Speaker’s corner has been the traditional international symbol for free speech since 1196 when the British crown began allowing condemned felons to use the site as a platform for their final soliloquies-even those critical of the government. In subsequent years British officials tolerated anti government tirades from dissidents including Karl Marx ,Fredric Engels,Vladimir Lenin and a legion of anachists so long as they spoke from that sacred sanctuary for debate and conversation.
On Saturday,that tradition ended with the arrest of the soft spoken German physician Dr Heiko Schoning who dared to question the government’s COVID orthodoxies.
Western democracy is now officially in crisis. Dr Schoning’s arrest marks the end of the long tradition of free speech that began on Speakers Corner and reached its apex in America’s adoption of the 1st Amendment in our Constitution.
Free speech has been under withering assault since 2019 when Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff ordered the internet companies that have privatized the public square to censor criticism of government vaccination policies. His pleas landed on willing ground;Virtually all of the Silicon Valley platforms have lucrative partnerships with vaccine makers and the mainstream media is utterly dependent on Pharma advertising revenues. Saturday’s mass arrests of peaceful protestors in Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park ,by riot police using violence and tear gas, marks our passage into the Post-Democracy era.
May Dr Schoning be the Crispus Atticus of the new democratic resistance.