A Historic First: Simon Wiesenthal Center Presents Digital Terrorism and Hate Report to Argentina Congress

April 16, 2021

Senior officials from the Simon Wiesenthal Center(SWC) presented the findings of it 2021 Digital Terrorism and Hate Project to the Congress of Argentina.
 
“We of course focused our attention not only on global trends on social media but also specific examples of the marketing of hate, violence and conspiracy theories that are blaming Jews and Asians for the Covid-19 pandemic,” noted Rabbi Abraham Cooper Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action for the SWC, a leading Jewish human Rights NGO. “We noted that while we are hopeful that the vaccines will ultimately defeat Covid-19, there is no known vaccine for history’s oldest virus—anti-Semitism”.
 
Rick Eaton, the Director of the SWC’s Digital Terrorism and Hate Project, noted that a key source of much of the hate emanated from  Telegram: “Most of these companies have no discernible rules about how to deal with such postings, adding: “We watching at least 350 Telegram channels and are discovering more on  daily basis.“
 
Rabbi Cooper urged Argentine legislators to convene hearings to evaluate what steps Social Media Giants are taking to degrade the online capabilities of bigots and to consider further action to tackle the growing problems of online hate and terrorism.
(Massa, Eaton, Cooper)

"Your institution has the job and the seriousness of preventing hate speech on social networks;  to look at  the violence in their origin, to avoid the permanent sowing of racism that were previously  disseminated in pamphlets and today are delivered on social networks, which are our new communication media,” added Massa, President of the Deputy Chamber.
 
And he warned: “There is a difficulty in the democratic world: finding a limit between the concepts of freedom of expression and hate speech. Clearly, this institution (SWC) helps us  to precisely focus, confront, and act in a way that helps eliminate hate speech while not harming freedom of expression.”
(Yedlin, Massa, Gelblung, Mouriño)

Dr. Ariel Gelblung, the SWC’s Latin American Director, said: "We take great pride that we are invited by the most important democratic institution in Argentina to present our 2021 Report, that will help our elected officials deal with those in our country trying to use social media to sow discord and hate.”

For full presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrY8aGXEazA&t=1296s

For further information, please contact Dr. Shimon Samuels at +336 09770158 or Dr. Ariel Gelblung at +54 9 11 49695365, join the Center on Facebook, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent directly to your Twitter feed.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).