Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Sacha Baron Cohen quote: [View all]andym
(5,443 posts)7. Sacha Cohen's 2019 ADL speech on social networks' contribution to a new fascism
Last edited Mon Jan 17, 2022, 11:33 AM - Edit history (2)
https://www.adl.org/news/article/sacha-baron-cohens-keynote-address-at-adls-2019-never-is-now-summit-on-anti-semitism"Thank you, Jonathan, for your very kind words. Thank you, ADL, for this recognition and your work in fighting racism, hate and bigotry. And to be clear, when I say racism, hate and bigotry Im not referring to the names of Stephen Millers Labradoodles.
Now, I realize that some of you may be thinking, what the hell is a comedian doing speaking at a conference like this! I certainly am. Ive spent most of the past two decades in character. In fact, this is the first time that I have ever stood up and given a speech as my least popular character, Sacha Baron Cohen. And I have to confess, it is terrifying.
I realize that my presence here may also be unexpected for another reason. At times, some critics have said my comedy risks reinforcing old stereotypes.
The truth is, Ive been passionate about challenging bigotry and intolerance throughout my life. As a teenager in the UK, I marched against the fascist National Front and to abolish Apartheid. As an undergraduate, I traveled around America and wrote my thesis about the civil rights movement, with the help of the archives of the ADL. And as a comedian, Ive tried to use my characters to get people to let down their guard and reveal what they actually believe, including their own prejudice.
Now, Im not going to claim that everything Ive done has been for a higher purpose. Yes, some of my comedy, OK probably half my comedy, has been absolutely juvenile and the other half completely puerile. I admit, there was nothing particularly enlightening about meas Borat from Kazakhstan, the first fake news journalistrunning through a conference of mortgage brokers when I was completely naked.
But when Borat was able to get an entire bar in Arizona to sing Throw the Jew down the well, it did reveal peoples indifference to anti-Semitism. Whenas Bruno, the gay fashion reporter from AustriaI started kissing a man in a cage fight in Arkansas, nearly starting a riot, it showed the violent potential of homophobia. And whendisguised as an ultra-woke developerI proposed building a mosque in one rural community, prompting a resident to proudly admit, I am racist, against Muslimsit showed the acceptance of Islamophobia.
Thats why I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you. Today around the world, demagogues appeal to our worst instincts. Conspiracy theories once confined to the fringe are going mainstream. Its as if the Age of Reasonthe era of evidential argumentis ending, and now knowledge is delegitimized and scientific consensus is dismissed. Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march. Hate crimes are surging, as are murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities.
What do all these dangerous trends have in common? Im just a comedian and an actor, not a scholar. But one thing is pretty clear to me. All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.
The greatest propaganda machine in history.
Think about it. Facebook, YouTube and Google, Twitter and othersthey reach billions of people. The algorithms these platforms depend on deliberately amplify the type of content that keeps users engagedstories that appeal to our baser instincts and that trigger outrage and fear. Its why YouTube recommended videos by the conspiracist Alex Jones billions of times. Its why fake news outperforms real news, because studies show that lies spread faster than truth. And its no surprise that the greatest propaganda machine in history has spread the oldest conspiracy theory in historythe lie that Jews are somehow dangerous. As one headline put it, Just Think What Goebbels Could Have Done with Facebook.
On the internet, everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart resembles the BBC. The fictitious Protocols of the Elders of Zion look as valid as an ADL report. And the rantings of a lunatic seem as credible as the findings of a Nobel Prize winner. We have lost, it seems, a shared sense of the basic facts upon which democracy depends.
When I, as the wanna-be-gansta Ali G, asked the astronaut Buzz Aldrin what woz it like to walk on de sun? the joke worked, because we, the audience, shared the same facts. If you believe the moon landing was a hoax, the joke was not funny.
When Borat got that bar in Arizona to agree that Jews control everybodys money and never give it back, the joke worked because the audience shared the fact that the depiction of Jews as miserly is a conspiracy theory originating in the Middle Ages.
But when, thanks to social media, conspiracies take hold, its easier for hate groups to recruit, easier for foreign intelligence agencies to interfere in our elections, and easier for a country like Myanmar to commit genocide against the Rohingya.
Its actually quite shocking how easy it is to turn conspiracy thinking into violence. In my last show Who is America?, I found an educated, normal guy who had held down a good job, but who, on social media, repeated many of the conspiracy theories that President Trump, using Twitter, has spread more than 1,700 times to his 67 million followers. The President even tweeted that he was considering designating Antifaanti-fascists who march against the far rightas a terror organization.
So, disguised as an Israel anti-terrorism expert, Colonel Erran Morad, I told my interviewee that, at the Womens March in San Francisco, Antifa were plotting to put hormones into babies diapers in order to make them transgender. And he believed it.
I instructed him to plant small devices on three innocent people at the march and explained that when he pushed a button, hed trigger an explosion that would kill them all. They werent real explosives, of course, but he thought they were. I wanted to seewould he actually do it?
The answer was yes. He pushed the button and thought he had actually killed three human beings. Voltaire was right, those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to billions of people.
In their defense, these social media companies have taken some steps to reduce hate and conspiracies on their platforms, but these steps have been mostly superficial.
Im speaking up today because I believe that our pluralistic democracies are on a precipice and that the next twelve months, and the role of social media, could be determinant. British voters will go to the polls while online conspiracists promote the despicable theory of great replacement that white Christians are being deliberately replaced by Muslim immigrants. Americans will vote for president while trolls and bots perpetuate the disgusting lie of a Hispanic invasion. And after years of YouTube videos calling climate change a hoax, the United States is on track, a year from now, to formally withdraw from the Paris Accords. A sewer of bigotry and vile conspiracy theories that threatens democracy and our planetthis cannot possibly be what the creators of the internet had in mind.
I believe its time for a fundamental rethink of social media and how it spreads hate, conspiracies and lies. Last month, however, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook delivered a major speech that, not surprisingly, warned against new laws and regulations on companies like his. Well, some of these arguments are simply absurd. Lets count the ways.
First, Zuckerberg tried to portray this whole issue as choices around free expression. That is ludicrous. This is not about limiting anyones free speech. This is about giving people, including some of the most reprehensible people on earth, the biggest platform in history to reach a third of the planet. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly, there will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites and child abusers. But I think we could all agree that we should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims.
Second, Zuckerberg claimed that new limits on whats posted on social media would be to pull back on free expression. This is utter nonsense. The First Amendment says that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, however, this does not apply to private businesses like Facebook. Were not asking these companies to determine the boundaries of free speech across society. We just want them to be responsible on their platforms.
If a neo-Nazi comes goose-stepping into a restaurant and starts threatening other customers and saying he wants kill Jews, would the owner of the restaurant be required to serve him an elegant eight-course meal? Of course not! The restaurant owner has every legal right and a moral obligation to kick the Nazi out, and so do these internet companies.
Third, Zuckerberg seemed to equate regulation of companies like his to the actions of the most repressive societies. Incredible. This, from one of the six people who decide what information so much of the world sees. Zuckerberg at Facebook, Sundar Pichai at Google, at its parent company Alphabet, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Brins ex-sister-in-law, Susan Wojcicki at YouTube and Jack Dorsey at Twitter.
The Silicon Sixall billionaires, all Americanswho care more about boosting their share price than about protecting democracy. This is ideological imperialismsix unelected individuals in Silicon Valley imposing their vision on the rest of the world, unaccountable to any government and acting like theyre above the reach of law. Its like were living in the Roman Empire, and Mark Zuckerberg is Caesar. At least that would explain his haircut.
Heres an idea. Instead of letting the Silicon Six decide the fate of the world, let our elected representatives, voted for by the people, of every democracy in the world, have at least some say.
Fourth, Zuckerberg speaks of welcoming a diversity of ideas, and last year he gave us an example. He said that he found posts denying the Holocaust deeply offensive, but he didnt think Facebook should take them down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. At this very moment, there are still Holocaust deniers on Facebook, and Google still takes you to the most repulsive Holocaust denial sites with a simple click. One of the heads of Google once told me, incredibly, that these sites just show both sides of the issue. This is madness.
To quote Edward R. Murrow, one cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument. We have millions of pieces of evidence for the Holocaustit is an historical fact. And denying it is not some random opinion. Those who deny the Holocaust aim to encourage another one.
Still, Zuckerberg says that people should decide what is credible, not tech companies. But at a time when two-thirds of millennials say they havent even heard of Auschwitz, how are they supposed to know whats credible? How are they supposed to know that the lie is a lie?
There is such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist. And if these internet companies really want to make a difference, they should hire enough monitors to actually monitor, work closely with groups like the ADL, insist on facts and purge these lies and conspiracies from their platforms.
Fifth, when discussing the difficulty of removing content, Zuckerberg asked where do you draw the line? Yes, drawing the line can be difficult. But heres what hes really saying: removing more of these lies and conspiracies is just too expensive.
These are the richest companies in the world, and they have the best engineers in the world. They could fix these problems if they wanted to. Twitter could deploy an algorithm to remove more white supremacist hate speech, but they reportedly havent because it would eject some very prominent politicians from their platform. Maybe thats not a bad thing! The truth is, these companies wont fundamentally change because their entire business model relies on generating more engagement, and nothing generates more engagement than lies, fear and outrage.
Its time to finally call these companies what they really arethe largest publishers in history. And heres an idea for them: abide by basic standards and practices just like newspapers, magazines and TV news do every day. We have standards and practices in television and the movies; there are certain things we cannot say or do. In England, I was told that Ali G could not curse when he appeared before 9pm. Here in the U.S., the Motion Picture Association of America regulates and rates what we see. Ive had scenes in my movies cut or reduced to abide by those standards. If there are standards and practices for what cinemas and television channels can show, then surely companies that publish material to billions of people should have to abide by basic standards and practices too.
Take the issue of political ads. Fortunately, Twitter finally banned them, and Google is making changes, too. But if you pay them, Facebook will run any political ad you want, even if its a lie. And theyll even help you micro-target those lies to their users for maximum effect. Under this twisted logic, if Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Hitler to post 30-second ads on his solution to the Jewish problem. So heres a good standard and practice: Facebook, start fact-checking political ads before you run them, stop micro-targeted lies immediately, and when the ads are false, give back the money and dont publish them.
Heres another good practice: slow down. Every single post doesnt need to be published immediately. Oscar Wilde once said that we live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities. But is having every thought or video posted instantly online, even if it is racist or criminal or murderous, really a necessity? Of course not!
The shooter who massacred Muslims in New Zealand live streamed his atrocity on Facebook where it then spread across the internet and was viewed likely millions of times. It was a snuff film, brought to you by social media. Why cant we have more of a delay so this trauma-inducing filth can be caught and stopped before its posted in the first place?
Finally, Zuckerberg said that social media companies should live up to their responsibilities, but hes totally silent about what should happen when they dont. By now its pretty clear, they cannot be trusted to regulate themselves. As with the Industrial Revolution, its time for regulation and legislation to curb the greed of these high-tech robber barons.
In every other industry, a company can be held liable when their product is defective. When engines explode or seatbelts malfunction, car companies recall tens of thousands of vehicles, at a cost of billions of dollars. It only seems fair to say to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter: your product is defective, you are obliged to fix it, no matter how much it costs and no matter how many moderators you need to employ.
In every other industry, you can be sued for the harm you cause. Publishers can be sued for libel, people can be sued for defamation. Ive been sued many times! Im being sued right now by someone whose name I wont mention because he might sue me again! But social media companies are largely protected from liability for the content their users postno matter how indecent it isby Section 230 of, get ready for it, the Communications Decency Act. Absurd!
Fortunately, Internet companies can now be held responsible for pedophiles who use their sites to target children. I say, lets also hold these companies responsible for those who use their sites to advocate for the mass murder of children because of their race or religion. And maybe fines are not enough. Maybe its time to tell Mark Zuckerberg and the CEOs of these companies: you already allowed one foreign power to interfere in our elections, you already facilitated one genocide in Myanmar, do it again and you go to jail.
In the end, it all comes down to what kind of world we want. In his speech, Zuckerberg said that one of his main goals is to uphold as wide a definition of freedom of expression as possible. Yet our freedoms are not only an end in themselves, theyre also the means to another endas you say here in the U.S., the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But today these rights are threatened by hate, conspiracies and lies.
Allow me to leave you with a suggestion for a different aim for society. The ultimate aim of society should be to make sure that people are not targeted, not harassed and not murdered because of who they are, where they come from, who they love or how they pray
If we make that our aimif we prioritize truth over lies, tolerance over prejudice, empathy over indifference and experts over ignoramusesthen maybe, just maybe, we can stop the greatest propaganda machine in history, we can save democracy, we can still have a place for free speech and free expression, and, most importantly, my jokes will still work.
Thank you all very much."
Edit history
Please sign in to view edit histories.
42 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
RecommendedHighlight replies with 5 or more recommendations
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
highplainsdem
Jan 2022
#8
There are stoll Holocaust survivors alive who remember how it happened there.
soldierant
Jan 2022
#34
And One of the First Anti-Semites Was None Other Than the "Apostle" Paul...
panfluteman
Jan 2022
#22
Addendum: Hhhhmmmm... Donald Trump's Situation Strangely Mirrors That of the "Apostle" Paul...
panfluteman
Jan 2022
#24