This statement expresses our opposition to any exclusionary & speech-suppressing chokehold over academic publishing, by any single ideology (whether 'Left' or 'Right'). This of course includes all ideologies that use loudly declared 'inclusion' for the deceptive purpose of a de facto ultra-politicized 'exclusion' of things they happen to disagree with. Things officially 'disfavoured' by Grand Controllers of an ideology. 'Disfavoured' by obligatory Maîtres à penser who (even though often already physically long defunct) shape a social messaging apparatus, a 'social pressure' engine. Obligatory Maîtres à penser who, dead or alive, supply all the approved catchwords, neo-terms, slogans, turns of phrase, mechanically cited / repeated talking points. The Maîtres à penser whose verbal vehicles continually ascend up the structural verticals of messaging systems, to become that which all Humans wishing to keep their jobs and avoid ostracism and 'HR disciplinary measures' must believe, express, and bow to. The Maîtres à penser who continually manufacture 'social proof' of the inescapable necessity to follow their every dictate -- because one surely could not disagree with 'what everyone does' and 'what everyone wants to be seen as'. The Maîtres à penser who constitute a non-elected and self-glorified Vanguard of 'operatives' and gatekeeprs required to run a mind-adjusting "permission structure" machinery (a term initially borrowed from advertising context). A "permission structure" machinery that ultimately auto-validates, in circles of dependent (non)'reasoning', self-reinforcing communication and Narrative arcs that seek to nullify all autonomous methods of research, analysis, and validation -- to the extent that the Controllers of the seemingly unassailable "permission structure" engine ultimately believe their own artifice, regardless of any contrary data, manifest fallacies, glaring errors, logical gaps, and even evidence of their own blatant manipulation of relevant data. They become unable to see anything they have not been conditioned to see. They become creatures of their own thought-machine -- a machine that runs on knee-jerk obedience, conformism propped up by endless repetition of 'talking points' (the principle of the 'echo chamber' amplified through managed top-down social and institutional pressure), thought control, mass indoctrination, ' "whole of society" consensus', and forced modification of behaviour, whether implemented by corporations or by The State (and perhaps enforced by subservient 'psychiatrists' [USSR-style]).

The problem with all of that is that an underlying Reality exists. There is real-world evidence outside the narrative Hall of Mirrors, and real Reality often differs from rhetorically (politically, ideologically) invented and messaged 'Reality'. Defence of free speech is thus NOT some sort of 'obsession'. It is NOT a Police-analyzable 'fixation' (using the latter term, for instance, constitutes a classic crude deployment, for overtly political purposes, of funded pseudo-pyschology jargon ['psychobabble'] -- of the kind implemented already many years ago in the USSR). The hoary trick of (re)framing as 'evil' any sort of disagreement with schematic speech and research restrictions is arguably the oldest fraudulent trick in Human history. Free speech is NOT 'toxic'. Free speech is NOT a 'liability'. What is a liability for Human progress and development, however, is hamfisted, blinkered, politicized, and crassly or even outright intentionally ignorant Censorship. 'Free speech' is both functionally useful, and essential for any kind of even minimally forward-looking society. "If all think the same, no one is actually thinking at all". It is unwise to throw away scholarly integrity just for the sake of 'correctly' filling some ideological compliance form. Viable future-oriented scholarship cannot really move forward -- CANNOT EVEN EXIST -- in a 'Struggle Session' atmosphere of ever-escalating 'thought purity checks' & 'allegiance tests' & 'oaths / affirmations of conformity'. Good research ≠ 'Consensus' or 'Party Line'. Good research ≠ 'Democratic Centralism'™. Ideological Vanguardism of all sorts unfortunately tends to become -- and has done so for millennia of recorded history -- a politically corrupt process. Eventually it subverts the scientific method. Thus, it promotes societal entropy and cascading system-failures. It also is a self-destructive. A wise Human Being will prudently consider and examine contrary ideas -- they may prove useful. To filter Human thought according to some one-page judicial 'injunction' and 'universal mandate', i.e. to suppress ('cancel') reseach regardless of actual quality and validity, is (a) foolish and (b) fraudulent. The PSR therefore opposes all administrative / judicial imposition of compelled speech and compelled terminology -- from whichever apparent "side" of the spectrum. We oppose all factions that aspire to 'total narrative control' -- a Grand Narrative (of whatever political stripe) . Let us be blunt: withholding evidence, 'scrubbing' ideologically awkward data from records, 'adjusting' documents, knowingly omitting pertinent conclusions, suppressing rival working hypotheses, etc. -- in the name of something like Political Communication or the Greater Good -- all of that is NOT scholarship. It is just plain old fraud. Even if done out of purported 'Effective Altruism' concern that data might be 'misunderstood' or 'misinterpreted'. When it becomes necessary to be panically afraid of real data, scholarship becomes just kabuki theatre -- there is no sashaying away from that. A commedia dell'arte with its Halequins, Pulcinellas, the pretentious Dottore, the Pantalone, the Capitano, the servant Zane ... Perhaps click on Pulcinella's image. below, listen, and reflect on various absurdities, heroisms, moments of clarity and moments of confusion ... Reality matters. A great deal.

		Hieronymus Francken I (††† 1610), "Die Compagnia dei Comici Gelosi bei einer Aufführung in Paris," c. 1590.

In c. 100 years none of the current ideological Commedia dell'Arte will matter one bit. Solid scholarship will matter, however. Bits of enduring meticulous data that endured de facto. Non-partisan individualist cutting-edge Human thought is a prize asset. Petty Bureaucratic Censorship obsessed with a hold-the-Narrative-dam-at-any-cost simply is a net liability. So are all related techniques of manipulation: e.g. de facto Censorship through selective thought-'adjustment' -- 'defamiliarizing' (i.e. 'cancelling') perfectly well documented data and knowledge. All ideologies, simply all of them, may and must be critically, courteously and Rationally questioned. We think very little of what the (legacy)media or a 'Political Class' may seek to present as 'permitted "Consensus" Thought' (i.e. induced 'groupthink'). We support (A) the Natural Right to ask 'inconvenient' questions, (B) the Natural Right to 'doubt', and to ground that 'based doubt' in thorough, re-examinable, and open evidence -- and (C) the Natural Right to always 'do one's own research' and publish it. Without ideological 'muzzling'. With sole regard for objective scholarly quality.[†] Thus, of course, we fully comprehend that our authors will cite -- as we ourselves cite and shall always cite, at our scholarly discretion -- whoever and whatever is Rationally relevant to a subject matter of thorough research. We are NOT going to abrogate that just because someone with a 'cause' feels suddenly (astroturf)'offended' for political, ideological, and factional reasons. That is NOT how comprehensive scholarship works. That would mean giving power-thirsty ideologues unlimited and unchecked discretion over what evidence in fact is, and what evidence may or may not be shown or heard or considered -- or even merely thought about. Thus, a crudest and most blatant Total Ideological Dictatorship. As in a Government Working Group 'tasked with' defining what words mean. From any researcher's point of view, that is beyond preposterous. Ultra-max cringe. A quantum leap in 'logic' and 'transparency'? "((0*L) + (0*T)/(N-1)*0.1) + 1000 = PAC [where L = Logic Index Number, T = Transparency Index Number, N [Sample Size] = 1, and PAC = Predetermined (Fudge Factor) Attribution of Causality]", to make it sound 'sciencey'?

Historically, it has always proved impossible to 'mandate' true loyalty or respect and to ensure it through coercion (the Police, Tribunals, and Emergency Decrees, and Agitprop Squads). It has proved impossible to mandate 'voting the "correct" way' -- 'correct' in the sense of 'mandated by Organizers'. It has proved impossible for any Spitzelstaat and Anwaltstaat to quash the telling of jokes in taverns -- even though terror and repression might for a short time be installed using the principles of "that depends on who's passing by your window" or "overhears your table-talk in a pub," with that 'who' and 'someone' happening to act as a 'Familiar of the Inquisition' who denounces ('reports') you (for perks, money, meds, Party favours, or 5 minutes of TikTok fame). No person of probity and Reason however has any deep obligation whatsoever to supinely serve such an utterly twisted System. One does comprehend the ideology racket's utter existential panic -- there is no 'guarantee'' that in the future any free-speech or (soon to be expected) off-Earth societies will actually 'obey' various Central Committee mandates of Planet Earth or UN, WEF, IMF, IBRD, IDA, or other (re)imaginings. Such erosion of "Total Control" will, eventually and 100% deservedly, entail an erosion of the (re)imaginings' PR-Agency-boosted fame, power, grants, entrenched networks, political perks, oversize 'consulting' fees and telemarketing benefits, as well as politically 'preferred' protected status. Good riddance, sooner the better. In this, the PSR follows ancient lay-lines of individualist probity, Realism -- as for instance in הַשְׂכָּלָה -- even though the PSR is not shackled to any tradition. We are cross-rooted into all of it anyway. This or that "cannot be put into question"? Please! Says who? Among Realist scholars seeking to refine knowledge eveything can and should be "put into question" as long as the evidence to be considered is thorough, not one-sided, precisely identified, and fully retrievable for any subsequent re-examination. Knowledge is in fact fragile, and just like any other item is ultimately in limited supply. Even worse, it can be suppressed, 're-written', or outright physically destroyed, often with negative effects that only become obvious much later. Knowledge is thus a thing too precious to be left to a politicized and schematic 'consensus' of any Establishment.

One naturally feels a little sorry for all those who suddenly realize they are fatally stuck with substantive (sometimes life-long, perhaps even inter-generational) 'sunk costs' as a result of placing all bets on a specific 'protected' Thought System. 'Sunk costs' that calculably yielded careers, lavish perks, preferments, hefty bonuses, political credits for 'loyalty-to-the-System', and carefully hoarded reward / service points for 'climbing-the-organizational-ladder'. Until supply of the relevant ideology vastly exceeded actual demand -- Micro-Economics 101. One of course wonders, for instance -- what happened to Monks after the Disestablishment of Monasteries? What happened to all the redundant very high-profile Party-Card graduates of top-level University Faculties of Marxism-Leninism after the Fall of the 'Berlin Wall' and after the utter collapse of the GDR's StaSi (Staats-Sicherheit, the Political Polce)? Oh, well. Recession or 'stagflation' for ideologues and a 'currently dominant political [ideological] elite'? All of this -- all of it -- has happened countless times. Thousands of years earlier. Thus e.g. the sudden collapse of Akhenaten's 're-imagining' of Ancient Egypt (c. 1353–1336 or 1351–1334 BCE). The neo-concept 'forever capital' of the pharaonic New Supreme Cult and of an ideological 'New Normal' -- the palace-town Akhetaten (basically a fancy 'Potemkin village' quickly patched together using mere coated and inferior mud brick] -- was largely deserted even before the effective crash of the 'government' of the inheritor juvenile pharaoh, the 100% forgettable Tutankhaten [more widely known as Tutanhkamun]. The corrupt Late Roman Empire might serve as another very good example. Such ominous examples are legion, really.