At least since the end of the Cold War, we have come to view the onset of a domestic authoritarian moment as an impossibility. This is because we have treated free, democratic societies not only as preferred political systems, but as the inevitable products of the progress of human history. By contrast, autocracies seem an ugly and fading holdover from a more primitive past.

But the truth is that the modern democratic era has been unbelievably short-lived. By treating it as an inevitable end-state, rather than a fragile experiment, we run the risk of not seeing its decay until it is too late.

The rise of totalitarian regimes across the world threatens to dislodge the US as the sole global hegemon and thrust us back into a world of warring ideologies. Far more insidiously, beyond the spectre of external adversaries, the threat of Western countries’ slow metamorphosis into surveillance states is very real.

To defend democracy and freedom, we must first recognise their precarity. This requires us to embrace intellectual humility through rational discourse, while simultaneously refusing to acquiesce to the gradual disintegration of our way of life. Above all, we must resist any infringement on our fundamental right to free speech; in the words of George Orwell, ‘like a drug, the machine [of censorship] is useful, dangerous and habit-forming. The oftener one surrenders to it the tighter its grip becomes.' The erosion of free expression is the clearest gateway drug to tyranny.

As historic values and the formerly robust confidence in Western institutions fade, cheap conspiratorial narratives grow more and more attractive. These narratives swap a belief in individual responsibility for one that is centred on grievance and victimisation. The abdication of personal responsibility is being leveraged as a tool by means of which today's growing conspiratorial vanguard can justify their real aim - a greater concentration of power in their own hands. As a society, we should remain perennially sceptical of simple solutions to complicated problems and must remain steadfastly committed to the pursuit of truth and the defence of our civil liberties.

This blog seeks to bridge the gap between historical precedent and today’s political challenges, with a special focus on analysing the complexities of the right to free speech. By reading this blog, you are supporting a push for guarding the values and free speech protections that have long served as the bedrock of our society.