of speech as one of their core values for themselves. In the Iraq War, I believe we had a bubble on this conflict. I think that bubble is, is collapsing and failing. Because—

So I just want to challenge you for a moment. Uh, because we did see student protests in, in campus around campuses throughout the United States. We saw both, both sides, and, and, and people broke through. You see a generational difference in the way people are looking at American foreign policy and communication. That's something we have not seen for a long time. And you can argue whether that's, you know, whether they're on the right track or the wrong track. What I will say is, systems take cues from leaders. And the President of the United States, and not talking, uh, about the innocent victims in the Palestinian side of this, terrible equation that started with October 7th, until about three or four months in, I was very critical. I called out President Biden frequently, saying, "Why aren't you speaking to or talking about the victims and innocent victims, uh, in this conflict?" And it wasn't until the King of Jordan showed up on his doorstep that President Biden actually said something of real import, uh, and substantively about the human dimensions of the lives that were lost. But it took a long time to do that. And what I think is, should worry everyone, is that some, the New York Times, and a lot of others felt that—now, what's interesting is there is a lot of diversity. To come back to your point, this is, I find myself disagreeing and agreeing with you at the same time, is that nonetheless, a different set of, uh, players within journalism, a, a more fragmented media, began to actually inject, not just fringe media, began to inject the other side of it. So normally, I'd say you were right on the bubble, but in this particular case, I think that bubble is eroding. And if I can just intervene for one second, Steve, just very respectfully, I think since we're talking about narratives, you said it started on October 7th, and I think it's really important. Well, and to go back, and I, and I agree with that. You know, I, I agree with that. But yeah, so that is the power of narrative, right? So, yeah, absolutely. Yes.

So, first and foremost, I want to say there's no such thing as objective news media at all, right? That's the main mistake of the mainstream media in the United States, in the West, and across the world as well. Last week, President Biden looked weak and frail in front of the entire nation. And for three and four years, the media told us President Biden was not weak and fragile. In fact, it was all cheap fakes, it was all imagination, it was all right-wing pouncing. The media hides behind objectivity to advance certain partisan objectives. I think the solution behind this is to ensure the media is open about their biases. I have more respect for Fox News and MSNBC than I do for CNN or New York Times because at least I know what I'm seeing with Fox News or MSNBC. With the New York Times, they hide behind objectivity and the, so-called, "I'm above politics." In reality, they're not above politics. They're like everyone else. They're human beings. So I think that is the main solution behind the media. But second, my point is about free speech and more so media pluralism. The problem about free speech and the West is that again, FMA may make the mistake of orientalizing the West. Free speech is not the same across the entire region. The United States has much better laws in free speech than does in Europe. Here, you get fined for misgendering people. In the United States, thankfully, we have the First Amendment. But the thing is, if you decide to say that free speech is some, some sort of facade created by some sort of Western elite sitting somewhere in a back room trying to, trying to like oppress other people using this oppressor-oppressed framework, it's just not true at all. But it is, in fact, a Western narrative that's being pushed inside the media and academia as well, alongside other sorts of narratives. And second, media pluralism. There are plenty of other news sources out there, both on the left and the right, and across the world as well, that report on way different lot of things. So, for example, on the left, Jacobin, The New, in The New Republic, for example, reports frequently on left-wing topics. Same on the right with The Daily Wire and sort of Fox News and, and all the sort of outlets as well. I think the best way forward for media is to be open about their political biases and to show people who they are and what they really stand for because it makes it easier for people out there. I'm not as cynical about people as I think the, the hosts here are, but I think people really wanted to see the truth, and they want to see different perspectives, and they really want to read about it. And I think we should empower people to do so by being honest and open. And as we're seeing, institutional distrust fall, collapse in the West because the media is hiding behind objectivity.

Okay, great. Thank you. So let's move to Sarah now, and then Ramy. Sarah. So, hey everyone. Uh, my name is Sarah Al-Theab. I'm a student at King's College London. And I would like to add something about, uh, the conversation about bias in media. To be honest, I've heard a lot of negative implications mentioned about this bias in media. I would like to say that maybe media being biased, for example, in the US, isn't so bad in itself because I would say, maybe if we had many channels that were unbiased and told, for example, their own perspective or their own opinion, we're going to see that there's going to be a divide within the people. And what does this create? This just creates more polarizing opinions, and this creates like, uh, a more of a chance of for a civil war to happen within that state. So I think, uh, I would like to get opinions on whether you'd agree that there is a positive implication from biased media. And can I actually put this to you, actually, Constantine? How do you see media bias playing out when it comes to coverage of the, for the Ukraine-Russian war, for example?

It takes a lot to render me speechless, as you've already observed, but I'm still speechless from that incredible graph you showed earlier where China, China was the most trusted media place in the world. I mean, this is hilarious, right? It's like if you went back to the Soviet Union, you would have got 100% trust in media because the entire narrative is completely controlled. China is a country in which you can't even Google Tiananmen Square, and a whole bunch of Western apps are unavailable. The idea, the idea that we would put them on the same chart as Western countries is preposterous in and of itself. Now, as for Russia-Ukraine, as I said earlier, I'm, I'm, I, from the outset, have said that I think, uh, the West, or certainly the UK, which I'm a citizen of, needs to do everything it can to support the Ukrainians and their fight for their independence. However, we had a recent example with Nigel Farage, for example. I've had Nigel on my show. There's even a clip on our channel of me arguing with him about this issue. I think it's called "Nigel Farage versus Russian," or something like that. U, and he recently made comments, or rather, he was asked to make comments about the whole conflict. And when he shared his view, which he's had for probably two decades, about NATO expansion, European Union expansion, etcetera, he was immediately demonized as some kind of evil Putin monster, which I just thought was completely irresponsible. We have to be able to have a sensible debate about the issues. And this is why I completely agree with Steve. I, I wouldn't say it's a particularly Western phenomenon. I think in the West, we've done more than anyone to try and overcome these moral panics, actually. But nonetheless, human psychology, mass psychology, mass psychosis, what it is, we, we do get into problems where everyone thinks the same thing, no one's allowed to disagree, no one's allowed to voice a concern. It gets back to the quote of, "He who, he or she who controls the present controls the past." And it's a very, very important point, particularly on NATO expansion. There were a great number of people who were worried about what the consequences of NATO expansion would bring, and that people were looking at this as sort of a cheap way to, to have a raw, raw relationship in Europe, and that would be low cost. Well, our current director of the CIA in the United States, Bill Burns, a friend of mine, was our ambassador to Russia, wrote a memo in 2008 and said, "The expansion of NATO into Ukraine would be a neuralgic issue for the Russians." Now, Bill Burns is faithfully representing Joe Biden and the White House and all of this, but he wrote that memo. He's probably the most knowledgeable person in the US government on Russia, and he was worried about this. Does that mean that you don't expand NATO? Maybe you do, but you have to be cognizant of what the costs and consequences would be from the top analysts. And when you squelch that, you just cancel that debate. And it wasn't just Nigel Farage who was raising this. A whole squad of American foreign policy intellectuals were worried about the various dimensions of this and basically got squeezed out of the story. Right? That was a debate we should have been able to have. And the most important thing that worries me about the way we have conversations generally is people automatically assume that you're a bad person because you have a position that they don't agree with, right? We should be able to have the sorts of robust discussions we've been having today without coming away from that thinking, "Well, this person disagrees with me about Israel and Palestine or Russia-Ukraine, therefore they're a bad person." What if they just have a different perspective that you don't particularly like? That's the whole point of having the ability to have these conversations.

Okay, can I bring in our onstage audience? Abdurrahman, first. Thank you so much. Um, it's a great chance to ask this question. So, being lived in five countries and, uh, traveling to many countries in my lifetime, I've noticed that, um, so we say that the, the West might have developed very fast because of its values, uh, that are great. But I have a small question here to, uh, see, most of the countries I visited, which were meant to be, um, full of resources, somehow had bad management. And, uh, uh, some of the countries that, uh, are, they seem to be known for having little resources, had had better management in them. So things like the internet and cars actually came because of wars. What are the chances that the West advanced because of some lacks in resources and because of the colonization that happened? And because, um, and in some of the global South countries, they still think the third world and the first world is actually a ranking instead of whether you are following the West or the South back when the Second World War was happening? So, what are the chances that the reason why free speech is not being, uh, applied well in other governments is because the way the government is being run is not in line with the values of that country's people itself?

May I make just a very quick point? Just on your point, I, I'm not going to be able to cover all of your question, but I just wanted to pick on something you said. We hear this conversation about colonialism a lot now, especially in the West. Uh, the sad truth of the world is that every great empire and every great civilization was created through conquest. Uh, if you look at Russia on the map, it's the biggest country in the world. That didn't happen by holding hands and singing Kumbaya. Uh, I studied Islamic history when I was at university. The great successes of the, of the Caliphate in its early days were not achieved through holding hands and singing Kumbaya. Great civilization advances through conquest. When people talk about colonialism and complain, all I hear is losers complaining about losing. So that was not a complaint. I see that something happened again. I don't mean you specifically, I mean, just this whole narrative about colonialism. The point, the point is, um, the only word you heard from my friend was slavery, and the only word you heard from me was colonialism. My question was, and, and it's, it's well, as I said, your question is long and complicated. I'll simplify it. It's okay. So, if your, your, your point was, we create a lot of the things that we created through war, and many of our achievements were developed through that. My point to you is, all of human achievements were created through that to some extent. Absolutely, absolutely. My question was, we are saying, uh, we're all talking about Western narrative, not because we're trying to pick the best place and then we all can go live in. I think we're trying to find the way to advance the narrative in the world to the better for everybody as much as we can, if that's, uh, possible. I think it is. So, okay, um, so my question was, the value, you, you first say that everybody's following their interests, but then you say, I think the West values are the best. So, is it morals and values, or is it interest? I want to know. And is it because the other countries like Jordan, where they try to follow the Western narrative, as much as prices are the same as in the UK, but salaries are not even a third, is that because the values of the people are different from the values of the system that they are following?

No, I don't think it's because of that. Obviously, different countries have different resources and different histories and different geographical positions and different neighbors, etcetera. When I say every country and every civilization pursues its own interest, that's just a statement of fact. But in terms of values, the reason I say Western values are better is the West is the only place that the idea of government by consent, the idea of freedom of the individual, the idea of free market capitalism, and the idea that we should all be free to pursue our own interests as we see them fit, is even considered a value. That to me is the reason for success. Now, of course, the United States is not only successful because of their ideas. It's successful because it has a geographical monopoly on a continent. It's able to be completely free from invasion. It's a newly created country that was able to build infrastructure from scratch, and on and on and on and on we can go, right? But ultimately, what I'm saying is the values, you know, the reason billions of people have been lifted out of poverty around the world, you've got to think about this, right? In 1947, when the partition of India happened, the average life expectancy in India was 32. 32, right? Today, it's over 70. And the reason is because of capitalism. And capitalism was created right here in England. You should look it up. Sir, you, you should look it up.

So, Abdurrahman, we're going to, just, we've had such a robust conversation so far, I think it's fair to say, but we now have to move on to the part of the show that we call the magist. Probably a very important, crucial moment to, to bring this in now. A space for understanding multiple perspectives. So let's take a moment. Let's just breathe and reflect on the discussion so far. Did someone here say something that you hadn't considered before? Perhaps your perspective shifted? Perhaps it's become even more pronounced? Um, let's go to anyone in our, from our speakers and our onstage audience. Let's go first to, uh, to Tamim. Uh, so I actually do agree with, uh, about the chart, right? If we look at the countries like, uh, China, obviously there's a problem. And I agree there's a problem because people are sheltered in the amount of resources and media they consume. Now, in the West, it's true, right? There is some sort of multiple understanding of what's happening in the world, and that's why people are saying what they're saying. And I also agree with you with another, uh, thing is when you said the West acts in with its own interest, and that's why the United States is able to, uh, aid and abet a genocide in Gaza with impunity. The fact that this genocide has been able to continue to this day is for that reason, right? Let's be honest. Some nations are powerful in what they do, and that's the reason it succeeds. And this is where I have to maybe disagree a little bit with Steve, since I initially thought about algorithms for somehow, you know, when people say, you know, we need to worry about algorithms and think about A, B, and C, it's besides the point because it's like we're claiming that YouTube and all those, uh, uh, meta channels do not have an algorithm for themselves. And I also disagree with another thing. There were so many encampments, encampments for Iraq, for Vietnam, for South African apartheid, like the one in Columbia University, where students had to chain themselves to tell them like, hey, apartheid is bad, maybe some to divest. Same what's happening now. The issue for the West right now is people have access to that media much faster, and that's why people are speaking up in a much way that seems like it's a problem to the people empowered.

I think what's really interesting about this discussion is that it just, it splinters in so many wonderful ways. Like, you know, the West is wonderful because it has this great personal liberty, but everyone is terrified about like, "woke." What is woke? I mean, you know, what does it mean that you get fined for misgendering people? Like, who do you know who has been fined for misgendering people? Like, no one gets fined for misgendering people. I know lots of people. But we're in the agreement phase of—but that's, but that's the point. That's what I'm trying to say is that you're all about free speech until you have to call someone by the pronoun they wish, in which case then it's like, "No, you're imposing on me." You know, people are complaining about colonialism, but I haven't heard Europeans shut up about migration for the last 20 years. You know, that to me sounds like the complaining. You know, we talk, you mentioned, I mean, the student encampments, I'm really glad you mentioned those. And I think there's a couple of important things to say. Columbia University, again, you mentioned Columbia was the first Ivy League to divest from South African apartheid. And Columbia didn't do it because they lived in America where they have great values. They did it because students forced them to. The students insisted and didn't stop until it was done. Um, interestingly, you know, Hamilton Hall, which was renamed Hamilton Hall, was occupied by students and they renamed it Hinn's Hall. They also occupied it in 1985 and named it Mandela's Hall. No one at Columbia University was expelled for protesting the Vietnam War, and no one was expelled for protesting against apartheid, but they have been for protesting Palestine.

Okay, so we'll go to Israel first. Then I think there are amazing points made in this debate. Um, I'd like to, one of my first points that I'd like to comment on is how when we talk about the West, we always talk about their sort of promoting this global justice, whether they are or not in the rest of the world. However, I think it's really crucial, and this is all that I could think of as an Albanian, about how the West has failed the West as well. I mean, we have, uh, the Kosovo-Serbia War, who wasn't handled well. The Bosnia genocide, the Srebrenica genocide. The Irish has still not been compensated for what has happened. So, just acknowledging that the West itself has not handled the promoting justice within its own territories, um, and has sort of, what I understood from the other, um, speakers, is that they have, uh, this, let's say, in the other parts of the world. Something really interesting that FMA brought up is also how, so we see these students, these people picking up in the West, but then we don't consider the West, let's say, pro-Palestinian. So when we talk about the West, this is a question that I have in mind. When we talk about the West, is it the people? Is it the public? Is it the government that we're talking about? Because especially for this Palestine, as, as Steve also mentioned, because people now are individually looking for this information on social media, and people are looking at it firsthand. Is it now, can we say that the West is pro-Palestinian because we have 100,000 students and participants in pro-Palestine, uh, protests? Or is it, are we talking about merely the government and their policies? I think there's a big schism between people and governments. Personally, when I say West, I'm talking about governments and government institutions, and we know that there's a big divide because the people have been asking for a ceasefire for nine months, and no government has actually listened to their populations.

Okay, J. Hi, I'm Zaynab, a student at Georgetown University. It's always nice to hear my country's name getting brought up, but it's also sad that it gets brought up in a war. So I think Constantine, you're right. It's great that we live in the Western world where students from around the world protested to end the war that killed one-third of my country. I think that's absolutely beautiful. It is also equally true that these students risk getting their lives and their careers completely obliterated for speaking against foreign policy of the United States. So I think the way forward for me, as, you know, someone who comes from the third world and do not experience these freedoms firsthand, is that we're sick of seeing the West without accountability. We're sick of seeing the West coming to our countries, turning it into a wasteland, then calling it, "Hey, we've made peace." And when we, the people, call to them and say, "Can you please take accountability for turning our countries into the wasteland?" They're like, "No." So, is it true that, you know, there needs to be a change of narrative? Yes, but at the same time, who is taking charge of this accountability? The beauty of, you know, being here, like you said, is that we have checks and balances that let these kind of organic changes in government happen. But the thing is, it's not happening. Which is why we're sick of it, and we're rebelling against it. That is the pathology of mistrust, which is why you're giving vocabulary to a lot of those countries which you really don't like, Russia, China, name whatever, to criticize the Western ways that you know, you probably don't like. So, accountability. Thank you. We're just going to get a couple more thoughts, um, from Hannah, and then I'm going to throw to Ramy, and then to you. Um, so thank you all for sharing all of those insights. I think the starting point of the end of this conversation should actually be a point you raised, Constantine. So you said, "It's not the West's responsibility to promote global justice." I'm glad that that's the case because they've not been very good at it. But I think we have to ask ourselves, then, where do we go from here? And at the heart of the answer to that question lies what you mentioned, Steve. You said the heroes that are actually, you know, going against the tide and doing everything in their power, even when it's come at the expense of their own livelihoods, to try and paint a truthful picture as best as they can. And I think it also comes in empowering regional voices and regional outlets. FMA, the five outlets that you've mentioned, or the ones that we're all unified in our stance against, I think the biggest issue is unfortunately the vast majority of people continue to rely on them as their primary news sources. But we're seeing new, um, organizations spearheading efforts to try and create a truthful narrative again, like Al Jazeera. So I think it's going to become vital in these next couple of years or in the future to actually empower regional voices to pick up this conversation and try and find some redress to what the West has so far, um, completely failed at doing, which is promoting global justice.

Okay, and then we'll just go to Ramy, and then we'll have some final thoughts. I personally believe that we should have that, I don't, I don't believe Western narratives should be completely like shut down. I'm not saying that at all. I do think Western narratives are, are, are good. I mean, if we got rid of them, then that's not equal. We're just treating it, we're just treating Western narratives and the people who report on them as, you know, as, as horrible monsters and, you know, villainizing it and treating other news sources as victims. I believe that we, that there should be an equal amount of Western, Eastern, Southern, and Northern, or even Central. And there should be a more balanced and equitable, um, reporting on issues around the world. I mean, we, I mean, if other cultures can have been doing it for thousands of years, such as the, the, as like the, the Arabian Gulf, we have the Maghreb, sort of what we're doing right now, but there's also the, um, the meeting houses of the people of Samoa in the Fale houses. So why not? Why don't we have all these inputs from other places too? Why, I'm just saying that like, say, a curry or a stew or biryani, you don't, if we put too much of one ingredient, in this case, the Western narratives, it's just going to be, you're just going to have a whole pot of, of wet meat. And so essentially, we, I'm not saying we need to cut, we need to cut Western narratives out entirely out of the conversation. I'm just saying we need less of it and more balance. Give, give more light to other news sources and other, other, um, inputs from other cultures that don't get a lot of attention.

Okay, thank you for all your contributions. Now let's get some final thoughts from the speakers, starting with you, Constantine. Well, in the spirit of agreement, I mean, the thing that makes me very sad listening to this conversation all the way through is that when I was your guys' age, I remember protesting against the invasion of Iraq on the basis that it would lead precisely to the type of conversation that we're now having. The West cannot undermine its moral authority by doing things that are immoral. Uh, and the reason partly we are where we are is that the West has done many immoral things. The persecution of Julian Assange, which you brought up, Guantanamo Bay, all of these things that should never have happened, are one of the reasons that we're here. So I completely agree with the criticisms that have been made in that sense, uh, that doesn't mean, as I've said before, uh, other societies are better. It means that the West must do better. And I completely agree, U, that it must. Uh, uh, oh, and the New York Times is trash and must be destroyed. And I here, look, look how we've come full circle. I agree with Constantine. The New York Times is trash. Um, and I think we, you had really great points, um, just now. I mean, accountability is such an important part, or should be an important part of this conversation. Uh, it's, it's been missing. And I think the demands to insist on accountability will change some of the landscape. It will probably change, um, what Ramy is saying, it will rebalance the equation slightly. And I think that's a, that's a wonderful thing. Uh, it, we need equilibrium and, and accountability, and this is part of what I hope, um, fosters both those things. Thank you. What I'm thrilled about is, is that I'm hearing a serious conversation among serious people, you know, talking about this evolving terrain and topography of identity and our place in the world and power and interests, and this tension between values and interests, which we just barely got into, is something we've been struggling with for a very long period of time. And the players are going to change, and the relative weighting of different players is going to change. And I, uh, uh, not just in the spirit of agreement, but occasionally, very rarely, I'm an optimist. Um, and I do think in moments of chaos and moments of a major crisis, sometimes lead to, uh, all of us beginning to think about, you know, what, what kind of world we want to live in. I, I hope my country, the United States, begins to have a serious discussion about what kind of democracy it really wants to have. Uh, I'm not sure we'll get there, but we'll see. But I think there are moments like this that are very useful. And I just want to say what a pleasure it was to listen to all of you. Thank you.

Thank you as well for all of your contributions. We've unfortunately come to the end of our debate. Uh, thank you to our speakers, Fauto, Steve, Clemens, and Constantine Kissen. And thanks to our onstage audience for your brilliant insights and [Music] contributions. And thank you to our partner and host, Bradford Literature Festival. Thank you to the C Foundation for bringing all of us together. But let's not stop here, but continue the conversation online. Find us on all social media platforms at Doha Debates and at Bradford Litfest. Thank you again, and goodbye. [Applause]