The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) held a conference this week to develop guidelines it aims to implement globally that would restrict online speech.
UNESCO boasted Feb. 23, “The first-ever conference to discuss draft global guidelines for regulating digital platforms ended on Thursday in Paris with a call to uphold the right to seek and receive information in the face of rising disinformation online.” But in UNESCO’s Orwellian worldview, free speech is somehow compatible with censorship.
Over 4,300 people participated in the three-day Internet for Trust Conference, UNESCO announced. The organization tweeted, “When misinformation & disinformation spread, facts are undermined & public trust is no longer there. This makes it much more difficult for the @UN & its agencies to make the world a better place. The digital world needs to be regulated.” And who better than the United Nations, which panders to Communist China and Palestinian terrorists? What a joke.
The UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay blathered about the global common good—which, apparently, includes restricting free speech. “‘The blurring of boundaries between true and false, the highly-organized denial of scientific facts, the amplification of disinformation and conspiracies – these did not originate on social networks. But, in the absence of regulation, they flourish there much better than the truth,’” Azoulay rambled.
Azoulay then paid lip service to free speech by saying she hoped “this technological revolution” didn’t ruin freedom of expression or human rights.
The UNESCO release quoted speakers at the conference such as pro-censorship Nobel winner Maria Ressa and leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to claim that “lies” must be targeted online. While at least 55 countries are working on internet regulation, UNESCO said, Azoulay is pushing for a global regulatory approach.
Azoulay and UNESCO ended with a call to “transform the internet” while simultaneously trying to make it seem as if they were concerned about freedom of expression.
UNESCO already partnered with Twitter in a “#ThinkBeforeSharing” campaign to “prebunk” supposed “misinformation,” but the campaign itself exposes the UN’s hypocrisy. The #ThinkBeforeSharing graphic titled “The link to antisemitism” warns about linking “an alleged conspiracy to Jewish individuals or groups (e.g. the Rothschild family or George Soros, a philanthropist) or the State of Israel.” This is wildly hypocritical coming from the UN, which has a history of legitimizing the false allegations that Israel is an apartheid state and consistently targets Israel on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, which funds and supports anti-Semitic terrorism.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that government agencies be held to account to uphold the First Amendment and not adopt UNESCO censorship guidelines. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
