Humanism as resistance – but resistance to what?

By David Warden

At the World Humanist Congress in Ottawa, calls for resistance raised a troubling question: can political mobilisation undermine the intellectual freedom humanism seeks to defend? David examines the dangers of groupthink, the need for political pluralism, and why critical inquiry must remain central to the humanist movement.

The 2026 World Humanist Congress in Ottawa adopted Humanism as Resistance as its theme. It was an impressive gathering, bringing together humanists from across the world to confront threats to freedom, democracy and human dignity. There were powerful contributions from people working in circumstances where resistance is not an abstract political slogan but a matter of considerable personal courage.

Yet I returned from Ottawa with a question that has troubled me for some years. Can a movement committed to reason, independent thought and intellectual humility become so closely identified with a particular political outlook that it begins to compromise those very commitments?

I have no objection to humanist resistance. There are governments that imprison dissidents, persecute religious minorities and nonbelievers, criminalise consensual same-sex relationships, and suppress freedom of expression. Humanists have every reason to oppose such practices. Nor do I question the legitimacy of campaigning for political change in democratic societies.

My concern is different. When humanism mobilises politically, how carefully does it distinguish between fundamental humanist principles and contested political interpretations of those principles? And how much room remains for humanists who share the principles but question the political conclusions? These questions matter because a movement that prides itself on thinking freely ought to be particularly alert to the dangers of thinking alike.

The moral appeal of resistance

The word resistance carries considerable historical and emotional weight. It evokes the struggle against fascism, the French Resistance, and the courage of those who have opposed oppressive regimes. It suggests a familiar moral drama: oppression, courage, solidarity and eventual liberation.

But there's a subtle danger in adopting resistance as a collective identity. The resister occupies the morally heroic position before we have necessarily established what is being resisted. Resistance requires an adversary, and the language of mobilisation can encourage us to divide the political world into allies and enemies. This is not an argument against resistance. It's an argument for examining its premises.

The Ottawa Declaration, reproduced in this issue, warns of a global resurgence of authoritarianism and warmongering, demagoguery, extreme nationalism, misinformation and hate. These are serious concerns. But some of the terms are also deeply entangled with contemporary political disputes. Who decides what constitutes authoritarianism? When does nationalism become extreme? How do we distinguish misinformation from legitimate disagreement, or democratic populism from a threat to democracy? The answers cannot simply be assumed. They require the very qualities humanism claims to cultivate: careful definitions, evidence, intellectual humility and openness to alternative interpretations.

I had raised some of these concerns before the Congress. In June, having been invited to comment on an early draft of the Ottawa Declaration, I wrote to Andrew Copson questioning whether references to nationalism and authoritarianism risked importing a particular political worldview into a statement intended to express universal humanist principles. Nationalism can certainly become aggressive, exclusionary and supremacist. But it can also express democratic self-government, civic belonging and shared responsibility. I was pleased that the final Declaration referred more specifically to extreme and chauvinistic nationalism. That was a welcome distinction. It also illustrates why precision matters.

Is humanism politically pluralistic?

Humanism has a long association with radical and progressive politics. The nineteenth-century freethought movement frequently challenged religious and political establishments, and many humanists have naturally gravitated towards liberal, socialist and social-democratic causes.

There's nothing inherently objectionable about this. But the historical association between humanism and progressive politics can become problematic if it hardens into an assumption that progressive political positions are the natural, or even obligatory, expression of humanist values.

My own political outlook has changed over the years. I now find myself drawn towards aspects of Burkean conservatism, with its appreciation of inherited institutions, social cohesion and the unintended consequences of political change, as well as to the communitarian instincts associated with Blue Labour. These sympathies coexist with my longstanding commitment to humanism. That change has made me more conscious of the political assumptions that often go unexamined within the organised humanist movement.

Humanists can agree on freedom of conscience, human dignity, democratic accountability and the importance of evidence while disagreeing profoundly about immigration, national sovereignty, international institutions, economic policy, or the proper relationship between individual liberty and social obligation. Those disagreements are not necessarily disagreements about humanism itself. They may reflect different judgements about how humanist values are best realised in complex societies.

Consider the European Union. One humanist might regard supranational institutions and international legal protections as indispensable safeguards against arbitrary national power. Another might regard the transfer of authority away from elected national legislatures as a troubling weakening of democratic accountability. Both positions can arise from a concern for liberty and democracy. A movement genuinely committed to intellectual pluralism should be able to accommodate that disagreement without treating one side as morally suspect.

Yet my experience of humanist conferences is that a broadly progressive-liberal outlook is often taken for granted. There is relatively little opportunity to hear thoughtful challenges from conservative, communitarian or other dissenting perspectives. This can become self-reinforcing. People who feel politically out of place may gradually withdraw, leaving an increasingly homogeneous audience. The resulting consensus can then be mistaken for evidence that humanists naturally agree on a wide range of political questions. A movement can become more united in appearance while becoming less intellectually diverse.

What do we mean by authoritarianism?

The Ottawa Declaration’s warning about resurgent authoritarianism deserves serious attention. There is substantial evidence of democratic decline internationally. Organisations such as Freedom House, V-Dem and the Economist Intelligence Unit, despite employing different methodologies, have documented significant deterioration in political rights, civil liberties and democratic institutions.

Some examples are relatively unambiguous. In North Korea, political opposition is effectively impossible. In Iran, dissenters face severe repression and religious authority is enforced through state power. In Myanmar, the military destroyed an emerging democracy through its 2021 coup. These are circumstances in which humanist resistance has a clear and compelling purpose. But difficulties arise when the same language is extended to political developments within established democracies.

The United States provides a particularly challenging example. Concerns about executive power, institutional independence and democratic norms under Donald Trump deserve careful examination. Equally, there are important distinctions to be made between a democracy experiencing institutional strain and a consolidated authoritarian state. Competitive elections, independent courts, political opposition, freedom of expression and the possibility of peaceful changes of government all matter. Populism itself is not synonymous with authoritarianism. It can express legitimate democratic grievances, although populist leaders may also undermine constitutional restraints and the rights of opponents.

The question is not whether we should defend democracy against authoritarian threats. Of course we should. The question is whether our political vocabulary is sufficiently discriminating to identify those threats accurately. If authoritarianism becomes a general description of political movements we dislike, it loses much of its analytical usefulness.

Grayling and Furedi: a conversation worth having

One of the highlights of Ottawa was the closing address by the philosopher A. C. Grayling, whose reflections on rational hope received an enthusiastic response. Grayling’s recent book, For the People: Fighting Authoritarianism, Saving Democracy, provides a vigorous defence of liberal democracy and its institutional safeguards. His concern is that populist movements and powerful political leaders can exploit democratic procedures while undermining the institutions and freedoms that make democracy sustainable.

There is much to take seriously in this argument. Elections alone do not guarantee liberty. A government with an electoral mandate may still seek to weaken judicial independence, restrict opposition or dismantle the conditions for future democratic competition. But liberal democracy contains an inherent tension. Liberalism emphasises individual rights, the rule of law and restraints on political power whereas democracy locates political authority ultimately in the people, requiring governments and institutions to remain accountable to them. Both are essential. Yet they can pull in different directions. What happens when courts, regulatory bodies, expert institutions or supranational organisations exercise growing authority over questions that citizens believe should be settled democratically? At what point does the protection of democracy become an insulation of political decisions from the electorate? These questions receive a very different treatment from the sociologist Frank Furedi.

In Democracy Under Siege and In Defence of Populism, Furedi argues that contemporary political elites have become increasingly distrustful of the judgement of ordinary citizens. He interprets aspects of populism as demands for political voice, recognition and democratic self-government. Furedi is not a politically neutral commentator. His association with MCC Brussels places him within a national-conservative intellectual milieu. His account, like Grayling’s, should therefore be subjected to critical examination. But that is precisely why I would have welcomed a conversation between them.

Grayling asks us to recognise the danger of elected governments weakening liberal institutions. Furedi asks us to recognise the danger of liberal institutions becoming insufficiently accountable to the people. The first danger is real. The second deserves examination too. Neither argument should be accepted uncritically, and neither thinker needs to be treated as an authority whose conclusions settle the matter. What would be illuminating is to examine the evidence and assumptions underlying both perspectives. What does Grayling see that Furedi misses? And what does Furedi see that Grayling misses? That is the sort of intellectual encounter I would have liked to see at Ottawa.

The danger of political gestalts

We all interpret political events through organising frameworks, or gestalts. These help us make sense of complex realities by identifying patterns and relationships. But a political gestalt can become so comprehensive that almost every event appears to confirm it. For some progressives, populist electoral success may be interpreted primarily as evidence of rising authoritarianism, nationalism or misinformation. For some conservatives, the same events may represent a democratic revolt against unaccountable elites and entrenched institutions. Each narrative can contain important truths. Each can also become resistant to contrary evidence. The danger arises when a framework becomes effectively unfalsifiable: when every objection is reinterpreted as further proof that the original diagnosis was correct.

I recognise this temptation in my own political sympathies. It would be easy for me to interpret every disagreement with an international institution as evidence of technocratic overreach, just as others might interpret every challenge to such institutions as an assault on liberal democracy. Neither reflex is an adequate substitute for inquiry.

A genuinely humanist approach would begin by asking: What precisely happened? What evidence supports the competing interpretations? Are we comparing like with like? What alternative explanations are available? What evidence might change our minds? These questions are particularly important when moral language enters the discussion. Once a political interpretation becomes closely identified with humanist virtue, disagreement may begin to look less like an intellectual challenge and more like a moral failing. That is how political consensus can harden into groupthink.

“…a movement devoted to reason ought to make deliberate room for serious disagreement, particularly when invoking politically contested concepts.”

Amsterdam and Ottawa

The Amsterdam Declaration of 2022 (published by Humanists International) offers a valuable corrective. It affirms that no one is infallible or omniscient, that knowledge requires continuing observation, learning and rethinking, and that humanists should neither avoid scrutiny nor seek to impose their views on everyone else. Most importantly, it commits humanists to the unfettered expression and exchange of ideas. The Ottawa Declaration, for its part, calls humanists to collective action against threats to fundamental freedoms and human dignity. It too affirms critical thinking and freedom of expression.

There need be no contradiction between the two. Indeed, effective resistance often depends upon accurate analysis, while critical inquiry can reveal injustices that demand action. But there is a tension that needs careful management. Mobilisation requires sufficient agreement to act together. Intellectual inquiry requires the freedom to question that agreement. Too much argument can paralyse collective action; too much conformity can undermine the intellectual independence that gives humanism its distinctive character.

My concern about Ottawa was not that it called for resistance, but that it leaned too far towards collective affirmation and insufficiently towards critical examination of some of the political assumptions underlying that call. A weekend Congress cannot examine every issue exhaustively. Nor should we expect every speaker to represent an opposing viewpoint. But a movement devoted to reason ought to make deliberate room for serious disagreement, particularly when invoking politically contested concepts. Otherwise, a Congress risks becoming an occasion for confirming what participants already believe rather than enlarging their understanding.

“Critical thought without the capacity for action risks becoming a talking shop. But mobilisation without critical thought risks becoming tribalism.”

A humanism confident enough to disagree

I've chaired Dorset Humanists for many years, and one of my priorities has been to preserve a space in which people with different political outlooks can explore difficult questions together. That does not require us to be politically indifferent. It requires us to distinguish between the shared principles that bring us together and the wider range of values, beliefs and commitments that shape our political conclusions.

Humanist organisations have legitimate reasons to campaign against blasphemy laws, persecution of nonbelievers, restrictions on freedom of conscience and other violations of fundamental rights. They may also choose to campaign on more contested political issues, such as assisted dying, where even humanists who share fundamental values may reach different conclusions. When they do so, they should acknowledge that reasonable humanists may disagree about the diagnosis, the proposed remedy, or the competing values involved.

Such pluralism need not weaken resistance. It may make resistance more credible by ensuring that its claims have survived serious scrutiny. The alternative is a movement that gradually becomes identified with a narrower political constituency, losing people who share its fundamental philosophy but not its prevailing political assumptions. That would be a considerable loss.

Humanism should be broad enough to accommodate liberal, socialist, conservative, communitarian and other perspectives, provided they remain compatible with its fundamental commitments to human dignity, reason and freedom of thought. It should also be confident enough to invite challenges to its most cherished assumptions.

The question raised by Ottawa, then, is not simply what humanists should resist in the wider world. It is whether we can resist the temptation towards political conformity within our own movement. Critical thought without the capacity for action risks becoming a talking shop. But mobilisation without critical thought risks becoming tribalism. We need both.

If humanism is to resist authoritarianism effectively, it must remain vigilant about the intellectual habits of its own movement. The Amsterdam Declaration’s commitment to unfettered inquiry is not an optional extra to be set aside when political mobilisation becomes urgent. It is one of the very things that makes humanism worth defending.

Perhaps the most important resistance begins with the courage to question our own side.