Something doesn’t add up here.
The Democratie Monitor wrongly labels Volt Nederland’s refusal to debate Forum voor Democratie as antidemocratic. Refusing to debate does not hollow out democracy. Legitimising actors who deploy norm and fact erosion as a strategy does.
Why do we say this? Freedom of speech is not a licence to normalise disinformation and the denial of, for example, climate change. Not every platform is a right. Editors and politicians can and should weigh up whether participation, and the form it takes, serves or harms public discourse. That is not censorship. Giving oxygen to lies and extremist ideology helps no one. Reasonableness disappears and toxic polarisation rises.
A resilient democracy is entitled, even obliged, to defend its own rules when those rules come under attack. Or, better still: “To maintain a tolerant society, it must be intolerant of intolerance” (Karl Popper).
A proposal to the Democratie Monitor: update your assessment framework. Look not only at whether someone refuses a debate, but also at the context of structural deception and manipulation, the public interest, and the impact on fundamental rights. Democracy is not a ritual of numbers, nor of endless contradiction built on disinformation and fear. Democracy is a set of values that requires active protection.
This is a revised version of an earlier post that may have given the impression that the Monitor spreads disinformation. In our view, that is not the case.
