[Music]
so
[Music]
[Applause]
ladies and gentlemen welcome the
moderator of the next session
roland freudenstein
[Music]
thank you so much ladies and gentlemen
dear friends
indeed i'm roland freudenstein policy
director of the wilfried
martens center for european studies in
brussels and
in a few months i will join globsec as
vice president
and head of the brussels office so a
triple welcome
to all of you here and to you um online
to the session on a topic on which
everyone is an expert which is political
extremism
goes virtual and international and
that's what we want to discuss with you
today
um we have two speakers right here in
the studio
and we've got three speakers online and
having only 50 minutes
that is a challenge so let's be
disciplined here
and um i will actually
introduce the speakers very briefly and
then we do a slido poll so be prepared
for that
and then we start with individual
questions to the speakers
so we have online from new york city
david ibsen who is the executive
director
of the counter extremism project
we have daphne hali kyopoulou
who is also online from reading who is
professor
of comparative politics university of
reading
we have the third online speaker michael
chertoff the chair
and co-founder of the chertoff group
and last but not least the former
secretary of homeland security in 2005
to 2009
in the united states and he's also
online from washington
uh here in the studio right next to me
we have
ivan bartosz the chairman of the czech
pirate party and there are people who
are saying
that he is going to be the next prime
minister so remember it might be a
historical moment
and last but by no means least simeon
sommokos
over here the founder and president of
the delphi economic forum
in greece so um
i again would like to remind you to be
brief um you also
can ask questions but keep the questions
brief
um and questions can be asked in three
ways
this would be in the room here just
raise your hand
wave at me i'll see you and um
then you have to you have to uh take
come to the microphone actually
i think this is the microphone right
that's where you have to come if you ask
the question in the room
there's also the option of using the
slido app
or the slido function on the globsec app
and finally there's a possibility to
connect via zoom
to the virtual studio so um
but before i ask my initial kickoff
questions to the five speakers i would
like to
do a slide or poll with you the audience
and the the question in the slide or
poll
can we bring that up please um the
question is
what do you think is the main driver for
the rise
in right-wing extremism
and there are there are four options it
is
social media it is the raising the
increasing economic disparities
it is the mutual support of
authoritarian governments
and parties so kind of the international
angle if you want
and here's a little provocation maybe
it's the illiberalism
of the woke left and you all know very
well that this is a thesis brought
forward by many
uh right wingers themselves so
please uh give from from uh from
uh classify these or rank these four
options in such a way that we see which
one
uh will be judged the most important by
you
we're going to come back in a in a few
minutes with the results
and now um let me let me start with
the the the topic and the questions and
of course we're
going to ask why uh right-wing extremism
is growing at all
we're going to discuss the role of
social media we're going to discuss the
international connectivity
and of course most importantly at the
very end
the question of how to respond so um
let me begin with ivan bartosz
as a czech politician ivan how do you
assess the impact of right-wing
extremism in
central europe and how serious a threat
is it for our democracies
so floor is yours thank you for the
question uh i have to admit
considering the europe and liberal
democracy and maybe the future of many
democracies in the world that we are at
war
that's obvious i'm happy
and it's kind of fortunate czech
republic does not
face the serious threat of right-wing
extremism
compared to for example in poland
hungary and
v4 countries even slovakia but
what we are facing is that the extremist
topics
are carried by the populist which
results in the same disappointment of
the people
and almost any narrative almost any
topic that hits the ground considering
politics concerning the european union
future of the nation or
economic questions even covet was
directly taken by the populist and
multiplied
by whatever forces are involved it could
be
russian money it can be influence of
china but
it it can be also particular race to the
election
motivation and it just uses similar
algorithm that
let's say the original outright movement
is
using so we don't have to really
distinguish
how the let's say bad feelings within
the people is supported
if it's originated on the right wing or
the other wing
but the the direct impact is uh
building mistrust to the institution
to the democratic politics to elected
politicians and it can easily and it's
not my words and i believe
it was somehow rephrasing what's love
havel like if you sleep
in democracy you may wake up in a
totalitarian system
and all those changes that are happening
are finally
and we had this historical experience
through democratic election
so addressing either right-wing
movements within the europe generation
identity which is huge movement through
greek and through the
to the other nation not hitting directly
czech republic
is just uh same as addressing
any let's say disturb disruptive
disruptive and carried by the social
media
thoughts and movements we have to do it
wisely with respect to the freedom of
speech
but also this is a serious threat and
divorce
in the future are the cyber wars and
disinformation wars and the knowledge
society
which we turn in from information
society deserves our attention
locally on the european level and we've
got a lot of guests here
obviously worldwide thank you so much um
excellent uh kick off um
there are so many other angles so i'm
going to pack them into the questions to
the other speakers
and then i do want an exchange with you
here and with you
online about about these questions
so the next question goes to michael
chertoff
in the united states um let's take
a look across the pond as they say what
is the relation between trump and the
alt-right
i mean how much alt-right is in trump in
other words
and um maybe as a as an afterthought to
this
how threatened was american democracy on
january 6th
at the time of the storming of the
capital
so michael chertoff floor is yours
well and i have to say i also agree with
what uh
mr bartos said about wiring extremism
i think in the united states we've
always had a group
that we would describe as alt-right goes
back for many years
but it's been more or less below the
surface and has not gotten a lot of
attention
until recently and i think two phenomena
really elevated it um in public
perception uh one was trump
because trump explicitly courted the
right
after the charlotte's film a march where
someone was killed by a right-wing
extremist in a car
trump described the right wing as very
good people
and he used very thinly coded language
that echoed some of the racist
and authoritarian meanings of the
alt-right
i also think to be honest the virus
and the lockdown further exacerbated the
situation
because some people resented the fact
that they had to wear masks
or that opportunity to attend things in
restaurants and bars were shot because
of the lockdown
and i think that further fueled the fire
and this culminated on january 6
and as i think the prior speaker said a
lot of what right-wing extremism
is about is creating distrust
and undermining social cohesion
and in the wake of the election in
november of 2020
trump's refusal to admit that the
election
was conclusive and has con continuing to
raise the claim that it was stolen and
there was fraud
even though literally dozens of courts
looked at the evidence and said there
was no evidence of serious fraud
that further created fuel for rightly
extremism
and what we saw to our shock and horror
on january 6
was really nothing less than a coup
attempt an effort on the part of
extremists
encouraged by trump to break into the
legislature and to physically injure
or harm the uh members of congress who
were voting
to ratify the result of the election
which they're required to do
in order to stop the election from going
forward
and i must say that to watch this would
i felt like i was watching something in
a in a fascist
state where people don't let the
election go forward
the good news is that the coup attempt
failed
and now the biden administration
yesterday
issued a strategy against
right-wing extremist and domestic
terrorism
we've now mobilized the fbi and the
intelligence community
to treat this as the number one
terrorist threat
in the united states and i think we need
to have a global
joint effort to deal with right-wing
extremism which is becoming an
international phenomenon
fueled by social media and to be honest
also made worse by the fact that you
have disinformation
emanating from russia and china
thank you so much uh for for this
introduction and i want to
actually stay with this international
aspect here
and ask uh the next kickoff speaker um
uh daphne aliciopoulou
is there such a thing as nationalist
internationalism
in other words isn't there a
contradiction in terms here
uh i mean we all know that uh you know
nationalists
uh let's say like from in brazil and in
some european countries may get along
but how about european countries that
are neighboring each other and sharing a
difficult history
how can nationalists cooperate between
those countries and
how important is this whole
international aspect
in uh in the in the the growing strength
of right-wing
extremism so daphne the floor is yours
yeah hello hi there uh thank you for
your question
just before i address it i want to say i
thought your uh sliding pose
really interesting and i'm very curious
to see what
uh what the results will be um but okay
so
nationalist internationalism indeed i
think it's an interesting way of framing
it you're absolutely right there's a
contradiction
in terms right so on the one hand the
far right as
i prefer to call it owns the nationalism
issue
right that means that it emphasizes the
nation
the the the in group over the out group
so
any international endeavor is by
definition not
their priority however there are some
some ways that these these uh
the two terms if you like or nationalist
internationalism can
coincide and that is uh both in terms of
extreme right groups but also in terms
of the more moderate far-right parties
that we see even in power in or in
in parliament so for example um many
extreme right groups
uh actually have many branches so you
know things like combat 18 for example
they
they function they have branches in the
us in canada and in
a number of european countries i think
similarly
some of these groups uh interact quite a
lot online and this gives them a
platform
to have members engage and and discuss
and spread their ideas so this
i think it's a it's an exhilarating if
you like uh
role that it plays that it allows people
to spread the message really quickly
through these international links
now in terms of political parties one
thing that i've noticed quite a lot in
my work is how they
copy each other so the the
internationalism
comes into into finding a message that
that one party sort of for example
spreads in one country and then another
party thinks so this is successful
so i will copy it too a famous example
is uh
i don't know if if the audience is
familiar with the
swiss svp the the poster they had in a
previous electoral campaign of a white
sheep uh on on a swiss flag
kicking out the black sheep and
obviously this this has been copied so
it's been used also from
the german npd and it's this this idea
of what i call civic nationalism this
message
that we need to exclude those who are
intolerant of us
and our beliefs and our democratic
values has been taken up
by a lot of um a lot of european far
right parties so this is the the copycat
internationalism if you like and then
and then finally there is also the
question of forming alliances so
these parties they have a grouping in
the european parliament
and and they try this way to form
alliances and and to compete with other
parties both in the system but also
in the european parliament but what i do
want to say to end
my response is that i think while this
as i said can be an exhilarating
uh question of accelerating the message
i don't think it's a structural issue
that is able to gain
them support and i think if when we do
touch upon the question of
of the causes of support i think these
are far more um
structural and and far more deeply
ingrained um
than that i don't think inevitably their
nationalism
is a weakness because that way they will
never really be able to forge
proper international alliances thank you
thank you so much stephanie
could we have the result of the slido
poll now
just asking our colleagues
there we go okay so social media is
considered the biggest driver
uh followed by uh increasing economic
disparities
and then the mutual support of
authoritarian governments and parties
if you want the internationalism and
finally
the smallest factor is the illiberalism
of the woke left
well some right-wing extremists would
deeply disagree with this
but um that's what we're here to discuss
i would like to continue now
with uh the next kickoff speaker david
epson
and indeed uh we would like to focus on
this
this one factor that was considered the
most important by you
uh social media and and the internet
and i would like to ask you david how
important
are social media for the growth of
right-wing extremism
are they more of a driver more of an
accelerator
or just a vehicle like any other
instrument that is being used
uh david the floor is yours oh thank you
roland
um yeah i mean it's it's an interesting
question but it's it's not black and
white
um obviously um you know social media
internet platforms uh permeate every
aspect
of our lives these days so you know as
tempting as it is to blame
every negative externality that is
arisen in society
um every disappointment um every outrage
uh to lay that at the feet of mark
zuckerberg as tempting as that is
um i don't think that we can do that uh
exclusively
so i don't know if terrorism and
extremism um uh
is caused by social media you know it
per se in a in a vacuum
um but we do have to acknowledge that
um it is a accelerant it is a
facilitator in terms of
allowing extremists on the far right and
elsewhere to
communicate to expand their networks to
propagandize
um to recruit uh even in some cases to
to raise money that's just uh the nature
of
the platforms um so when you look at it
it's really kind of a two-pronged answer
you know do extremists misuse social
media
do terrorists misuse internet platforms
um to grow
and and to expand their message and to
expand their membership yes absolutely
um
on the other side are social media
companies and internet media platforms
are they doing enough to curtail this
this misuse
uh because it's not just to say enough
that terrorists are using social media
to expand and recruit and propagandize
you also have to look at the platforms
themselves and what steps are
are they taking to curtail this type of
use and
if if they're not stepping in in the
appropriate ways they're not taking the
opportunities to curtail such misuse
then obviously they're part and parcel
um to the problem of extremism
um online just on on the first issue
by nature social media platforms they
connect people people with similar
backgrounds people with similar
interests they're also exclusionary in
terms of once you get into a group on
social media it's very easy to
exclude opposing viewpoints moderating
viewpoints so it's the perfect platform
for these kind of in-group dynamics that
the previous speaker
just just uh announced it's also a great
environment for these kind of propaganda
and ideological feedback loops
so the information comes in it gets
circulated
you can drown out kind of again
moderating voices uh
and perpetuate the kind of process of
radicalization
on these these platforms the last
speaker also kind of mentioned and this
goes to the question that you asked
the ability to kind of communicate
outside of your community
one thing we've seen with extreme
far right and the creation of these
transnational right-wing networks
is the use of social media to connect
outside borders
the extreme right-wing used to be very
community-based it was very
ethno-nationalist-based
and now we've seen that there's this
kind of transnational creation of these
groups where you're putting aside these
national differences
in favor of an adoption of a more kind
of transnational
identitarian ideology
that can unite people on really racial
bounds as opposed to
to national uh bounds and so yes when
you see when you find different
attackers
who are motivated by right-wing
motivations
they're drawing upon um manifestos and
motivations and tactics that may have
occurred
in different countries and they're
citing each other whether it's in uh
germany or norway or poet or el paso
or christ church you kind of have this
commonality of messages and this
commonality of tactics
on the internet i would also note that
there's really this this really is kind
of a digital native phenomenon
the growth of this neo-nazi
accelerationist
type movement which is amongst younger
neo-nazi
members and extreme right-wing members
um where there's this subculture of of
of memes
um and music uh and
symbols where you have this now you can
see that you know
a member of the far right in um in the
us who might have previously been part
of a neoconfederate secessionist
movement
is kind of adopting the same language
and the same skull masks and the same
imagery
um as an extreme right-wing member um in
germany or from some kind of nordic
uh resistant movement so the platforms
clearly are
being used to facilitate this type of
activity i would just add that
as i mentioned in my opening of my
remarks you have the tech companies
themselves
which i think because of ideology in one
hand and the business model on the other
hand
may not be doing enough to identify and
interrupt this this type of activity
on the um the culture aspect of it
there's this kind of libertarian utopian
mindset that means that
the very nature of connecting people
will always result in positive outcomes
it will always lend to democracy
movements and there's taken a while to
re to realize that their platforms can
be used for good and bad just like any
kind of communication
system that's been a hindrance and we
also look at the business model which
really is about
keeping people on the platforms as long
as possible engage as long as possible
and this
leads to the deployment of certain
methods certain algorithms
which draw users to more incendiary
controversial um conspiratorial type
content
which certainly doesn't mitigate the
effects of
the radicalization amongst these
networks so certainly
um ultimate responsibility relies with
the individual extremists and the
terrorists who
engage in these activities and propagate
this ideology and commit uh terrorist uh
attacks
at the same time we have to look at
social media companies who operate these
platforms and
question whether they're doing enough
and taking sufficient steps
to mitigate and pressure and disrupt
this kind of extreme right wing activity
thanks david um and
i already have a couple of questions
from the audience here um
i will nevertheless first of all take
our last speaker
um from from the kickoffs um see me on
tomokos
and ask him simeon in assessing the rise
of right-wing extremism
leftist analysts and actress politicians
like to emphasize socioeconomic factors
the rise of poverty the rise of the
despair rising disparities between poor
and rich
between countries in the pandemic so
it's all
it's all about the economy stupid if you
want in their eyes
and then you have you have more
conservative
commentators such as for example francis
fukuyama
with his recent book identity who
explain the rise of right-wing extremism
by identity politics and actually more
cultural questions questions of how
how groups look at each other how groups
are treated by the rest of society
and and this also ties into
the fourth option on the slider poll
that i put in there
the illiberalism of the woke left there
is a whole school out there
which claims that it is the intolerance
of wokism starting with u.s
universities going to also british
continental european universities and
then
uh media and and and political
establishments
uh which causes people to counter react
and what we see in right-wing extremism
is just a reaction to that
so these are two schools of thought and
i would like you to
kind of offer a synthesis you're greek
so
give us a synthesis please thank you
thank you roland and i
thank globsec actually for this
opportunity
i hope that we'll find some working
relationship between this important
event that you organize
in this part of the world we are
emerging as a
we like to think as an important event
in the southeast europe so i hope that
we find
joint efforts that we do jointly
together
to respond directly to your question i
will speak actually as a citizen rather
than you know as an expert i don't
consider myself
myself an expert because uh being a
conference organizer sometimes we see
things horizontally
we don't have the time to go in depth
but i would
like to say that undoubtedly both
factors
that you mentioned are feeding each
other
the rising equality in the last years
has led a whole group of
working class citizens unprotected
and unsafe if you like to manufacture
changes that are where all are
experiencing nowadays
jobs are being shipped overseas or
becoming obsolete
to mention what happened in greece five
percent of the total population the
youngest
back during the more severe economic
crisis we have had
they went abroad i mean you know and we
had a huge brain drain which i don't
know how we're going
to bring back all these people therefore
the big debate at the time in greece
was whom to blame i mean the weak and
confused policies of the governments at
the time the economic elites of the
country with the fat
you know salaries etc so that was where
a lot of extreme left wing and extreme
wing rhetoric
converged this is this is my view and
the huge changes on the economic front
created also rapid changes in the social
norms
the rise i think in my view of the
neo-fascist group in greece
you remember the golden dawn was only
made possible
during that period of time the situation
was also fueled of course by the
uncontrolled immigration which is a
major issue
i think that is going to come in the
years ahead unfortunately and especially
the creation
of the immigrant ghettos we have had in
many parts of greece
the absolute lack of integration
policies created the rise of these
forces
and needless to say that this was
turbocharged by the internet and the
social media
that was what happened in greece it is a
fact i think that
we all live in times of the eventual
collapse of the social
structure of the past century and the
rise of individualism which has weakened
people's sense of belonging this is my
thought
for example less people are members of
political parties or trade unions
even football clubs see their membership
falling these days especially in younger
generations there is a gap
of representation for many people and
extreme right wing groups are eager
to exploit this psychological factor i
feel that modern societies are
fragmented
and common experience are dwiddling many
people without a well-paying job feel
that all that is left to do is to defend
themselves
against the elites and whichever themes
these elites are
in favor my last point which is a rather
question it
is not a you know remark and perhaps
later on we can discuss is
what is the role of the political
leadership in all this
because i have to tell you what is
happening in greece these days
the far left the far right party is not
getting more than
one percent of the polls compared with
10 percent that it was getting a few
years ago
and even the uh left party i mean is
very weak this day so i would like to
ask the experts because i'm not an
expert i must tell you
what is the role of the political
leadership in all this
discussion that we're having this
morning thank you very much excellent
question to end
an answer um and we will certainly
debate that in the remaining 20 minutes
that we have here
uh i would now like to take some of the
questions that came in here
uh through the slido function on the
globsec app
and i would try to bundle them a little
bit
there are two concerning extremism and
terrorism
there's there's one um i mean actually
uh
both should go to michael chertoff
uh so why does it appear so much harder
to prosecute and convict
far-right extremists on terrorism
charges
and the other one is what can we do
about terrorists operating through
international and national legal fronts
that is to say
ngos and getting funding for them so
this is obviously the
question to michael chertoff floor is
yours
thank you well first of all the good
news is if you look at what's happened
in the wake of january 6
i believe over 400 people have been
charged with various criminal offenses
relating to the violent acting out that
we saw at the capitol on january 6.
so i do think we're going to see a rise
in cases now we don't actually have a
specific
domestic terrorism criminal statute
but we have a number of other criminal
statutes which easily
apply including hate crimes
and violations of civil rights and
obviously you know act other acts of
violence
so there are plenty of legal avenues
available to the government and as i
said earlier
the administration has now unveiled a
strategy to make
domestic violent terrorism a priority in
counterterrorism
and that means uh collecting more
information
coordinating with state and local
officials
and coming up with effective strategies
to prevent and disrupt terrorist
activity
and also to divert people who are
beginning to move in the direction of
violence away from that
and essentially to deprogram them so
that i think is very effective
in terms of ngos or
international organizations that are
supporting domestic terrorism
at least i'm not aware that we've seen a
lot of operational support
at this point um internationally for
u.s domestic terrorists from overseas
we've seen moral support and we've seen
people going online and encouraging it
and as i said earlier
some of this i think is actually driven
by particularly the russians
but i don't know that we've seen
financial support or operational support
but i do think that again as we increase
the focus
on these particular violent threats
we will certainly uncover or nes support
domestic terrorist acts at an
international level with operational or
financial
assistance okay
thank you very much i would now before
continuing with the questions i got on
slido here
i would like to give the floor to uh
someone
connected to us via zoom from india and
please introduce yourself very briefly
and then ask your question
floor is yours oh thank you
i'm dr vivek mishra from the indian
council of world affairs this is a
government think tank here and the
oldest think tank
dealing with international relations and
other related issues
my question is regarding the health of
democracy
increasingly we are seeing populism both
on the left and the right fronts
making home uh inside democracies in the
health of democracy
on the you know on one side you have
issues like cultural nationalism and
conservative politics
versus the left populism that we have
which are so-called pro-people issues uh
and they are stacked in democracies
increasingly in in the global south
uh against one another now and if you
leave these two out
then there is uh you know the risk of
elite politics thriving
uh between these two extremes so how do
we reconcile all these for achieving a
deeper democracy is what
uh i'm asking today thank you thank you
for the opportunity
and thank you for the question i would
like to give that to ivan bartosz
well how healthy is our democracy and
how would you answer that question uh
it also thank you for the question and
it also i will use
uh that part of the speeches for some
very beginning
what can politician actually do right
and uh
it's regaining the trust uh as far
as i'm concerned and it's the way how we
wanna do politics
is just you know you have to act
transparently
you just cannot lie not even within the
campaign
because the lack of trust to the
politics and
politics they represent is just based on
you don't lead by example that means you
don't have to be like a super nice guy
you know you can be tough politician you
know fighting the crime you know
you can in the fair political discussion
beat your opponent
with arguments right it's everything is
legit
but you cannot lie to the people and uh
i believe and it wasn't mentioned in
here
but why you are looking for identity by
yourself
because you cannot be proud of your work
you don't see a future
in your commitment to the society then
the extremists
online and even some politics within our
democracy in czech republic
emphasize that feeling within the people
threat
threatening them you know with no future
with migration crisis which completely
went around the czech republic it didn't
hurt us people were
passing to germany sorry to the german
people and uh
once you use that it's just never never
ending circle
because you are captured in them lies so
first you have to
give a future to the people they can
believe themselves they can be happy
about their life
and then you have to regain the trust if
you take a look to the north
when the government is open not just
open excess data
but if there is an issue you describe
the issue no matter how bad it is
and you describe the people the way how
you're gonna solve it
it's a partnership and it was a little
bit mentioned in there
but that let's say even suffering part
of the society
never had you know this understood
understandable voice
of them it was often ignored and that
makes a place to actually extremist
and populist to just you know pick up
the glove and use it in the campaigns
and as far as i believe you cannot
have ambition to change the society it's
it's just the optimistic approach
if you don't believe to the individual
and this regaining the trust
and then social media can help us
because politician
can broadcast himself widely he's not
dependent even
on the on the public public media
and it could be used as a tool by
politicians to actually fight
those extreme wings in politics and
one thing that was mentioned in here as
a tool remember
when there was arabian spring we all
believed that social media help people
to organize themselves against regime
you know even in the turkish
turkish opposition but then when it was
captured by the totalitarian government
or specific leader it was abused to
actually
put people in jail and control the
narrative and use the propaganda
so each technology can be abused
used in a good way but in very end you
get to the individual
on one side as a citizen and to the
leader
so as long as we can adapt lead by
example
especially through truthfully described
issues and your politics
you can regain the trust and we've got
almost
nothing to afraid except the terrorist
organization
which uh the fight is their everyday
life
they actually don't want to introduce
the change because that
fear is what feeds them provided they
don't forget when they come in power
yeah because sometimes you know what
happens yeah but i totally agree with
you i mean regaining the trust
is a very important component easy to
lose
it's hard to regain indeed indeed
we've got it's heating up now here in
the
in the slider function uh so we have
uh 12 minutes left so let's uh let's
really shorten our answers and i would
now like to
uh to ask the census censorship question
ilya shashko
asked how to find the border between
fighting the extremism in the internet
and total censorship
also has something to do with the uh
illiberalism of the left because you
know that some
right-wing narratives are that the big
tech companies in fact
impose a uh a biased
uh uh as kind of censorship on social
media which is why you have to create
your own or whatever
so i would like to ask david that
question uh david
what where is the red line between
between censorship
and reasonable uh uh defense against
extremism
i mean that's a great question it's the
million dollar question it's something
that everyone has been wrestling with i
think since the advent of these
these social media platforms as ivan
said you know
any communication tool can be used you
can use for good it can be used um
for for nefarious purposes i mean i
think one example of this is in the us
is in the case of of donald trump um
you know again the speaker mentioned how
individuals can use
social media to communicate directly to
the people uh to bypass
kind of these entrenched um political
structures that may not be responsive to
uh the needs of people who don't have
the proper access
uh or money now some people can see that
as a wonderful thing
now you have donald trump who
communicated directly with the people
he bypassed 17 other establishment
candidates in the republican primary
and he he defeated uh hillary clinton
who basically represents the political
establishment
uh in the united states um you know
pretty much for
for for a generation other people see
this as a huge affront to democracy i
mean some people see donald trump as
basically the standard bearer for
white supremacy uh in uh in the united
states
um and have taken action really to
to uh limit his use of this social media
function
really for for that purpose um so it
kind of goes back
to this issue of you know finding some
kind of you know
moderation between the
the people who want to use these
platforms to communicate directly to the
people
and also defining in some sense you know
what is
a misuse and what is an affairs purpose
of the internet on the latter case i
don't think it's always as complicated
as we make it out
to be social media companies promulgate
terms and conditions
uh terms of use for their platforms
they routinely have identified things
whether it's from
adult consenting pornography to calls to
violence
to distribution of csam material things
that are prescribed on the platforms
and they deploy um individuals and also
technologies to curtail this type of
activity for some reason when it comes
to
forms of of other kind of political
speech or extremist speech
the companies are less likely or less
inclined to utilize these same tools to
prescribe that type of
activity so i think that all reasonable
people can come together and say look
you have these terms of conditions
you have individuals who are designated
as terrorist um
individuals by the u.n by the eu by the
us for example
um obviously they shouldn't have access
to these different platforms that's in
line with
the social media companies terms and
conditions and the rules and it's also
in line with
with common sense and i think if we
refer back to these rules into common
sense
um it would be less problematic of a
debate
thank you thank you david uh i i have a
question for daphne here
and it concerns the factor of religion
we haven't talked about this
so far but i think it is it is quite
significant
and the question by amanda coakley from
vienna
is how much in your opinion is the far
right supported or
influenced by ultra-conservative
christian organizations
daphne what's the answer
so thank you i think i'm gonna i'm gonna
take this opportunity to link this
question with some of the things that
i've heard been talked about
uh in the panel generally about the the
causes of the far-right religion being
one of them i think
so the short answer to this question is
some some role for some particular
country so that
this is mixed there is variation um
it is quite closely linked in certain
countries we know for example that
that a lot of these parties are closely
linked to some whatever religious
organizations we also know that in in
some countries
uh the far right is is more secular and
so there is variation and i think just
to
to broaden and put put my political
scientist heart a second
and and broaden it i don't think i think
i think what's important to emphasize
here is that
that it's not one factor one thing i've
heard in the panel being talked a lot
about
is the people so essentially we have
this idea that the people vote for one
thing for one reason
but that's not the case there is no such
thing really as the people societies are
consist of various social groups with
different preferences
often clashing preferences now what the
far-right has done
is that it has managed to to gain broad
coalitions
from many different societal groups who
support them for different reasons
others for religion
because they are ideological voters or
nationalism also because they're
ideological voters
but others again for economic reasons or
for trust reasons i
agree with ivan there so these are the
protest voters so i think
that what we need to understand is that
in order to
to to address the far right what we need
to do is break
these coalitions so instead of focusing
on one
one factor alone i think we need to
understand why different
core and different peripheral voters
support these parties for different
reasons and how these coalitions the
voters can be
somehow broken thank you
thanks stephanie now five minutes
remaining
this is your last chance you people in
this room to ask a question at that
microphone
and if no one steps up to the challenge
then yes spam
please would you come here briefly
introduce yourself and then
quickly ask you a question
we have to work with a microphone
because otherwise the online
participants can't hear you
can you hear me yes yes good afternoon
everybody uh my name is jana
krideshwa i'm professor university
california so i like to talk about the
role of technology
uh but a little bit differently from
different point of view
um technology aggravating fears
and insecurities voters voters losing
jobs due
to offshoring outsourcing or maybe
simply due to china trade shock and
you know giving the votes to populist
leaders who promise
protectionist policies etc so how what
do you think um
in your view should governments do to
address
this fear stemming from technological
revolution in terms of
i don't know fiscal policy or industrial
policy or social policy
right and we also you know we've seen
that um for example president bidens i
know i'm closing
uh biden's fiscal stimulus was
kind of um you know a step in that
direction
so i really appreciate your views thank
you i would like to give that question
to ivan bartosz what would be your
social and economic policy answer
to the phenomena of marginalization and
and and and uh anti-global globalization
movements that we see
uh okay we have to consider that
globalization is just a fact
it show us in akavi there is nothing
like specific
you know island of uh positive deviation
that would not be
touched by the global changes either
it's climate or it's a virus
obviously uh it's a prosperous society
uh we were talking about extremes on the
left on the right side
their combined rhetorics adding the
catholic religion or whatever reason
anti-vex and dye masks you have to found
the sufficient line of the politics a
little bit
a little bit to the right that actually
leads to the prosperous society
which is free market degenerates you
know
options for the people and the
treasury of the country and then you
have to have
very strong and it's not a in the way in
a bad way
it's socialis social system is often
in europe thinks something is wrong but
obviously covey showed us how many
people
could not make it so the rich society
that generates the prosperity of the
country
thinking of those people for whatever
particular reason
cannot reach the average wealth of
having a good job
sufficient education and that's the role
of the state and
we are members of the european union so
that role and there was a china
threat of economic growth we could
you know and we will i believe address
those
issues together our big concern is
environmental
responsible politics we are talking
about
maybe future of the of the carbon tax
that brings the companies back into
europe because the only uh
advantage they've got that they are in
the countries of a cheap labor
and no environmental responsibility that
they have to deal with
so this common approach of not extremist
solution
and very pro-people-oriented in the
matter of fact
there are a lot of people who just
cannot adapt to 21st century changes
and obviously they will not because they
are either on the side of the society
or they turn the age when the change and
adoption is very difficult for them
that's the combination great concluding
remarks
i would like to formulate the takeaway
here
and if you if i had to put it into one
sentence it would be
as there are many reasons many factors
involved
in the rise of right-wing extremism
there are also many factors involved in
many aspects to the response to it
and we have of course in insufficient
time but we
we have touched upon a couple of those
points
and these are i would say the one of the
major buzzwords was leadership
leadership by politicians that has to be
exercised better um
there are socio-economic policy answers
uh there is also the the question of uh
better regulating uh social media and
the internet
and and that will take cooperation of
many actors
um respect of groups
uh however justified or unjustified you
feel their resentment or their
their grievance may be um
and last but not least and maybe the
most difficult
buzzword here trust uh how to
re-establish the eroding trust in our
societies now
i think with all like with all
interesting debates we finish with more
questions than answers
but but we may still be confused but on
a much higher level i suppose
uh i hope so uh thank you for for being
here i would just want to announce that
in
10 minutes we have a session right here
about the winners and losers of the
pandemic um
and and uh sorry it's five minutes i
just here
uh and uh in maria teresia the other
big room there will be a session of you
from central europe
future of the european union with the
foreign ministers of the
wichigrad countries of slovakia czech
republic hungary and poland
so i want to i want to thank you all for
being here
thank our online colleagues uh david
michael and daphne and of course our two
speakers here in the room
simeon and evan thank you all
and hope to see you soon thank you