“The mix of moralism, technocracy and political power is itself the ‘footprint’ of a totalitarian movement in the making,” David Thunder writes.
A few weeks ago, the Prime Minister of Spain used the occasion of a “forum against hate” in Madrid to launch “HODIO,” a “hatred and polarisation footprint” created by the Spanish Observatory for Racism and Xenophobia and the Ministry for Inclusion, Social Security and Migration.
The goal of the new “hatred and polarisation footprint” is to create a public measure of the amount of hateful and polarising discourse occurring on social media platforms available in Spain and to use this measure, to quote Sánchez, to “demand responsibility” from the platforms for restricting the polarising “amplification” of hate speech.
In spite of the appearance of “science” and “objectivity” that the word “measurement” might suggest, there could be nothing more partisan and politically charged than the “HODIO” initiative, which effectively assigns to the national government of Spain the function of combatting “hatred” and “polarisation” on the internet – two terms that do not lend themselves to any clear and non-partisan interpretation...<<<Read More>>>....