Correction: the violence is in Northern Ireland, not the Republic of Ireland. I just said “Ireland” in the video, which is incorrect. Sorry for the error!
Watching the racist violence coming out of Northern Ireland, I feel a lot of different emotions. Horror. Anger. Sadness.
Children have had to flee their burning homes, set alight by a crush of angry racists who sparked the fire because they believed migrants lived in the buildings. Business and cars also went up in flames. People driving down roads were stopped in their cars as angry mobs searched for migrants. Zeteo UK’s Owen Jones described the violence, rightfully, as a pogrom.
There are specific, local elements to the racist tinderbox that was lit on June 9. I won’t spend time trying to explain them when others are eminently more qualified to break down the dynamics of Loyalism and Unionism that are specific to Northern Ireland.
But those local factors aren’t the only one. There are also some elements here that are reflective of the forces making the world more hateful, more angry.
First, their rage is based on utter lies. This latest bout of far-right aggression came after a Sudanese man stabbed another man in Northern Ireland. Tommy Robinson, a British far-right activist, was just one of many who took to Twitter in the wake of the attack. He tried to urge people into the streets, decrying the “yet another invader attack on our people.”
Elon Musk amplified the post, calling on the public to protest “repeatedly and loudly.”
But here’s the thing — this wasn’t some kind of violent pattern as a result of immigration, as Robinson’s wording implies. Repeated studies show that there’s no correlation between immigration and violent crime, whether in the U.K. or here in Canada.
In short, the thing they’re so angry about is utter bullshit.
That’s why it’s so important that we do something about the internet’s ability to spread lies, hate and incite violence.
Canada is moving to deal with online harms — will it deal with hate?
A major announcement from the government this week dealt with exactly this topic: regulating social media.
The big, splashy headline out of Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, was that the government plans to restrict kids under 16 from using social media platforms — that is, unless those platforms implement yet-to-be-defined “adequate safeguards” to protect children.
But the legislation also has another aspect that largely slid under the radar. In a backgrounder, the government describes the Safe Social Media Act as targeting seven categories of harmful content. Two of those categories are “content that incites violence” and “content that foments hatred.”
As currently drafted, the bill tells us very little about how it will address those two issues. It leaves a lot up to a yet-to-be-established regulator.
That’s got some watchers worried.
“Our reading is that, as far as online hate is concerned, it’s business as usual, unless the regulator makes it a priority to address,” said Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.
On top of that, a key concern Balgord highlighted was a clause in the bill that read: “proactive search of content not required”
“Nothing in this Act requires an operator to proactively search content on a regulated service that it operates in order to identify harmful content,” the clause explained.
According to Balgord, this puts the onus on the victims of hate to “argue against an uncaring tech giant that they’ve been hurt.”
Still, what’s drafted is better than nothing — and it addresses a few concerns that lingered during Canada’s previous attempt to deal with online harms, according to Amarnath Amarasingham, a professor of religion and political studies at Queen’s University who has extensive expertise researching extremism.
“I think the good news is that Canada finally has an online harms bill,” he said.
The last attempt to regulate online harms, which died on the order paper and never became law, had a too-narrow focus on content that incited violence, he explained.
“Most extremist content on the internet and social media does not incite violence. The vast majority of content is just shit content that is hateful, harmful, and polarizing. The new bill seems to at least acknowledge this with some mention of content that foments hatred.”
While Amarasingam said he was really hoping for some regulation of gaming platforms like Roblox, considering how march harm — from exploitation to extortion — happens on these platforms, the government “kicked it down the road to be potentially addressed later,” which was “irritating.”
“But, at the end of the day, we have something! And if it passes without being completely diluted, the online space could be less of a swamp. And that’s a good thing,” he said.
Would regulation help Canada avoid Northern Ireland-style riots?
As I already mentioned, there are a lot of factors that go into sparking racist riots. But it’s undeniable that social media plays a role in fuelling this anger — and social media doesn’t generally respect borders.
“What’s happening on the ground (in Northern Ireland) is being used to incite violence in the U.S. and Canada. Like ‘why can’t our racists be more like their racists?’ So they feed off each other,” explained Amarasingam.
“Regulation would ideally put a stop to this kind of open incitement.”
That’s why it’s so important for the government to get this bill right.
And sure, regulating the internet — actually forcing these monstrously rich tech giants to take a shred of ownership over the trash that swarms their platforms — won’t deal with all the local factors that fuel racist violence, nor will it end the ever widening wealth inequality that has left people feeling so desperate and powerless.
In fact, on that note, a report out in January warned that economic inequality is worsening in Northern Ireland — much like Canada’s wealth gap is the widest it’s been in recorded history.
I wonder if there’s a reason the billionaires who own these tech platforms are so happy to keep us angry with one another, rather than working together to fix that problem?
But I digress.
This regulation, done right, would be a step.
And when you’re running a marathon against rising tides of hate, each step matters.
