In this mailing:
- Judith Bergman: Killing Free Speech in France, Germany and on the Internet
- Nima Gholam Ali Pour: Sweden: Whitewashing Its Anti-Semitism?
by Judith Bergman • August 8, 2019 at 5:00 am
In early July, France's National Assembly adopted a draft bill designed to curtail online hate speech. The draft bill gives social media platforms 24 hours to remove "hateful content" or risk fines of up to 4% percent of their global revenue. The bill has gone to the French Senate and could become law after parliament's summer recess. If it does, France will be the second country in Europe after Germany to pass a law that directly makes a social media company censor its users on behalf of the state.
Knowing that a mere Facebook post could end you up in front of a judge in court is very likely to put a decisive damper on anyone's desire to speak freely.
If Facebook's agreement with France is replicated by other European countries, whatever is left of free speech in Europe, especially on the internet, is likely to dry up fast.
While Facebook eagerly claims to be fighting hate speech online, including claiming to have removed millions of pieces of terrorist content from its platform, according to a recent report from the Daily Beast, 105 posts of some of Al Qaeda's most notorious terrorists are still up on Facebook, as well as YouTube.
When will Facebook -- and YouTube -- make it a priority to remove material featuring the terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki, whose incitement has inspired actual terrorists to kill people?
In May, France called for increasing government oversight over Facebook. Now Facebook has agreed to hand over to French judges the identification data of French users suspected of hate speech on its platform, according to France's Secretary of State for the Digital Sector, Cédric O.
Previously, according to a Reuters report, "Facebook had refrained from handing over identification data of people suspected of hate speech because it was not compelled to do so under U.S.-French legal conventions and because it was worried countries without an independent judiciary could abuse it". Until now, Reuters noted, Facebook had only cooperated with the French judiciary on matters related to terrorist attacks and violent acts by transferring the IP addresses and other identification data of suspected individuals to French judges who formally demanded it.
by Nima Gholam Ali Pour • August 8, 2019 at 4:00 am
So far, expressing anti-Semitic views as a Social Democrat politician in Malmö has apparently been acceptable. Even though the party has publicly said it regretted the incidents, no one has yet had to resign because of them.
The memory of the Holocaust should not be reduced to a photo-op to whitewash Malmö's ruling politicians. Remembering the Holocaust is about clearly counteracting the conditions that created the Holocaust: the normalization of anti-Semitism.
It is this normalization of the anti-Semitism to which Sweden's Social Democrats and other Social Democratic parties in Europe -- like Jeremy Corbyn's UK Labour Party -- have contributed.
Malmö, Sweden's third-largest city, has become known for its vibrant anti-Semitism, and it is not clear if the ruling Social Democrats really have the political or moral will to counter it. Pictured: Malmö City Hall. (Image source: Hajotthu/Wikimedia Commons)
Malmö, the third-largest city in Sweden, has become known for its vibrant anti-Semitism. It should consequently not be surprising that many Jews there do not feel safe. Making anti-Semitism even more problematic, it is not clear if the ruling Social Democrats really have the political or moral will to counter it.
The former Mayor of Malmö, Ilmar Reepalu, has several times been accused of expressing anti-Semitic sentiments. Other leading Social Democrat politicians, such as Adrian Kaba, have also in the past spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. This year, when the Social Democrats' Youth League in Malmö demonstrated on International Worker's Day, May 1st, they chanted, "crush Zionism".
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