SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron this week launched the Christchurch Call, a global initiative to combat online extremism. (Photo: @JaneCoombsNZ/Twitter)
Despite Christchurch Massacre and Others, Trump Refuses to Join 'Unprecedented' Global Effort to Tackle Racist Extremism Online
"To be honest, I do not understand the United States," said New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
May 15, 2019
The White House announced Wednesday it will not join a global initiative, launched in the wake of a massacre in New Zealand two months ago, to tackle racist and extremist online content.
"By not standing alongside other world leaders to fight hate," said the Southern Poverty Law Center in response, "President Trump has shown once again that he doesn't understand the importance of white supremacy in fueling terrorism."
The Christchurch Call--which has the backing of 17 countries plus the European Commission and eight major tech companies including Twitter, Google, and Facebook--was launched Wednesday by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron.
\u201cThank you for being here @JacindaArdern, @KingAbdullahII, @Macky_Sall, @Pak_JK, @erna_solberg, @JustinTrudeau, @theresa_may, @LeoVaradkar, and @JunckerEU, for an unprecedented joint initiative: the #ChristchurchCall to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.\u201d— Emmanuel Macron (@Emmanuel Macron) 1557950055
The initiative comes exactly two months after the terrorist attack on worshipers at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which a gunman who professed racist hatred against Muslims and immigrants livestreamed his slaughter of 51 people.
"This attack was part of a horrifying new trend that seems to be spreading around the world," Ardern wrote in an op-ed at the New York Times last week. "It was designed to be broadcast on the internet."
She denounced the "staggering" scale of the video's reach:
Original footage of the livestream was viewed some 4,000 times before being removed from Facebook. Within the first 24 hours, 1.5 million copies of the video had been taken down from the platform. There was one upload per second to YouTube in the first 24 hours."
The right to free expression, she wrote, "does not include the freedom to broadcast mass murder."
Ending that threat, she added, necessitates collaboration--thus the Christchurch Call.
It calls on "governments and private corporations to prevent the posting of terrorist content online, to remove it quickly when it does appear, and to prevent the use of live-streaming to broadcast violence," as the Irish Times reported.
The Trump administration gave the initiative a hard pass.
While saying it supported the call's "overall goals," the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy said in a release that "the best tool to defeat terrorist speech is productive speech, and thus we emphasize the importance of promoting credible, alternative narratives as the primary means by which we can defeat terrorist messaging."
In the wake the Christchurch attacks, Ardern's government passed a ban on military-style semiautomatic weapons--a move praised by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
"Sandy Hook happened six years ago and we can't even get the Senate to hold a vote on universal background checks w/ #HR8," the freshman congresswoman tweeted at the time. "Christchurch happened, and within days New Zealand acted to get weapons of war out of the consumer market."
The inaction has Ardern scratching her head.
Speaking to CNN's Christiane Amanpour, Ardern said this week: "Australia experienced a massacre and changed their laws. New Zealand had its experience and changed its laws. To be honest, I do not understand the United States."
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, The U.S. is on a fast track to authoritarianism like nothing I've ever seen. Meanwhile, corporate news outlets are utterly capitulating to Trump, twisting their coverage to avoid drawing his ire while lining up to stuff cash in his pockets. That's why I believe that Common Dreams is doing the best and most consequential reporting that we've ever done. Our small but mighty team is a progressive reporting powerhouse, covering the news every day that the corporate media never will. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. And to ignite change for the common good. Now here's the key piece that I want all our readers to understand: None of this would be possible without your financial support. That's not just some fundraising cliche. It's the absolute and literal truth. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. Will you donate now to help power the nonprofit, independent reporting of Common Dreams? Thank you for being a vital member of our community. Together, we can keep independent journalism alive when it’s needed most. - Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
The White House announced Wednesday it will not join a global initiative, launched in the wake of a massacre in New Zealand two months ago, to tackle racist and extremist online content.
"By not standing alongside other world leaders to fight hate," said the Southern Poverty Law Center in response, "President Trump has shown once again that he doesn't understand the importance of white supremacy in fueling terrorism."
The Christchurch Call--which has the backing of 17 countries plus the European Commission and eight major tech companies including Twitter, Google, and Facebook--was launched Wednesday by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron.
\u201cThank you for being here @JacindaArdern, @KingAbdullahII, @Macky_Sall, @Pak_JK, @erna_solberg, @JustinTrudeau, @theresa_may, @LeoVaradkar, and @JunckerEU, for an unprecedented joint initiative: the #ChristchurchCall to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.\u201d— Emmanuel Macron (@Emmanuel Macron) 1557950055
The initiative comes exactly two months after the terrorist attack on worshipers at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which a gunman who professed racist hatred against Muslims and immigrants livestreamed his slaughter of 51 people.
"This attack was part of a horrifying new trend that seems to be spreading around the world," Ardern wrote in an op-ed at the New York Times last week. "It was designed to be broadcast on the internet."
She denounced the "staggering" scale of the video's reach:
Original footage of the livestream was viewed some 4,000 times before being removed from Facebook. Within the first 24 hours, 1.5 million copies of the video had been taken down from the platform. There was one upload per second to YouTube in the first 24 hours."
The right to free expression, she wrote, "does not include the freedom to broadcast mass murder."
Ending that threat, she added, necessitates collaboration--thus the Christchurch Call.
It calls on "governments and private corporations to prevent the posting of terrorist content online, to remove it quickly when it does appear, and to prevent the use of live-streaming to broadcast violence," as the Irish Times reported.
The Trump administration gave the initiative a hard pass.
While saying it supported the call's "overall goals," the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy said in a release that "the best tool to defeat terrorist speech is productive speech, and thus we emphasize the importance of promoting credible, alternative narratives as the primary means by which we can defeat terrorist messaging."
In the wake the Christchurch attacks, Ardern's government passed a ban on military-style semiautomatic weapons--a move praised by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
"Sandy Hook happened six years ago and we can't even get the Senate to hold a vote on universal background checks w/ #HR8," the freshman congresswoman tweeted at the time. "Christchurch happened, and within days New Zealand acted to get weapons of war out of the consumer market."
The inaction has Ardern scratching her head.
Speaking to CNN's Christiane Amanpour, Ardern said this week: "Australia experienced a massacre and changed their laws. New Zealand had its experience and changed its laws. To be honest, I do not understand the United States."
The White House announced Wednesday it will not join a global initiative, launched in the wake of a massacre in New Zealand two months ago, to tackle racist and extremist online content.
"By not standing alongside other world leaders to fight hate," said the Southern Poverty Law Center in response, "President Trump has shown once again that he doesn't understand the importance of white supremacy in fueling terrorism."
The Christchurch Call--which has the backing of 17 countries plus the European Commission and eight major tech companies including Twitter, Google, and Facebook--was launched Wednesday by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron.
\u201cThank you for being here @JacindaArdern, @KingAbdullahII, @Macky_Sall, @Pak_JK, @erna_solberg, @JustinTrudeau, @theresa_may, @LeoVaradkar, and @JunckerEU, for an unprecedented joint initiative: the #ChristchurchCall to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.\u201d— Emmanuel Macron (@Emmanuel Macron) 1557950055
The initiative comes exactly two months after the terrorist attack on worshipers at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which a gunman who professed racist hatred against Muslims and immigrants livestreamed his slaughter of 51 people.
"This attack was part of a horrifying new trend that seems to be spreading around the world," Ardern wrote in an op-ed at the New York Times last week. "It was designed to be broadcast on the internet."
She denounced the "staggering" scale of the video's reach:
Original footage of the livestream was viewed some 4,000 times before being removed from Facebook. Within the first 24 hours, 1.5 million copies of the video had been taken down from the platform. There was one upload per second to YouTube in the first 24 hours."
The right to free expression, she wrote, "does not include the freedom to broadcast mass murder."
Ending that threat, she added, necessitates collaboration--thus the Christchurch Call.
It calls on "governments and private corporations to prevent the posting of terrorist content online, to remove it quickly when it does appear, and to prevent the use of live-streaming to broadcast violence," as the Irish Times reported.
The Trump administration gave the initiative a hard pass.
While saying it supported the call's "overall goals," the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy said in a release that "the best tool to defeat terrorist speech is productive speech, and thus we emphasize the importance of promoting credible, alternative narratives as the primary means by which we can defeat terrorist messaging."
In the wake the Christchurch attacks, Ardern's government passed a ban on military-style semiautomatic weapons--a move praised by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
"Sandy Hook happened six years ago and we can't even get the Senate to hold a vote on universal background checks w/ #HR8," the freshman congresswoman tweeted at the time. "Christchurch happened, and within days New Zealand acted to get weapons of war out of the consumer market."
The inaction has Ardern scratching her head.
Speaking to CNN's Christiane Amanpour, Ardern said this week: "Australia experienced a massacre and changed their laws. New Zealand had its experience and changed its laws. To be honest, I do not understand the United States."
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.