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DSP and India Hate Lab Elections Webinar | Otter.ai

DSP and India Hate Lab Elections Webinar

Tonei Glavinic59min

Susan Benesch

01:21

Okay, everyone, as I think zoom has already informed you, We will record this meeting so that we can share it with people who recording in progress aren't able to attend. In fact, as I said, that I hear the thought recording in progress, and then we'll produce a transcript and a summary for you to share with others. I am a warm welcome to everybody. I'm Susan Finnish. I founded the dangerous speech project a decade ago after noticing some uncanny, stunning similarities in the rhetoric of political leaders in periods leading up to intergroup violence in a huge variety of countries and cultures and languages and historical periods. I named that dangerous speech for its apparent capacity to inspire violence, although politicians we have realized are far from the only people who use dangerous speech. It does tend to proliferate during elections, since it is such a useful tool for aggregating power by means of fear, dangerous speech has become all too familiar in many countries during this year of elections, especially in India and the United States, or, I should say, for example, in India and the United States, among the dozens of countries holding elections around the world in 1924 India got an early start, and the United States will bring up the rear. We have noticed some echoes between them and lessons to learn, and with three phenomenal colleagues, I'll offer you those ideas today. I'll ask some questions. They'll give all sorts of answers, and then I'll open it up for questions from the audience. Please post those questions in the chat, and you're welcome, of course, to post them at any time you need to wait for the official Q A, and we'll take them as much and take as many of them as we can. So now let me, let me briefly introduce the speakers of panelists for today. Akib Hamid Naik is a multimedia journalist with more of a decade of more than a decade of experience reporting from India, Kashmir, China and the United States. He is the founder of Hindutva watch, which is a research and documentation project on the rise of Hindu nationalism, and also the founder of India hate Lab, which documents studies and analyzes hate speech, disinformation and conspiracy theme, and I could add dangerous speech that target India's religious minorities, online and offline. Part and n is an independent journalist based in India. He mainly covers rural India from many different outlets, and his work has appeared in the LA Times, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, people's archive of rural India, Times of India, digital, among many others, he has been selected for awards and prizes by all kinds of organizations, including the Pulitzer Center, the Indian Express group and the European Commission. Kathy Berger, my own immediate colleague, is the director of research at the danger of speech project. She studies the relationship between speech and intergroup violence, as well as civil society responses to dangerous and hateful speech online. That is also, not surprisingly, a pretty good description of what the dangerous project does. She's a research affiliate of the University of Connecticut's economic and social rights research group and managing editor of the Journal of Human Rights. She has PhD in anthropology from the University of Connecticut. So that's the that's the cast we have today. And I would like to plunge right in by asking Rakib, Rakib and art, what was different about this election in India compared with previous ones, regarding speech or not.

Susan Benesch

05:46

Please jump in.

Speaker 1

05:48

Okay, I think I'll jump in. I believe in the history of Indian elections, the campaigning for recently concluded elections was the most hateful run. And in fact, in my lifetime, for almost 29 years, I haven't seen such latent hate and victory being still, day in and day out, we have leaders of the ruling party, including Prime Minister Modi, Narendra Modi, and Home Minister Amit Shah, during these hateful, dangerous speeches. And in fact, many of you must remember in April, Modi in his now infamous hate speech, caused infiltrators and those who produce more children, and as it was obvious, because the peak election season, this received widespread international attention. But this was not the only, the only hate speech he claimed in almost every speech following that one, he targeted Muslims, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, and sometimes by targeting them via local student party. And he made claims such as, Muslims will take away job reservations meant for other Hindu groups, referring to Muslims as special people, or the so called, quote, Bank of opposition party, and promoted anti Muslim conspiracy theories like Lord jihad, that alleges that Muslim man trapped in the woman in gulab to convert them to Islam and land Jihad that Muslims and Croats upon government land to Build religious structures. And then this time, he came where Muslims are voting as a block to defeat this party, under some conspiracy theory, to turn India into a Muslim nation, Islamic nation. And his right hand man, the one minister, Amit Shah, was also very consistent with his demonization of Muslims. And not just only demonized the Muslim citizens, but also targeted, repeatedly targeted, the Rohingya refugees and migrants from Bangladesh, leaving them as infiltrators. And to make a point here that during elections, the BJP leadership often conflicts determine outsiders with Indian Muslim voters. And this was actually done this time by the senior BJP leadership. And as a result of hate being normalized at the top, the entire BJP rank and file jumped right into it with hate and dangerous speech being the, I think the single weapon and Muslims being the sole target in elections. And I remember, because we were after, we had an election monitoring that setup, and initially before, after 22nd 21st when normally there was this hate speech, we would have hate speech. Hate speech is coming in almost every day, but it was just limited to two or four. But as soon as Modi delivered that hate speech, the entire BJP rank and file kind of followed that and started living like literally, our team was working at least 16 to 18 hours a day. We had eight members of the team during the election, launching where it was so crazy after his speech that these ageful Danger speeches were being delivered almost in every part of the country. And now, after the results, I think it is a secondary discussion whether this hate really paid off for the party electorally. But from the face of it, the meant to incite fear, gait and violence at the ground level, on the streets, and promote more discriminatory policies at the policy level. But having lost its majority and now depending on the regional allies for minorities, the discriminatory policies might take a step back, but the anti Muslim and anti Christian hate speech, and why didn't they before,

Susan Benesch

09:54

just just to follow up. So was this not, not like previous election? After all, Modi is the same Prime Minister. Is the same man who ran in the last election,

Speaker 1

10:06

in the last two elections over the last decade of Modi's rule, he never directly targeted Muslims by calling them out. This was the first election where he directly targeted Muslims while he was a prime minister. But if you look at his track record that he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat back then, he did use inflammatory language towards Muslims. In fact, after the Gujarat program, our 1000 Muslims were murdered under his watch, he organized this state in one of those speeches, in one of those events during that March he called Muslim, you know, these relief cancer Muslims were, you know, placed as child breeding centers. So he had the history of delivering hateful, dangerous speeches. But out of past decade of his rule, he had kind of, you know, tried to protect his image as, like, you know, being that democratically, being that inclusive leader, he would speak up something, but at policy level, he would do something. But now his words and policies, kind of, you know, match together. And this election, this election, these elections, are brought together.

Susan Benesch

11:26

What did you what was in this, in this election in India, that was different from previous ones? Yeah.

Susan Benesch

11:39

Thank you.

Speaker 2

11:40

Thank you, first of all, for having me. I think over the past 10 years under Narendra Modi, India has steadily moved from a functional democracy to an electoral democracy. Press Freedom ranking has gone down. Human rights leaders have been jailed, journalists have been threatened, and minorities have been persecuted. If you look at if you look at how India has operated over the past 10 years, you see that we have used some of our latest technologies and used them to sort of put us back into the storage. We have used some of the latest inventions to enable some of our most primitive instincts. In that sense, I think the 2024 election in that context provided a bit of hope, because they did not give there was a full majority. There was, and that invincibility was shattered in spite of the hate speech and dangerous speech that just recalled. So in that sense, a lot of people took a lot of hope from the results, because this was a lopsided contest. It wasn't a election. We had a blind media or the purview Election Commission, and yet medical Modi could not cross the majority of all by instance. And in that sense, I think this election has given people a lot of hope, because it could mean that the media might be more critical, more fair going forward, that the regional parties might find more strength and courage to take on the BJP in the upcoming state elections, the next few months and years. Having said that, I think the thing about the thing about the Hindu nationalism project is that it carries it does not depend on the electoral outcomes. It is a very well oil machinery on the ground that keeps operating regardless of what happens in the field, so what happens in the election, so that. So in that sense, I think the dangerous features will carry on, and that is something we have to be on guard against,

Speaker 1

13:56

if I may, jump in there to continue. What part that I think the effect a lot of people are saying like, you know, after these election results, that Modi's last majority there is going to be restoration. See, they are going to be lesser attacks than minority. I think that's a complete lie, and that's kind of a powerful giving to the people, especially the minorities, who are extremely vulnerable than they were in the entire history of this independent country. And I think this is exemplified by the fact that, since Modi has only action, at least four must have killed a different incidents because of the identity, in some cases, related lynchings, at least three Muslims actually in just one particular state called chykistar, which was flipped last year from Congress to BJP. So that's number one. And unfortunately, in India, the issue of hate in India, speech only comes to media attention during the election side, and having done this work for four, three years now, that can safely say that India, that that anti Muslim hate speech has been normalized to such an extent that it has become part of the social political topic of the country for the past 10 years of holy school. So just to add a bit that

Speaker 2

15:11

when a Muslim OSI walked up in the parliament to take his oath as the member of parliament, he was heckled by the by some of the other fellow parliamentarians. There was one member of the parliament who even finished his oath by saying, Jai Hindu Russia to the Hindu nation.

Susan Benesch

15:35

So as as we are anticipating here in the United States, the election is not going to be, or has not been, in India, an end of something really, but instead a continuation and even a beginning of more more conflict. We have been noting at the dangerous speech project that whoever is declared to be the winner of our forthcoming election, there will be a large number of people who are not only upset but also fearful of many other people in the country since they will have been taught to think that way, and that's going to be a very significant ongoing problem. May I ask you both then, what echoes or similarities do you see between the Indian electoral process and ours in the United States,

Susan Benesch

16:33

for example, I could maybe out you by saying, by asking, Have you noticed any any efforts to diminish or defang dangerous speech in India,

Speaker 1

16:53

I think there have been some projects on the ground that have been working to Counter speech, you know, counter the hate speech, also promote inclusive dialog among communities. But the other side of it is the fact that the important agency, the important institution that could lead this dialog, this important work of counterspeech that is civil society, has been almost demolished by the by the by the party in power over the past decade. And but the best and best of our academics that with the human rights defenders are not right now in jails. We should have been leading and doing this critical work, the communities leaders. In some cases, you know, in some states, dozens of them who were doing this work before they're in jail. And unfortunately, I think the civil society, hopefully, maybe after this elections, it might rebounds. But as of now, it is literally non existent. It's fragmented, and that's what this government has done. And there is this, you know, old fear among different people, whether it be activist journalist, to do this work, because the act of countering hate speech or documenting hate speech is is an unspoken crime, and this regime, those who deliver these day to night speeches, roam free, but people like us, for example, my organization as a police case against against us in the state of our registered last Year, and the offenses carry the carry the prison time of up to five years, if you know, during the trial. And this was viral because we were documenting hate speeches, and unfortunately, this is a reality. But on the other side of it, there are some smaller initiatives that are working on the ground, promoting inter community dialog, you know, leading some of the Taurus speech majors, and they've been really effective. In fact, to mention one, it's called Karaman in mahopad, the caravan of laws, run by harsh Manda. He's a former bureaucrat. His organization has good job and promoting dialog, and in fact, you know, as a part of the majority community, to even reach out to Muslim families who are victims of crimes lynching, to just go and show compassion and empathy, because that is also powerful, but in the times we are living in when the old shade sense of humanity seems wrong,

Susan Benesch

20:00

I think you're from Maharashtra and have done a lot of impressive journalism there. Do you have any Have you observed any efforts to to undermine or prevent hate speech and dangerous speech? Well,

Speaker 2

20:21

yes, I think you can sort of corroborate what I'm saying is but when, for the two and a half years after 2019 Maharaj was ruled by a coalition of three parties, the Shiv, Sena, the nationalist Congress Party and the Congress Party. So three parties basically came together and kept the BJP out for the next two and a half years. During that period, which included the covid 19 pandemic, there was a significant reduction in persecution of minorities in Maharashtra. There was a significant reduction in hate speech against Muslims in Maharashtra. If you remember, just at the start of the beginning of at the start of the pandemic, there was an incident where was basically accused, was basically found to be living in a congregation in Delhi, and that congregation coincided with the lockdown, and then that congregation ended up becoming a bit of A hot spot. What followed after that was citizen campaign to target Muslims and paint them as people who are spreading covid 19, several states across India who had voted Muslims. I mean, I've spoken to several Muslim workers after that would be that drivers would tell me that people considered their rights after single names, Muslim vegetable vendors were not allowed to enter villages. There were rumors that they're spending covid. They are spitting in your currency note. They're spitting in your food just so you can, you know, spend covid 19 that sort of resulted in systematic social and economic boycott of Muslims during the pandemic. But in the state of Mahara, because we had a non BJP government, the marginalization of Muslims was nowhere close to what it was in some of the other states. The Chief Minister at the time, utre had categorically said that if you spread any of these rumors, will catch up with you. He had categorically made comments denying some of those rumors, and that, I think, made a huge impact. Because when the chief minister of the state who controls your law and order in the state, makes that sort of comment, it sort of runs through the entire system, and that resulted in a fairly recent process. I would say the perception of the marginalization of Muslims wasn't as bad as it was in other states for those two and a half years, one could really see some change on the ground. And that was reversed when the state was flipped in 2022 2022 and again in 2022 when the state was flipped and the BJP came back to power, you could see the rise in hate speech. You could see the rise in the speech. You could see the alliance in computer tension bubbling across the state, where you had small scale riots, you had car you had lynchings once again. So it makes a huge difference when you have a state government and a chief minister who does not belong to the same ideology as the BJP? I think that was the difference that we saw in Maharashtra during those two and a half years. If I made sense,

Susan Benesch

23:58

let me just ask one follow up question. It sounds part that. So if you're saying that, of course, the party to which the state government belongs, matters quite a lot. But was it also the case that this individual Chief Minister made a significant difference? Could it also if somebody else were Chief Minister, they wouldn't have spoken in this way?

Speaker 2

24:25

Let me answer that in two parts. Firstly, which is why I started my initial comments by saying that this result would give significant hope to smaller parties, regional parties, to take on the BJP state government election. And that is very crucial, because the state controls your law and order. So if you still have, if you have a BJP government, the Modi government, and a non BJP government in the state, it could still make a huge difference to the people living in that state. So that's number one. Secondly, who was the chief minister of Maharashtra is actually a former BJP ally. He has been with the BJP. He has been Modi's ally. His party, rather, has been Modi's ally for a long time, but lately, there's been friction between the two parties, and he has totally realized that being a Hindu nationalist party in this climate probably doesn't work for him, because the BJP will eat into that space. Has actually eaten into that space. So if he wants to create his own niche or narrative, he has to find something else. And he did quite well during the two and a half years that he helped the state to answer the second question, according to that, would be, the Chief Minister does have to go sort of out of his way to make a comment which is sort of unequivocal and unambiguous? As far as minorities are concerned, there are a couple of examples that we've had BJP government by minorities has not completely, has not continued unabated. Is one of the examples where the communist government but the Chief Minister probably wasn't as effective, and the hate speeches and social qualiferative calls for social have continued in this case, for having a chief minister who will have the courage to speak up for minorities.

Susan Benesch

26:38

I can't help noting that the United States is also a highly federated country in which state governments have a tremendous amount of power regarding law and order and law enforcement, but keep you wanted to add something. Oh, yeah,

Speaker 1

26:58

I think pretty much covered almost all of it, but I'll still add some of the data. For example, he mentioned after Maharashtra was flipped in 2022 there was rising age, which, in fact, in our last is 2023 hate speech in India, report, Maharashtra stood number one for most anti Muslim hate speech events. We recorded 118 hate speech events throughout the year. So that was extremely, extremely crazy down there, and also stayed with most dangerous speeches because we put some type of hate speech now reported. Hopefully this year it will be different. But as Bob said, that the will of this as the law and order and police comes under the state, and the will of the Chief Minister really, really matters so and also, we have observed that hate speech, I mean, hate speeches, tends to decline when there is change in the state government And and it is also, I mean, as he said, the will of the state government order comes under their control. It is very important for the will. And if states are unwilling, even non vigilant period, states will see a surge in hate speech. For instance, as he mentioned, Chhattisgarh, but there was another state called Rajasthan upon this whole state that flipped in December, and it was one among the top five states with the most hate speeches we required last year. But on the other side, Karnataka is an interesting case study where the government, the government another state, yeah, where the Congress, government that came to power last May showed intent to curb hate speeches. And before May, when it was still with the BJP, we recorded at least six, eight speeches on an average every month. But after it was flipped, it reduced down to three like, you know, a 50% reduction. But also there was, you know, the change in tone of those who were still delivering speeches. Initially they would be very dangerous, but after that, they were still exclusionary, calling the India to be a Hindu nation and all, but they weren't advocating for violence, social biominization of the minorities, because they knew that police is closely monitoring and they will take action. They will put us in jail. In this one case, we had Hindu Jagan with a we were after monitoring them, and on basis of, you know, documentation. Put them out on our social media handles and websites Police Department cases. And later on, they realized that, you know, they were live streaming because we were only able to get hold of those speeches because they were live streaming it. And once they realized that, you know, there's a group that is totally tracking them, they deactivated the entire Facebook account and went completely off the grid. And I mean, for us, it was a little bit free, because it wouldn't be, it wouldn't have that national audience anymore. They will still hold these events, but they will be very private for like, you know, whatever set of people. And to make the point here that about the social media companies that the 668 and the Muslim hate speech, events in person, events documented in 2023 all of them were either amplified or live streamed on Facebook, YouTube.

Susan Benesch

30:42

So when we return to the accordance of the other platforms, the topic all too familiar, but I'd like to turn to Kathy now and say, there's so so there are some examples in India that are of great interest to us. At the dangerous beach projects is always looking for ways of diminishing dangerous feature and making it less influential and and among the hardly significant examples from India of high ranking officials calling it out and threatening consequences to people who spread it. Do we have that in the United States Kathy, or do we have other people who are in some way, in some useful way, responding to dangerous speech to make it less impactful?

Unknown Speaker

31:34

Yeah,

Cathy Buerger

31:37

so we do. There are some interesting people who have condemned other dangerous speech coming from other high ranking officials, but not nearly enough, right? I think that when we think about some of the speech that has become relatively commonplace in our political discourse, we hear I was, you know, I was madly scribbling in my notes as you were speaking earlier, rakhib and Parth about all of these similarities that were coming to my mind in our own research about dangerous speech during the election in the US, kind of the clearest corollary there is between this idea of infiltrators, right that we've seen so much language over the past six months talking about falsely describing migrants As invaders, and again, you have this speech that is trying to promote fear and suggest that there is this really terrible threat, this mortal threat that is posed to the people of the country, the candidate who is sharing this information can help you, can save you, right? I think an interesting difference between the two countries is that in the US, you don't like a lot of that speech is coming from someone who is not an incumbent at the like a direct incumbent, at least. And so it's easy to say there's this threat, and the person who is in power now is allowing it to happen where it's slightly different positioning in India. But so we do have some, some high ranking officials who have condemned that, not nearly enough. Like I said, the the case that sticks out to me, the most famous, I think, politician that we've seen condemn that kind of speech, is Mitt Romney, who, of course, is no longer kind of an active person running for office, but has come out and said that, you know, former President Trump's campaign has been dangerous based on anger and hate, but we don't see the direct condemnation. There's been a movement, I think, a lot of movement right now among governors, kind of led by the charge of the Utah governor Spencer Cox and his former the companion the, you know, the Democratic candidate Chris Peterson in Utah, where they released this very famous ad that said, you know, we disagree on policy, but we commit to speaking civilly and accepting The result of an election. And you know, with that, that movement, you've seen other governors around the country really take up that, that model, and produce similar ads and sign dignity pledges and all of this, but it feels kind of removed, right? We're having people commit to speaking civilly, but not directly, condemning the badge speech. And so I think that there, there's a lot of space for that and a need for that in the US, especially when we look at the lessons from India. But there are, there are other actors out there who are speaking up. I mean, we attended one of our webinars before, or have heard me talk? You've probably heard me talk about this group I am here, which is a group of just regular people who kind of collect themselves in a Facebook group online and then collectively respond to hatred and dangerous speech in the comment section. This group started in Sweden in 2016 and has now spread to 18 different countries. There are 150,000 people involved in one of these various groups, and so they're really trying to organize themselves, to respond in a way that creates an impact into discourse, but, but not, not at the same level. I think that there's that's something we're really lacking right now.

Susan Benesch

35:30

Thank you so much. I want to pick up on something we we have all been discussing before this meeting, which is the migration of dangerous speech from political context to other to other kinds of speech, or we could say mediums, situations in which people consume content, as we like to Call it, when it's online. India hate lab recently published an interview with Cornell prohibit, who's a filmmaker and journalist who just published a book called H pop, the secretive world of Hindu pop stars. And in that book and in the interview, he describes how inflammatory and violent and discriminatory rhetoric has made its way into music in particular and into other forms of popular culture, a keyboard or Parth, you want to say a bit about that? And then, Kathy, would you tell us what is in the United States? And then all of you, please tell us what to do. Yeah,

Speaker 2

36:51

you know, I think it was Gary Kasparov who said that you can go very far in a democracy if you convince the majority of the minority. And that's pretty much what's happening in India and I guess in the United States, the music or the H pop that you just mentioned, that's pretty much aimed at doing that. It's basically humiliating Muslims and the best Hindu festivals have become a way to target Muslims. There's a festival called lamra B in India, which celebrates the birth of the mythological figure called Brahma, Hindu figure called RAM. And I was reporting on how this has changed the face of villages in the last few years. And when I was traveling through some of the parts of Maharashtra, I realized that this Hindu particular, this particular Hindu festival is no longer about celebrating their own religions, but about the other religions. So you know, your processions, your music, your DJs, everything is geared towards humiliating Muslims. There are processions which lined up, especially in front of a mosque, and then they play insecure, inflammatory songs which call for externation of Muslims, which call for violence against Muslims, which call for boycott of Muslims. And that has happened very at large scale level, across the state, across the state, across the country. And it's a very planned, well oiled sort of a machinery that is organizing. These are not spontaneous rallies. These are not spontaneous possessions. It's a very well oiled, organized machinery that is using these Hindu festivals to cubulate Muslims, provoke Muslims, and basically intimidate Muslims by using

Susan Benesch

38:50

music. Kathy, have you seen dangerous speech in popular culture as well in the United States? Yeah,

Cathy Buerger

38:57

absolutely. I think that there's, there's a large body of scholarship on white supremacist music and the way that white supremacist groups have used music as a way to recruit new members, especially among young people. You have record labels like will to rise, records that are specifically designed to kind of cater to groups that are promoting white supremacist messages, and many of those are, you know, available on on things like Spotify or YouTube, they're they're accessible. And a lot of the you also see another part of popular culture that I think is related, that we've seen kind of intersect with music, are active clubs. There's been a lot written about kind of sports clubs in the way that you use these other pieces of pop people in and to kind of normalize other beliefs, providing that that group myth that gets people to come and do activities as a group, and then you have, you know, white supremacist music playing during while people are working out, and things like that. You also have much more mainstream music, which has more of a contentious interpretation. So there was a lot made out of Jason Aldean song. Try that in all town, right? Which is not necessarily as explicit as many of the types of music that we're talking about that would be promoted by will to rise records, certainly, but it is still a promotion of violence and a promotion of kind of intergroup violence in a way that that valorizes it, that says, Yeah, you know, try that in our small town, try those values, try that behavior here, and see what happens to you, right? So I think we have various levels of extremity, of extreme speech that's coming through music.

Speaker 2

40:48

Yep, age gap between people, the older generation sort of misses the good old days and blaring anti Muslim songs in front of one, mostly the younger one that the international groups have tapped into. Their age group, largely is between 18 to 25 or 30, and that is the group that they have tapped into, while the older generation sort of misses the good old good old days. This is not to suggest that India never had a community. Always had a bit of an undercurrent of in the Muslim divide. But this was, it was never as bad as it is today. I mean, I met, I remember meeting a 70 year old man who remembers the 1992 riots that happened in Maharashtra, Mumbai, the capital of Mumbai, to the capital of Maharashtra. And even during that, he did not feel like a technical sentences. In fact, his village him as the village head around the same time when the community, but today he sort of feels like a technical assistance. I mean, it is. What has happened over the past few years, is that it has completely changed the base of villages. It has completely changed the dynamics between Hindus and Muslims. There used to be a time when Hindus also celebrated participatory whereas Hindus participated in Muslim dominant festivals, but that has completely now gone out of the window. Those who used to dine with each other now exchange cold glasses. It's become, to a large extent, that is something that I think will take a long time to sort of bridge, because it won't happen through one or two election results. It will take successive significant societal

Unknown Speaker

42:54

workforce over the past few years.

Susan Benesch

42:57

Also here in the United States, we also have seen people who used to talk to one another who used to socialize together no longer doing so. We are three quarters of the way into our own together. And so I'd like to invite the audience to post any questions that you'd like to ask in the chat. And then in the meantime, I'd like to come back to a topic that I that I promise to return to, which is

Susan Benesch

43:33

tech platforms. What have you learned first of all, about the role that tech platforms can play in diminishing the impact of hateful and dangerous speech and in preventing violence. Have they succeeded at that? Is there room for improvement? And if so, I think

Speaker 1

44:05

in the Indian context, social media platforms have completely failed the people, the users, but they have not failed the people who are ruling, the ruling the country. They've been very survival, very viable, and they have, in fact, played a huge role in amplifying and making sure that this hate endangers speech reaches the country, both every zip code in the nation. So that has been, unfortunately, very true. And of course, if you take some examples from the elections, for example, there was one by the BJP. They books read on their social media platform. Kind of Muslim man, you know, the cartoon party creating them the country's wealth and resources, and that Muslim man becoming factor and kicking out other marginalized Hindu groups out of that nest that they had created, and for Instagram, where they were extremely viral, it took them days altogether to take down the video, and that too, only after Election Commission of India was forest, forest which otherwise had kind of, you know, favored the ruling party, not taken decisive actions against the danger speech being feathered by its leaders after they wrote the letter, only then the platforms took it down. So that means that these platforms very much care about their business interests, rather than the people, rather than the minorities, were impacted as a result of this. And in India, the application of interviews on social media has led to outbreak of violence. And of course, can talk in detail about that, but to give you a good example of how social media was weaponized inside common violence is the Delhi program. In 2020 a mass outbreak of violence against Muslim, Muslim neighborhoods, and in which 53 people were killed, and mostly Muslim men and women, unfortunately, and Facebook was extensively used to live stream hate speeches before the outbreak of violence. In fact, during the violence, there was some Hindu private leaders people to join them to attack some of the neighborhoods. So Facebook, and in my research, you know, research at the India, if I had to, like, you know, especially in India, in the US context, it's different. It's a little different. But in Indian context, if I had to run the number one platform that is mostly that is inciting violence on the ground, I would put my Facebook and Instagram, and then it goes to YouTube and then Twitter and other social media platforms. But number one, Facebook extremely dangerous that every day, every day, the hate speeches that we document, we mostly find them on Facebook. I know that

Susan Benesch

47:22

you have also flagged and recorded content response. Even in some cases no response, until after people are killed on the basis of the content so you have you've

Unknown Speaker

47:40

already answered

Susan Benesch

47:43

exactly one of the first questions, which came from our dear which was, can you talk about how dangerous speeches led to violence in India? Unfortunately, there are many, many, many examples, but you've just just given something asked. A second question, also, how does missing mis and disinformation intersect or overlap with dangerous speech in India. Do you want to say a word or two about that? One

Susan Benesch

48:13

question about,

Unknown Speaker

48:18

sorry, I couldn't hear that question. Can you repeat that?

Susan Benesch

48:21

So sorry that that question is, it's in the chat. Also. It's how does misinformation and disinformation intersect or overlap with dangerous speech and media? Maybe you could give an example or two. Yeah,

Speaker 1

48:38

just to give an example this elections, this was very clear that opposition party didn't mention in its manifesto that they were giving way to give away countries wealth to Muslims. But despite that, continuously peddled this disinformation that the opposition party was indeed going to give away countries resources and wealth to Muslims, and that resulted in tensions on the ground and the results of those of those species are very evident after the report for the Prime Minister and the successive violence we have seen on the streets in different parts of the

Susan Benesch

49:18

country, for the examples you gave earlier, of the Various love jihad, land jihad, etc, are dangerous, go ahead. He's

Speaker 2

49:29

accused of slaughtering a cow, the lynching has against recovery has come out that there

Speaker 2

49:50

animal. They're not doing anything illegal. So that is one of the examples of how misinformation or disinformation leads to violence. There was one more example that happened during the pandemic in my home state, where there were these WhatsApp messages, Muslims are actually out of the rules, spreading covid 19. And then there were these three people, three seers actually, who lost way late in the night in one of the villages. And people thought that they were actually Muslims who are there to illustrate covid 19 and whatnot and a mother and Lynch them to death. So misinformation and disinformation leading to violence and overlapping windage speech is not quite common in India. Would

Susan Benesch

50:48

say that, unfortunately, this is one of the lessons learned from the Indian view we had, of course, the example of January 6 to teach us on our own turf, not far from my house. In fact, that inflammatory speech can redirect into violence, but there are also so many more examples in India. The next question is from Richard Wilson, another long time, dear colleague, I've been keen to hear about the role that Indian TV and radio media played during the election, either amplifying or countering the surge in a speech.

Speaker 2

51:35

But the Indian media has actually turned people into a litch form. I mean, there is, there are no two ways about it. It has amplified anti Muslim rhetoric. It has amplified anti minority rhetoric, it has actually operated as the extension of the establishment. So as far as the BJP, the ecosystem is concerned, the media is actually a part of it. There was a time when the media questioned the establishment, then they got close to the establishment. Today. We live in a country where the media is established, you know, so they have been very much part of the CPG ecosystem. And if the media, I mean, I can go as far as I think that if the media had been fair and objective election, we would have been looking at

Susan Benesch

52:32

that is a very striking claim, and of course, in the United States, the mainstream Media was roundly criticized, in particular after the last election, for also serving often as a mouthpiece for

Unknown Speaker

52:59

particular one candidate.

Susan Benesch

53:03

Next question is, I'm hiring to get to all of them, since time is tight. Next question, question from yuti Joshi, could you please talk about the impact of the non profit Hindu swayamsevak San HSS and its contribution to the rise of hate crimes in India? That's the first question. And the second one, under the Defense Ministry's guidance, signing schools and cadets to Indian armed forces. Can you please talk about any research on the new initiative where 62% of sinic schools will be going to the Sangha, moving toward a Hindu nationalist ideology quite openly?

Speaker 1

53:45

So the question, because I don't know, naturalism in the US, Hindustan, silhouk sang is international wing of the RSS, the roster, so I'm still the parent, guided of the rolling fire. International ideologies. They've been creating the US for so many decades, and they provide ideological support and backing to a lot of these Hindu nationalist groups operating in diaspora, when it comes to contributing rise of state crimes in India, I am not much aware of it, but they do provide ideological and, you know, defensive Cover to a lot of these internationalist actions that are happening in ground in the country, wherever they were printing from, because HSS are living in the US and Canada and UK and different European countries in Africa and other South Asian, Southeast Asian countries. To answer your second question about the Defense Ministry's guidance scenic schools. So the extent of the international students in the country, we a lot of people will still have a grapple with, because we, not a lot of people know like being able to infiltrate the education system, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the press, but I can tell you the complete institutional capture that has happened over the past decade, and the internationalist movement moment is strongest in its history, as of today and the schools you're talking about, of course, 62% of the schools are going to go to sampaiwa San pariwar is umbrella of international organizations. But apart from that, San pariwar roughly operates organization called which is project of vishwin of America. They run over 100,000 schools across the country, including 10,000 in jam and Kashmir the state. So extremely like, you know, eye opening in 29 now, like, Okay, 10,000 schools in Kashmir Muslim majority region. But again, their curriculum differs, like, you know, in states, like

Susan Benesch

55:59

in tribal areas,

Speaker 1

56:00

they would have a whole different curriculum demonizing Christians. In places where there's a Muslim population, they would have going to demonizing Muslims and then into the Kashmir. It's mostly promoting nationalism. Why Kashmir and India, you know, altogether. But anyways, that is my answer to your second question. Thanks so much.

Susan Benesch

56:22

I want to turn from one of to the to the question of the media, and when I said that the US, mainstream media has been criticized for being an off piece of a candidate, it wasn't very well put. What I mean to say is that there was a lot of criticism after the last election of the media for uncritically reporting falsehoods, for In so doing, amplifying what was in effect, disinformation. Kathy, may I invite you to comment on that, since you've been working on a guide for journalists, sure.

Cathy Buerger

57:13

Thank you for that opportunity. Yes, we're working, collectively with over zero and protect democracy to provide a guide for journalists about how to responsibly report on incendiary rhetoric that's coming from political officials, right political candidates, and I think it is a really difficult question, because you feel that there is a responsibility to make sure that people understand the kinds of things that their potential leaders have said and are saying, without giving too much platform for hateful speech, harmful speech, dangerous speech, and promoting these falsehoods, as you're saying so, using the relatively soon and so keep an eye out for that. There are also, there are other guides that are coming out on related topics that I think will be very helpful. So if you sign up our letter, you will hear about all of this.

Susan Benesch

58:15

I'm afraid we've reached the end of our hour, and there are still more questions I'd like to invite and there, of course, love to

Susan Benesch

58:28

may I, may

Susan Benesch

58:29

I invite the people who who have already offered questions, also those who have more questions, to send them. My email address is Susan at dangerous speech.org, speech, all one word. Or you can find Kathy Kathy at dangerous speech.org I just put my chat on the dangerous beach website, and we'll be happy to circulate the question also to thank humbly and very vigorous food for some kind of taking part in this great discussion. I see that those of you in the audience also enjoyed it. Thank you so much for joining us, and we hope to do more of these. So we hope to see you again soon, and of course, we'll keep you posted. Thanks very much. Thanks so much again. Bye.

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