Alliance For Responsible Citizenship

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.

History

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. 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. The founders believe the West no longer has a binding narrative, as this has been "picked apart"; leaving it with a geostrategic vulnerability. In the face of this crisis, Anderson characterised the goal of ARC was to "regroup, and put forward a positive agenda" 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. They suggest that the conservative 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. The ''Financial Times'' said that the organisation's conference "included discussion of fringe, right-leaning ideology".

It is associated with psychologist and political commentator Jordan Peterson. 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".

Organisation

Company records in the UK show ARC has two shareholders – the Dubai-based investment management group Legatum and the British investor and Brexit advocate Sir Paul Marshall. Advisory board members included the following:

Conference

The group's first conference was held in Greenwich, London, 30 October – 1 November 2023. The platform had 100 speakers, with delegates from 71 nations said to number between 1,000 and 1,500. 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".

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. Bishop Robert Barron gave a talk on "What is the True Nature of Freedom". The English author and social critic Os Guinness was on a panel discussion with Jordan Peterson, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and John Anderson.

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. It was reviewed by '' Premier Christianity'' as "high-brow thought and unscripted conversation", 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".

The organisation held its second conference from 15 to 19 February 2025 at ExCeL London with about 4000 attendees.

References

External links

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"2025 conference keynote speakers"
Alliance for Responsible Citizenship
{{Jordan Peterson

2023 establishments in England
Conservatism
Political organizations established in 2023
Political conferences
Transnationalism
Western culture
Political organisations based in London
Right-wing politics in the United Kingdom
Libertarianism in the United Kingdom
Libertarianism
Conservatism in the United Kingdom