The Web Summit, held for the past two years in Lisbon, was courting danger by inviting the French far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, to speak at its next conference on November 5th, 2018, at the Altice Arena.
Co-founder of the wildly popular event, Paddy Cosgrave, stated today that he had changed his mind and that Le Pen’s invitation had been withdrawn, "based on advice we have received and the large reaction online overnight."
The invitation to Le Pen to join a debating forum at the conference, provoked a backlash on social media and Cosgrave has decided that, "Her presence is disrespectful in particular to our host country. It is also disrespectful to some of the many tens of thousands of attendees who join us from around the world."
He also said that his team welcomes suggestions for more "appropriate" speakers to speak at the event.
The organisers realised they were playing with fire and already had ensured Le Pen did not have centre stage, asking her to be part of a debating forum, away from the prime slots that attract media attention.
This strategy always was likely to fail as the furore triggered by her inclusion in the roster of 1,000 guest speakers, has proved.
"As has always been the case with speakers who express what might be considered offensive viewpoints, they are explicitly not invited to speak on our centre stage, nor on our more than 20 other primary stages.
"They appear instead on our smallest stages at Forum," he said.
Ever the diplomat, Cosgrave explained, "The issue of hate, freedom of expression and platform technologies is one of the defining questions of 2018. We will redouble our efforts to approach this difficult issue at Web Summit with more care."
The event organiser said he already has conceded that he would cancel Le Pen’s invitation if the Portuguese government objected.
In the end, it was online pressure that pushed Cosgrave to rescind Le Pen’s invite but he also will have pleased the government which prefers to avoid controversy.
Cosgrave anyway is on his best behaviour after last year’s blunder when he held a banquet in Lisbon's National Pantheon where many of Portugal’s heroes and statesmen are entombed.
The summit has no trouble attracting top speakers, here is list of the first 250 of them, booked for November this year HERE
