Can European democracies govern truth without destroying it, and should they?
We face an unprecedented information crisis of disinformation, deepfakes and algorithmic manipulation, overwhelming institutions and norms built for a slower, more stable public sphere. But can today’s democracies regulate truth without sliding into authoritarianism? Should they? And if not, what solutions might arise instead?
Kite Insights founder & CEO Sophie Lambin moderated the debate ‘Democracies should govern the truth’ at the Systems Transformation Hub in Brussels a few weeks ago, at the invitation of Club of Rome President Sandrine Dixson-Decleve. (The Systems Transformation Hub offers strategic guidance for European policymakers to accelerate systems change within the current economic structure toward a healthy society within planetary boundaries).
In this fascinating Debatable-curated debate, speakers examined whether European democracies were up to the task of governing the truth, what alternatives might work, and what the job of a democracy might be in relation to truth.
FOR: The case for intervention:
We’re already past the point of choice, argued journalist and author Nafeez Ahmed. "Either elected governments assert democratic authority over the conditions under which information circulates, or that authority remains with billionaire-owned platforms, oligarchic capital, and hostile political networks operating with no accountability."
Activist Laura Sullivan of the Flamingo Collective noted that current democracies and leadership are captured by corporate interests – yet we still need them to govern truth. So we need to rebuild the trust and participation that legitimise democratic governance.
Adrian Monck argued that democracies already regulate truth extensively, through laws against perjury, fraud, and libel – so how did Big Tech get an exemption from rules that apply to everyone else?
Democracies should govern truth, but only if they hang together. Regulation requires leverage. Leverage requires scale. Scale requires unity.
AGAINST: The case for restraint and alternatives:
On the Against side, author Hugh Pope argued that disinformation is a symptom, not the disease that needs treated. It’s a symptom of a broken top-down system, and the solution is participatory structures like citizens’ assemblies, rather than more centralised control.
Laura Shields contended that we cannot regulate or govern for the truth, but we can instead govern to build literacy, tolerance and empathy.
And Kirsten Dunlop of Climate-KIC drew a crucial distinction: Truth is not created by governments and thus cannot be governed by them; rather, it emerges from discourse, distributed intelligence and diverse perspectives. “Truth governed by the state becomes ideology,” she said. Consequently, democracies should protect the pursuit of truth but not claim to be the authority on what truth is.
Jury members Jean-Marc Lieberherr Monnet of the Institut Jean Monnet, Adam Weiss of ClientEarth and Michael Northrop of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund raised challenges and paradoxes: we may need intervention, but no institutions yet exist that we can trust to intervene. Yes, democracies should govern reliable information flows, but current democracies, captured by corporate interests and disconnected from citizens, cannot do so without deepening distrust. Before regulating truth, we need to rebuild the trust and participatory institutions that make democratic governance legitimate.
The debate was preceded and followed by episodes of Stand With Courage – a documentary about Sandrine Dixson-Decleve’s grandfather, a WWII Resistance fighter and concentration camp survivor and a musing on resistance, freedom and everyday heroism.
In concert, debate and film created a space for collective reflection: what kind of everyday courage do we need in Europe, what kind of empathy and coexistence, to shore up the cracks in democracy’s foundations and for truth to prevail?