UN Plots War on Free Speech to Stop “Extremism” Online

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The United Nations Security Council wants a global “framework” for censoring the Internet, as well as for using government propaganda to “counter” what its apparatchiks call “online propaganda,” “hateful ideologies,” and “digital terrorism.” To that end, the UN Security Council this week ordered the UN “Counter-Terrorism Committee” — yes, that is a real bureaucracy — to draw up a plan by next year. From the Obama administration to the brutal Communist Chinese regime, everybody agreed that it was time for a UN-led crackdown on freedom of speech and thought online — all under the guise of fighting the transparently bogus terror war.

The UN, ridiculed by American critics as the “dictators club,” will reportedly be partnering with some of the world’s largest Internet and technology companies in the plot. Among the firms involved in the scheme is Microsoft, which, in a speech before the Security Council on May 11, called for “public-private partnerships” between Big Business and Big Government to battle online propaganda. As this magazine has documented, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other top tech giants have all publicly embraced the UN and its agenda for humanity. Many of the more than 70 speakers also said it was past time to censor the Internet, with help from the “private sector.”

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At the UN meeting this week, the 15 members of the UN Security Council, including some of the most extreme and violent dictatorships on the planet, claimed they wanted to stop extremism and violence from spreading on the Internet. In particular, the governments pretended as if the effort was aimed at Islamist terror groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda, both of which have received crucial backing from leading members of the UN Security Council itself. Terrorism was not defined. Everybody agreed, though, that terror should not be associated with any particular religion, nationality, ethnicity, and so on, even though at least one delegation fingered the Israeli government.

In its “presidential statement” after the session, the UN Security Council claimed that “terrorism” could be defeated only with “international law” and through collaboration between the UN and emerging regional governments such as the various “unions” being imposed on Europe, Africa, Eurasia, South America, and beyond. “The Security Council stresses that terrorism can only be defeated by a sustained and comprehensive approach involving the active participation and collaboration of all States, international and regional organizations … consistent with the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy,” it said. Of course, the UN still has no actual definition of terrorism, but it is in the process of usurping vast new powers under the guise of fighting this undefined nemesis.

However, the UN, in its ongoing war against free speech and actual human rights around the world, has offered some strong hints about its agenda. According to UN officials, the plan to regulate speech on the Internet will complement another, related UN plot known formally as the “Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism.” As The New American reported last year, the plan calls for a global war on “ideologies.” That crusade will include, among other components, planetary efforts to stamp out all “anti-Muslim bigotry,” anti-immigrant sentiments, and much more, the UN and Obama explained. So-called “non-violent extremism” is also in the UN’s crosshairs, as is free speech generally.

It was not immediately clear how a UN-led war on “anti-Muslim bigotry” would stop ISIS. The savage terror group, which according to top U.S. officials was created and funded by Obama’s anti-ISIS coalition, served as the crucial justification for the UN plan. However, based on the outlines of the UN extremism scheme released so far, it is clear that there will be no serious efforts to address the growing extremism of the UN or the violent extremism of many of its mostly autocratic member regimes. Instead, the “extremism” plan will serve as a pretext to impose a broad range of truly extremist policies at the national, regional, and international level.

Seemingly oblivious to the totalitarian absurdity of the comments, top UN officials called for safeguards against “excessive punishment” wielded against those who express their views on the Internet. “The protection of free media can be a defense against terrorist narratives,” UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson told the Security Council during the meeting this week in a stunning example of double-speak. “There must be no arbitrary or excessive punishment against people who are simply expressing their opinions.” It was not immediately clear what specific punishments for free speech would be considered non-excessive. But in the United States, despite UN claims about pseudo-“human rights” requiring censorship, any and all “punishment” for expressing one’s views is strictly prohibited.

Separately, the Communist Chinese dictatorship, which now dominates various UN bureaucracies, enthusiastically embraced the UN’s efforts. Speaking on behalf of the brutal regime, Liu Jieyi, Beijing’s permanent representative to the UN, said that institutions promoting “extremist ideologies” needed to be “closed down.” Apparently he was not referring to the “extremist ideology” of the Communist Party of China or its brutal regime, which has murdered more innocent human beings than any other in history. Beijing alone has killed more than 60 million people, not including those butchered in forced abortions. Other communist governments allied with Beijing have murdered tens of millions more, just in the last century.

While the UN has a major role to play, governments also need to help out in censoring the Internet and abolishing free speech, the communist regime said. “States must shut down some social media networks,” Liu continued, calling for the UN and its members to “cut off the channels for spreading terrorist ideologies.” He also touted terror decrees adopted recently by Beijing that target the Internet and purport to authorize the deployment of the communist dictatorship’s armed enforcers all over the world. As The New American has documented previously, the Chinese dictatorship will be playing a major role in the UN’s anti-freedom of speech crusade. In fact, the regime currently has its agents embedded all throughout the UN, and even at the top of the UN agency that globalists are working to empower as the global Internet regulator. He claims censorship is all in the eye of the beholder.

Even as Communist China and other overtly dictatorial UN members emphasized censorship and regulation to stop ideologies and “propaganda” they dislike, the Obama administration, the European Union, and some of its formerly sovereign member states instead touted government propaganda to counter extremist propaganda. However, speaking for the EU, Alain Le Roy also celebrated the unaccountable super-state’s own efforts to censor the Internet as something to be emulated. As this magazine reported last year, the EU’s self-styled police force, Europol, even launched a whole unit aimed at censoring “extremist” content on the Internet. The EU spokesman pointed to, among other schemes, ongoing EU efforts to remove “propaganda materials” from the Internet, as well as EU propaganda efforts to “spread alternative messages.”

The representative of Syria’s brutal dictatorship, Bashar Jaafari, showed up to crash the party. He pointed out that multiple UN member states had used terrorist fighters and mercenaries in their quest to destroy Syria. And he is right. Indeed, as far back as 2012, U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency documents show that the Obama administration knew the “moderate Syrian rebels” it was supporting were led by al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. The administration and its allies were also working to create what they described as a “Salafist principality in Eastern Syria” — today the principality is known as the Islamic State, or ISIS — in order to destabilize the Assad regime. Even top U.S. officials have openly admitted that Obama’s “anti-ISIS” coalition was responsible for creating, arming, and funding ISIS. What role the Internet and “propaganda” may have played in that, if any, was not made clear at the UN meeting.

In Libya, a similar situation occurred. The Obama administration, under the guise of enforcing an illegitimate UN resolution, openly partnered with self-declared al-Qaeda leaders to overthrow former U.S. terror-war ally and brutal dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Congress was never consulted, making Obama’s war illegal and unconstitutional, in addition to the serious crime of providing aid to designated terror organizations. Today, thanks to that extremism, Libya is a failed state awash in heavy military weaponry and terror training camps. Much of the Obama administration-supplied aid for terror groups in Libya was transferred to supporting terror groups in Syria following the fall of Gadhafi’s regime.

Aside from governments, dictators, and international bureaucrats, Big Technology was also represented at the UN meeting. Microsoft Vice-President and Deputy General Counsel Steve Crown told the assembled representatives of governments and tyrants that there was no “silver bullet” to prevent terrorists and extremists from using the Internet. “If there were an elegant solution, industry would have adopted it,” he claimed, adding that Google, Facebook, and Twitter were coming together to prevent the Internet from being abused. Facebook was exposed just this week censoring conservative media outlets from its “trending” news section. And earlier this year, Google was exposed for having helping the U.S. government foment jihadist-led revolution in Syria.

Echoing the UN’s rhetoric, Crown claimed “international law” and fascist-style “public-private partnerships,” in which governments and Big Business join forces, were the appropriate response. He also said the “international community,” a deceptive term generally used to refer to the UN and its member governments, needed to “work together in a coordinated and transparent way.” The UN Security Council agreed, saying in its final declaration that there needed to be “more effective ways for governments to partner with … private sector industry partners.” It is hardly a new agenda.

As The New American reported previously, the technology giants — all of which are regularly represented at the globalist Bilderberg summits — have also emerged as enthusiastic supporters of the UN’s radical “Agenda 2030.” According to the agreement, the goal is “transforming our world,” redistributing wealth at the international level, empowering the institutions of global governance, and more. Among the mega-corporations proudly backing the scheme are the world’s top three search engines: Google, Microsoft’s Bing, and Yahoo. It was not immediately clear whether those corporations’ support for the deeply controversial UN agenda would affect the supposed impartiality of their search results. But critics of the UN plan expressed alarm nonetheless.

Of course, a handful of the more than 70 people who spoke at the Security Council confab paid lip service to freedom of speech and freedom of thought. The Iraqi government’s delegation, for example, emphasized differentiating between “freedom of thought and extremist ideologies.” Others said the war on extremism could not be used to justify persecuting critics of governments. Some of the speakers no doubt had good intentions, too.

However, putting the UN in charge of fighting extremism and dangerous ideologies would be like putting a mafia boss in charge of fighting crime — it is patently absurd, even grotesque. Most of the UN’s member regimes are undemocratic, to be generous, and many of them are led by genocidal psychopaths who murder with impunity. Among other UN member states, those enslaving North Korea, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Sudan, China, and many more are run by criminals and mass-murderers who epitomize terrorism and violent extremism. Plus, virtually every terror group on earth today has its roots in state-sponsorship, including ISIS and al-Qaeda.

The real solution to terror, then, is neither a stronger UN nor a global war on ideologies, extreme or otherwise. Empowering the UN to wage a global war on ideas, ideologies, propaganda, and speech is itself an extremist proposition riddled with extreme dangers. A far simpler answer to the scourge of terrorism would be to defund the UN, arrest those supporting terror groups, and stop propping up dictators and terrorists with taxpayer money. Anything else is a dangerous fraud.

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.