Social media giants who allow hate speech must face the law
The terror attack in Christchurch should be a turning point in how we view social media and the limits of so-called “free speech”. Let it be a clarion call to finally pull tech giants into line, writes Paul Williams.
Rendezview
Don't miss out on the headlines from Rendezview. Followed categories will be added to My News.
New Zealand lost its innocence last week.
For a country wholly unfamiliar with political violence, the cold-blooded killing of 50 innocents (and the serious injury of many more) is a brutal reminder of a dystopian present where hate, lies and ignorance trump tolerance, truth and knowledge.
As we do after each of these tragedies, families of the dead grieve while security agencies rethink protocols and community leaders reach for answers.
Reassuringly, the unqualified condemnation of this act of madness has been universal. Well, almost. Queensland Senator Fraser Anning — the bloke too extreme for KAP and One Nation — blotted an already very inky copybook.
RELATED: Dear NZ — Fraser Anning is not us
While Anning said he is “utterly opposed to any form of violence within our community” (then went on to twice belt a kid who egged him), he added the tragedy lies not in white nationalism but in an “immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place.”
That’s victim-blaming on steroids. Worse still, Anning cruelly mocked the Queenslanders he pretends to represent by writing this garbage under official parliamentary letterhead. No wonder a million Australians signed a petition to expel him from parliament. Too bad it has no power to do so.
For Anning’s claim to bear even a shred of credibility, crowds of NZ’s Muslims would need to be criminally anti-social. But can anyone name a New Zealand mass shooting committed by a Muslim immigrant? The reality is the vast, vast majority of the 50,000 Muslims in NZ and 600,000 in Australia are law-abiding citizens who work hard, pay their taxes and want only peace and prosperity for their kids and their new country.
We can only assume Anning’s antipathy is simply a hatred of cultural difference. On this, Anning has form. Who can forget his arrogantly defiant attendance — at taxpayers’ expense — at a neo-Nazi rally in Melbourne early in the year? As PM Scott Morrison said, Anning is a “repeat offender”.
RELATED: Taxpayers shouldn’t pay a cent for Anning’s neo-Nazi jaunt
But none of that explains the Christchurch tragedy specifically let alone the rise of white supremacy generally.
In large part I blame the web and especially social media — a channel the accused killer used to live-stream his atrocities while urging followers to subscribe to an infamously racist blog. And while it’s unlikely social media alone created this monster — racists are statistically more likely to be impoverished, poorly educated white men who feel cheated by globalisation and threatened by immigrants and educated women — it’s highly probable he committed his attack because social media’s echo chamber (where racists talk only to racists) convinced him the whole world shares his depraved thoughts.
I also blame the long-held myth — now widely repeated by trolls and hate-merchants — that the right to free speech is universal and unimpeachable. It is neither.
Public speech comes with public responsibilities not to cause public harm. Users who breach this basic social contract — and the social media giants who facilitate hate speech — must face the full force of the law.
RELATED: NZ terror attacks: Social media platforms have failed
That’s why western democracies must embrace a “muscular liberalism” that protects the vulnerable and draws tight boundaries around what can be said and done in public and what cannot. The eleventh hour ban on professional pest Milo Yiannopoulos’s tour of Australia is therefore a step in the right direction.
For too long racist rallies in Australia and elsewhere have been allowed to proceed because “free speech” has become an all-powerful mantra. But let’s call out these rallies for what they are: recruiting grounds for terrorists.
Sadly, the problem is amplified in the United States where, since Donald Trump’s election in 2016, hate crimes have soared. After Trump’s vilification of Muslim and Mexican immigrants, and after giving tacit support for violence against journalists and other critics — he hints at using his outlaw motorcycle gang fanbase to deal with opponents — hate crime in the US increased by 17 per cent in 2017. That’s hardly surprising given Trump’s refusal to unilaterally condemn neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, and his refusal to use the word “terrorist” after the Christchurch tragedy. He sure as hell would have used the ‘T’ word if the Christchurch shooter had been a Muslim.
That at least partly explains why religion-based hate crime is soaring in the US where, today, Americans are twice as likely to die during a white supremacist terror attack as an Islamic fundamentalist one.
Let Christchurch be a turning point. Let this tragedy force us rethink the limits of “free speech”. Let it be a clarion call to finally pull social media giants into line.
Paul Williams is a columnist for The Courier-Mail.
Originally published as Social media giants who allow hate speech must face the law
We’re replacing the kangaroo with this? What a waste of $10m
What happens when you get a self-serving mining billionaire whose fortune depends on the Chinese Communist Party to help rebrand Australia? A national symbol that looks like a COVID-19 cell, writes Miranda Devine.
Sorry for the scare campaign, the planet is fine
When a climate activist apologised for how environmentalists had misled the public over climate change threats, the fearmongers were not happy, especially when Greta is upping her fight, writes Miranda Devine.