 | |
| Formation | 2023 |
|---|---|
| Founders | |
| Type | |
| Purpose | Renewing Western culture |
| Headquarters | Pall Mall, London |
CEO | Baroness Stroud |
| Website | https://www.arcforum.com/ |
The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) is an international organisation whose aim is to unite conservative voices and propose policy based on traditional Western values. It is associated with psychologist and political commentator Jordan Peterson. It was founded in June 2023, with a London conference held in October of that year.
In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald , former Australian deputy prime minister John Anderson, who helped initiate the conference, said the group emerged as a response to a "civilisational" moment in which the Western world "is plagued by self-doubt and confusion" regarding its values and beliefs. [1] The "shaky ground" of depleted social institutions, such as the Christian Church, and the breakdown of cohesive social norms could be seen as part of this crisis. [1] The founders believe the West no longer has a binding narrative, as this has been "picked apart"; leaving it with a geostrategic vulnerability. [2] In the face of this crisis, Anderson characterised the goal of ARC was to "regroup, and put forward a positive agenda" [1] by providing a better narrative than one of inevitable doom and decline.
Others described ARC as being a response to problems in contemporary conservatism itself. That the global movement, at least in the English-speaking world, was "scrambling to define itself by what it opposes rather than what it believes". A report in The Telegraph saw the group as a corrective to the "chaos" and "excesses" in American conservatism during the rise of Donald Trump; the "muddle" of conservative beliefs in the UK; and the lack of a clear cause for conservatives in Australia. [3] [4] The Financial Times said that the organisation's conference "included discussion of fringe, right-leaning ideology". [5]
It is associated with psychologist and political commentator Jordan Peterson. [1] [6] One Australian journalist identified the purpose of ARC as follows: "to replace a sense of division and drift within conservatism, and Western society at large, with a renewed cohesion and purpose". [4]
Company records in the UK show ARC has two shareholders – the Dubai-based investment management group Legatum Ventures and the British investor and Brexiter Sir Paul Marshall. [7] Advisory board members included the following: [1] [8] [9] [10]
The group's first conference was held in Greenwich, London, 30 October – 1 November 2023. [3] [7] [10] The platform had 100 speakers, with delegates from 71 nations said to number between 1,000 and 1,500. [3] [4] [11] The journalist Fraser Nelson of The Daily Telegraph described it as one of the "largest gatherings of the global centre Right in recent British history". [3]
Among the speakers were Kevin McCarthy, former speaker of the US House of Representatives, John Anderson, former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator , and former Dutch politician and writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali. [12] Bishop Robert Barron gave a talk on "What is the True Nature of Freedom". [13] The English author and social critic Os Guinness was on a panel discussion with Jordan Peterson, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and John Anderson. [14]
An evening event held at the O2 Arena was headlined by Jordan Peterson, with several authors and commentators, such as Douglas Murray, Ben Shapiro, global warming sceptic Bjørn Lomborg and Jonathan Pageau, and attracted a crowd near to its capacity of 20,000. [15] [16] It was reviewed by Premier Christianity as "high-brow thought and unscripted conversation", [17] while some media were more critical, with The Guardian writing that, in a year of floods and heatwaves and likely to be the hottest on record, attendees were offered "a grab-bag of cherrypicked talking points that ignored the risks from climate change". [18]