NEW YORK CITY - Cancel culture has taken many victims in recent years, but one former musician is combating the silencing of unpopular opinion with what he hopes to be a new annual conference.
Winston Marshall, the British banjoist and guitarist who left the band Mumford & Sons in 2021 after daring to like a book from journalist Andy Ngo, just wrapped hosting the inaugural Dissident Dialogues, a festival he says celebrates the diversity of opinion.
"A lot of talk of diversity these days, but not that much talk about diversity of opinion, my favorite kind of diversity," Marshall told Fox News Digital in an interview. "I was plunged into the ideas space a few years ago. And one of the things I noticed is that people are dying to talk to other people, to hash out their ideas. So I thought, 'Oh, that's interesting.'"
"Having come from a music background, having put on 20 to 25 festivals across America, all over the world, I knew that people actually love that. People actually love coming together. So I thought, let's try and apply the rock and roll thing to the idea space," he added.
Dissident Dialogues, held last weekend in Brooklyn's Duggal Greenhouse, hosted an impressive roster of prominent voices like Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, famed atheist and biologist Richard Dawkins, Somali author and advocate Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Harvard professor Steven Pinker, and independent journalists including Michael Shellenberger, Lee Fang and Alex Berenson.
Also speaking at the festival was Uri Berliner, the veteran NPR editor who was forced to resign after speaking out against the liberal groupthink that took over the outlet's newsroom.
"We're also talking about heterodoxy, thinking freely, thinking differently, thinking for yourself. And I would also add that we're very keen for all ideas," Marshall said. "We're not an anti-woke festival. We want everyone at the table, and we're very keen for all ideas to be challenged and brought in.
"So that's my dream for the future. Let's be the festival where real debate happens from a broad stroke, a broad spectrum of people."
One of the most fiery moments of Dissident Dialogues was a debate on the Israel-Hamas war with The Free Press reporter Eli Lake and The Fifth Column podcast co-host Michael Moynihan on the pro-Israel side squaring off against former Bernie Sanders press secretary Briahna Joy Gray and writer Joseph (Jake) Klein on the anti-Israel side.
Other topics tackled in panel discussions include transgender medicine, the current state of colleges, government censorship, feminism, religion and wokeism.
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"It's a really wonderful atmosphere. It's a very loving atmosphere. We have atheists, theists, libertarians, Marxists, liberals, progressives, conservatives, everything. And I hope we can attract even more," Marshall told Fox News Digital.
Marshall already teased to festival attendees that Dissident Dialogues will return in 2025. And he's hoping to platform even more different viewpoints.
"We need more diversity of opinion. I think you can never have too much diversity of opinion. It is hard sometimes to get people from different opinions. Not everyone likes confrontation, but my hope is that we foster a culture of disagreeing agreeably, even if it gets a little sizzly and spicy on stage," Marshall said. "I think it's better for society."
