Chairman of Dorset Humanists, Editor of Humanistically Speaking, Humanist Rep for Holocaust Memorial. Social Democratic Party (UK). Free speech & own opinions.
United Kingdom
Joined October 2013
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David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
I have seen many ugly things on social media. But after the murder of Charlie Kirk, something new and disturbing appeared.
My feed was filled with people celebrating his death with grotesque glee.
Videos of Kirk were chopped, twisted and repurposed by users, making him appear to say things he never said – all to justify their hate.
Influencers and Left-wing ‘journalists’ joked about the father-of-two’s assassination, reducing his death to a sinister meme.
This is not just cruelty. It is the normalisation of violence against those who dare to think differently. A culture that cheers when opponents are silenced by force is one that is heading towards catastrophe.
Yes, Kirk’s murder is a personal tragedy for those who knew him.
But it is also an attack on everything Western civilisation stands for: free debate, peaceful dissent and the ability to speak the truth even when others find it offensive.
The assassination alone will have a chilling effect on free speech – and not just in America.
In Britain we may not have the menace of guns, but we face the same threat from Leftist activists trying to silence and persecute their political opponents. And, chillingly, our rulers are following their lead.
Take Graham Linehan, the comedian and writer who gave us Father Ted and who was arrested by five armed officers at Heathrow airport last month for three tweets challenging the presence of males in women’s changing rooms.
He had made no threats. He broke no moral code. He said what millions of ordinary people believe.
Yet the thought police came for him, because someone disagreed with Linehan’s belief that men cannot be women and called them in. That should terrify anyone who values living in a free country.
There are several ways in which free speech is being eroded in Britain, and the @Conservatives are going to fix them all. Two of them stand out.
First is the criminalisation of speech. Laws meant to prevent harm are now being used to police people’s own opinions. Offending someone has effectively been turned into a crime. That is wrong.
Second is politicised policing. Real and appalling crimes – like shoplifting, burglaries and rape – are going unsolved, yet police are being sent after comedians like Linehan for what they post online.
Justice is being twisted into a weapon against ordinary people while violent offenders and abusers walk free.
At a time when bakeries are locking up sausage rolls for fear of theft, this is a waste of police time and a betrayal of voters who expect officers to protect public safety rather than for them to arbitrate on personal disputes.
Of course, what happened to Charlie Kirk and to Graham Linehan are on different scales. But both are symptoms of the same sickness: a culture that seeks to silence, not debate.
Worse, we have a government that sneers at those who dare raise the alarm about the erosion of free speech.
That is why I have asked Lord Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, to lead a review into the laws now being abused to stifle expression.
He will bring together the sharpest legal minds, parliamentarians and campaigners to identify where reform is needed.
Because this is bigger than one case – free speech is the foundation of democracy. Without it, there is no accountability, no creativity, no freedom.
I have never flinched from that fight. As equalities minister, I challenged Stonewall’s attempts to rewrite the law, defended academic freedom and said what too many feared to say: there is no right not to be offended. Protecting people from satire or criticism is not the job of the state.
Charlie Kirk paid the ultimate price for expressing his beliefs. And Graham Linehan is being dragged through the courts for sharing his.
Free speech is not negotiable. It is the bedrock of a free nation and one of the values true liberals and true conservatives share.
It is now the duty of all of us to defend it.
David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
Wonder what the UK would do if Islamic terrorists built an enclave near London, dug a tunnel system larger than the underground, slaughtered 7000 Londoners, took 1250 hostage and fired 10,000s of rockets at the City...
You'd hope they'd wipe the terrorists out. Wouldn't you?
David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
The reflex to accept that you should never hear a position that offends you has to be rooted out from our civil societies. Things that offend us are part of the stressors of life, and we must be able to withstand these. Seneca explained that strong trees are those that evolved to withstand the power of ferocious winds. Being offended is akin to facing strong winds. It will make you stronger, and a better debater. You don't have the right to threaten (or worse) someone else because you are offended. Please internalize and spread this important message.
David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
Navi Pillay's UN inquiry on Israel just released a report accusing Israel of “genocide.”
We asked legal expert Salo Aizenberg to take a look.
Turns out the report is a complete travesty. See his devastating rebuttal here: 🧵
unwatch.org/un-watch-rebutta… @Aizenberg55
David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
🧵I wrote a rebuttal of UN's new "report" accusing Israel of genocide for @UNWatch It is filled with fake data, fake intent, fake evidence. It erases Hamas. 10/7 is presented as something Israel did—including taking hostages (really!). See more below 1/ unwatch.org/un-watch-rebutta…
David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
The new UN commission report accusing Israel of "genocide" is impressive. It is an impressive collection of Hamas or distorted data points while leaving out any data that contradicts the false accusations. The report is wild. It contains no mention of:
- Hamas disposition, composition, strength
- Hamas tunnel network
- Hamas causing civilian harm and destruction in Gaza (from their misfired rockets, booby trapped homes/tunnels, direct killing/torture of Gazans)
- Hamas well documented use of human shielding (to include using civilian infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, mosques, homes for military purposes)
- Illegal taking/holding of hostages (hostages mentioned only 4 times as their return as a questionable objective for Israel)
- Legitimate military targets in Gaza
- All humanitarian efforts taken by Israel (unprecedented) from over 2 million tons of aid, 2 million vaccinations, 14 million liters of water from Israel a day, electricity to desalination plants, support to hospitals, transfer of patients, etc.
But it does contain:
- Any and ever unqualified Hamas number
- Distorted false reports such as the Guardian report on number of Hamas killed
- Any statement of an Israeli official they could take out of context like doubling down on "Amalek." They insist any Smotrich or Ben-Gvir statement "should be assessed to determine whether they constitute incitement to commit genocide."
The commission report is a collection of cherry-picked data that started with a goal to prove an accusation. It does not show Israeli specific intent to destroy a group, in whole or in part at all.
Israel is trying to destroy Hamas. That is not genocide. That is war.
Israel is waging their war against Hamas while taking more measures than any military in history to prevent harm to civilians and providing unprecedented humanitarian aid to civilians during active combat, all despite the actions of Hamas to cause harm to civilians, their own population.
NEW: The Pillay Commission’s 72-page paper accusing Israel of “genocide” collapses on the law and the facts — ignoring Hamas’s war, relying on dubious data, and inventing intent.
🔗 Read UN Watch’s legal rebuttal by @Aizenberg55: unwatch.org/un-watch-rebutta…
David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
There’s a deep underlying analogy between what has happened to Charlie Kirk since his murder and what has happened to Israel since October 7. In both cases, there was a clear act of violence against an innocent victim. And in both cases, instead of recognizing the wrongness of that violence, many have sought to blame the victim—pointing out their faults as if that somehow justified the killing.
They fail to grasp that innocence, in relation to a crime, does not require moral perfection. A person can be flawed and still not deserve to be killed. A country can have problems and still not deserve massacre. But instead of acknowledging this, they fixate on imperfections—real or invented—in order to make the violence seem less shocking and less criminal.
And it doesn’t stop there. They don’t just highlight flaws—they engage in libel: decontextualizing quotes, spreading distortions, even fabricating claims, all to create the impression that the victim deserved it. The goal is not explanation, but to exonerate the perpetrator.
That’s the core of the analogy. Whether in the form of antisemitic libel or more general attacks, libel functions to erase the very concept of innocence. It turns victims into aggressors and makes illegitimate violence look justified.
David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
Believe it or not, I had an old school friend on today’s marches in London. He sent me some photos from the crowd.
We went to middle school together and grew up on the same Eastern District council estate in Northampton.
I asked him why he was there. He gave me two answers:
1.“The government doesn’t listen to us.”
2.“I want to feel proud of my country again.”
He wore a Union Jack, not a St George’s Cross as he said that one had been hijacked by racists.
He wasn’t there for Hopkins, Musk, or any of the professional ‘grifters’ as he put it. He was there to feel part of something bigger, though he admitted there were a lot of, in his words, “assholes” there.
He’s an electrician. He’s smart. He’s not racist, but he’s not “PC” either. He’s not a fan of Keir Starmer but he also believes Farage would be a disaster.
Oh yes, he’s a bundle of contradictions! But aren’t we all?
I don’t know what ‘box’ we put him or the millions like him in. And I think pretending they’re all racists or fascists would be a massive mistake.
Some were. But not all.
This is about something bigger than immigration slogans or GDP numbers. For decades we’ve hollowed out our national life, underfunding and undermining the very institutions that once brought us together.
Karl Polanyi, writing in The Great Transformation, argued that when markets are “disembodied” from society, when land, labour, and life itself are treated as commodities
society pushes back. He called this the “double movement”: people seeking to protect themselves, to reclaim dignity and meaning when everything solid seems to melt into air.
That’s what I saw in my friend’s photos. Not just anger, but a demand for belonging.
We’ve replaced collective experience with atomisation. Without getting too nostalgic, programmes like the BBC’s Generation Game once pulled in millions every Saturday night, giving us something we could all talk about on Monday morning. Now we watch Netflix, Disney+, Prime, or Paramount, alone, in algorithmic silos.
Football used to be affordable and rooted in community; now it’s millionaires playing for the profitability of billionaires. The NHS, the post office, the railways - all chipped away, run down, sold off or centralised, leaving people feeling powerless and disconnected.
And don’t get me wrong: some kind of “Hovis Labour” nostalgia for the 1950s isn’t the answer. The country back then was often intolerant, grey, and deeply unequal. But what we’ve built since is a society that gives people little to hold in common, no collective story about who we are or what we’re for.
I reckon that’s partly why my mate marched. Not because he wants to turn back the clock. But because he wants to feel pride again. Pride in a country that is inclusive, fair, and offers a role for everyone. Pride in a nation that has a respected place in the world, tackles grotesque inequality, and gives people something real to believe in.
Polanyi warned that when democracies fail to provide a humane alternative, the backlash can turn authoritarian. This is how fascism grew in the 1930s, not because everyone became a true believer, but because millions felt abandoned and looked for strength, identity, and meaning wherever they could find it.
If Labour and progressives don’t offer that story of renewal, if we don’t rebuild our national institutions, restore collective pride, and re-embed markets within society, the far right will do it for us, in their own image.
And by then, it will be too late.
David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
Funny how no one ever seems to criticize the Houthis for violating Israel’s sovereignty.
David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
They’re not just boycotting a country— they’re boycotting survivors.
Ireland 🇮🇪
Spain 🇪🇸
Slovenia 🇸🇮
The Netherlands 🇳🇱
All are threatening to boycott Eurovision if Israel is allowed to perform.
Don't forget who represented Israel last year:
Yuval Raphael, a young woman who survived the Nova Music Festival massacre, where hundreds of young people were slaughtered by Hamas terrorists.
While countries with far worse human rights records, are welcomed on global stages, Israel, the lone Jewish state, is singled out and shamed.
This isn’t about music. This is about Europe isolating and targeting Jews. Again.
David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
Since October 7, it’s been clear to me that we’ve entered a fundamental bifurcation—not unlike the Dreyfus Affair, when society split in two, revealing who stood for justice and who stood against it.
Once again, the fault line formed around Jews. A hostile majority rallied around its favorite scapegoat, spreading lies and libels, trying to impose powerlessness on a hated minority. Jews are the canary in the coal mine—and what begins with us always has universal stakes. Even now, the segment of society that refuses to abandon Jews pays a steep price as the libels intensify and go mainstream.
But the universal moment is here. To speak of good and evil doesn’t mean those on the side of good are perfect. The Allies were not flawless, but they were the force of good against the Axis. Today, the camp of decent, sane human beings faces a camp of monsters—those who cheer Charlie Kirk’s death, who legitimize Hamas, who spread lies about Israel.
And let me be clear: standing against evil is not demonization. Evil people also call their enemies “evil” to dehumanize them. But that does not mean we are the same. The rabbis understood this when they shaped the birkat ha-minim prayer, the blessing against the heritics. Inspired by David’s psalms, it once called for the downfall of the wicked (reshaim). Over time, it was refined: not the downfall of the wicked, but of wickedness (risha) itself.
That is the heart of the matter: the fight is not to hate the person, but to hate their evil alone. Not to call for annihilation, but for renewal and repentance. And that’s the fundamental difference between us and them.
David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
Every single person on the left should really, really listen to this.
David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
Charlie Kirk’s assassin Tyler Robinson, 22, killed him because he hated his opinions and thought he was a fascist. Yet ironically, HE was the fascist, killing someone to silence their opposing views.
The woke left love to say ‘speech is violent.’
It’s not - violence is.
David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
I hope I'm wrong.
But tonight feels like some sort of invisible line has been crossed that we didn't even know was there. The last time I felt like this was 9/11 when it was clear, without knowing the how and the what, that the world was about to change forever.
Like the rules of the game had been permanently altered and there was simply no going to back to the innocent, peaceful past.
I didn't feel like this when an attempt was made on President Trump's life. If I had to rationalise why I didn't, I guess it's because several US Presidents have been shot at and even assassinated. Somehow it was within the realms of the possible, no matter how awful.
But to murder a young father simply for doing debates and mobilising young people to vote for a party that represents half of America? This is something else.
Charlie's death is a tragedy for his wife, his children and his family. I don't pray often. I am praying for them tonight.
But I fear his murder will be a tragedy for all of us in ways we will only understand as time unfolds.
I hope I'm wrong.
David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
If you believe free speech is for you but not your political opponents, you're illiberal.
If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you're a fundamentalist.
If you believe the state should punish those with contrary views, you're a totalitarian.
If you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you're a terrorist.
David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
The assassination of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy. He devoted his life to arguing for what he believed in as eloquently as he could, always engaging with his political opponents in good faith and modelling the value of open and honest debate. Free speech cannot be allowed to die with Charlie. Now more than ever we need to stand up for the free exchange of ideas. That is the best way – the only way – to resolve our political differences. If we resort to violence, liberal democracy cannot survive.
Lord Young of Acton, General Secretary, the Free Speech Union UK
Jillaine Heather, Chief Executive, the Free Speech Union New Zealand
Reuben Kirkham and Dara Macdonald, Co-Directors, the Free Speech Union Australia
Lisa S Bildy, Executive Director, the Free Speech Union Canada
Sara Gon, Director, Free Speech Union South Africa
Jon Benjamin, Chief Executive, Free Speech Union International
David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
'The meaning of life is to live it, as wholly as we can, as abundantly as we can, as bravely as we can, here and now.' A wonderful words by child psychologist, educationalist and humanist James Hemming ❤️#TheLittleBookofHumanism
ALT The meaning of life is to live it, as wholly as we can, as abundantly as we can, as bravely as we can, here and now, sharing the experience with others, caring for others as we care for ourselves, and accepting our responsibility for leaving the world better than we found it. James Hemming.
David Warden 🏳️🌈🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🎗 retweeted
There's a passage in both the Talmud and the Quran to the effect of: "When you take one life, you destroy the world."
Any life. From a child in Gaza to Charlie Kirk. Violence is wrong in every case; it blackens our hearts & degrades our humanity.
It has to stop - for EVERYONE.