Oct. 12, 2018 - Know More News - Adam Green
02:43
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Jonathan Greenblatt. | |
| He is the CEO of the Anti-Defamation Defamation League. | |
| Jonathan, thank you for being with us. | |
| Um, you say Facebook has a moral and ethical obligation not to allow people who circulate Holocaust denial on its platform. | |
| Holocaust denialism is anti-Semitism plain and simple. | |
| It is a form of hate speech that really shouldn't be up for debate. | |
| I mean, to talk about the intent of it is like talking about legitimacy of racism. | |
| Simply put, it is unambiguously wrong. | |
| It is a willful and deliberate tactic that's long been used by anti-Semites and bigots. | |
| That's hateful and hurtful to Jewish people and others who perished in that terrible catastrophe. | |
| The intent of it is literally to undermine the narrative of Jewish suffering and to render Jews inconsequential to their own story. | |
| So again, we wouldn't debate the ethics of slavery, and we don't debate the truth of Sandy Hook, the Holocaust, its legitimacy as a historical event for which there is an overwhelming body of evidence, and millions and millions and millions of people who perish should not be as a legitimate event up for debate. | |
| Zuckerberg frames this as a free speech issue. | |
| Do you think he has a point or is this not an area that should be protected? | |
| Well at the ADL, we are fierce advocates for the First Amendment. | |
| I think we need to also recognize though that businesses have an obligation, a responsibility to make sure their platforms are safe for all of their users. | |
| And as Facebook is now, thankfully, taking steps around dealing with hate speech on their platform and taking steps to deal with fake news on their platform, Holocaust denialism is an original form of fake news. | |
| And as they are taking measures to ensure, again, the integrity of the experience for all their users, Holocaust denialism deserves to be considered in this body of work that, again, this body of lies that they are qualifying for. | |
| So it is we work, you know, the ABL opened up an office in Silicon Valley last year. | |
| We work actively with Facebook and the other tech companies. | |
| They have been good partners with us in trying to mitigate cyber hate and trying to reduce online harassment. | |
| I'll acknowledge here that Facebook has taken great steps to move the ball downfield and to make their platform safer for all of their users. | |
| But this story reminds us that there is still a long way to go. | |
| So what surprises me is that Mark would fumble on something that seems so incontrovertible. | |
| Again, the intent of Holocaust deniers is one thing to promote a vicious and pernicious form of anti-Semitism. | |
| I hope he recognizes that. | |
| Jonathan Greenblatt, thank you so much for your time today. |
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