Hello and welcome to The spiked podcast. I'm Fraser Mars and I'm delighted to be joined this week as ever by spiked editor Tom Slater Hello, and we also have spiked columnist Luke Gittos Hi So we got plenty to discuss today first of all telegram Facebook and the fight for free speech online the return of islamist terror to Europe and why things won't be getting any better under Labour
So the founder of telegram Pavl Duraov was arrested last week. This week he was given a long list of charges all connected to things that he is alleged to have allowed to happen on his app.
Tom, this is a completely unprecedented move. Normally, you know, it's taken as a given the apps like WhatsApp or Facebook will unfortunately pay host to criminal activity and never before has marked Zuckerberg being arrested or Elon Musk been put in handcuffs. This is quite an extraordinary move on the part of the French.
It definitely feels like an escalation in the growing battle that we've been seeing between the big tech companies and various governments, particularly in Europe. And as you say, just holding the CEO of a company to account there's various charges things in relation to terrorism into relation to charred exploitation.
So it's basically saying that because these nefarious individuals use this tool in the same way they might use a telephone or an internet connection that therefore this company and this individual Pavl Duraov is in some ways culpable for that is really alarming.
And a sign of things to come really, I think there's been a growing hostility towards the social media companies, particularly ones like telegram which prized themselves on being basically as censorship free as is possible, we're still maintaining a reasonable business.
And there's a kind of sense of tightening of the screws. I mean, Macron has been very keen to present this is nothing to do with the government. He's obviously very keen to maintain paracysers sort of status as a would be hub for tech startups and so on. But I think it's undeniable that this is the culmination really of where a lot of things about a culmination where things have been going in Europe, not just in France but across the EU of course.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, look, it does sort of fit into that broader sort of anti free speech, you know, trend that we've been seeing lately. The first thing I've been struck by is how people have described this as re-igniting a debate around free speech. Well, this doesn't feel like a debate feels like something far more serious when people are being arrested in Europe and across this country for what they say online.
It does feel like we're moving into different territory and to talk about this as though it's a very nice discussion around the limits of freedom of speech when you know Pavl Duraov has been arrested on very, very serious charges. Seems a little understated. I mean, what people might not know about Pavl Duraov is that he was at the centre of, at least in the minds of the Kremlin, of the anti Kremlin movement for a long time.
He was his platform, his old platform BK, which VK, excuse me, was central to opposition movements against the Kremlin, including in Ukraine and in the Maidan. And at that time, if you listen to his interviews, he describes how he resisted calls from the Russian government to hand over details for say Ukrainian opposition within that movement and said we're not going to compromise our users in order to satisfy the Kremlin.
So he has always been, I mean, we should take anything he says in interviews, I suppose, with a pinch of salt. But he has been a central figure in a kind of anti establishment movement before. So his arrest is really frightening because if it's now the case that owners of these networks can be held accountable for what is said on them, then inevitably the natural reaction of on behalf of those owners is going to be clamped down on what is said and what is permissible.
And that sets the terrifying precedent, I think. One thing he also talked about was how this is about regulation and it's a discussion around how he responds to various requests for information from different national states.
So he talked about how he was asked for information around the January 6 riots and refused claiming that this was a political move. And you can see how these requests for information against against companies like telegram can be used politically or suggesting that has been done. But you can see the potential for states to take action in this in a quite a politicized way in order to get information about how political movements are developing.
So you don't need to be conspiratorial to think that once the governments and states have a way to find this information out and once that pressure is applied, it's going to be applied for reasons that we might not think acceptable. Yeah, and it's interesting, you know, you're bringing up his past with the Russian government.
You know, similarly telegrams been hailed by the pro democracy protesters in Hong Kong is absolutely essential to them, organizing. We seem to understand instinctively that, you know, why he would not want to give up information to the CCP or to, you know, Putin and the Kremlin.
But as soon as it's our governments, we sort of assume that well, they can't have any possibly have any nefarious reasons to want someone's information, but that's not the case, is it, you know, and you can also clearly see that the bulk of the allegations, which basically relate to illegal activity,
if it's not necessarily a pure speech issue, are being treated as the kind of thin end of the wedge. I mean, a lot of the chatter around this is a lot of the commentary suggesting, you know, maybe this will be good because it will bring the tech bros kind of down to size and therefore they're more likely to acquiesce to something like the European Digital Services Act, or to any of these attempts by various governments to clamp down not on a legal activity that has, you know, takes place online, but just on speech, which they would rather wasn't uttered.
And that's been really explicit, and I think there's a reason actually that we're starting to see a bit of a shift in relation to Silicon Valley, and we might go on to Mark Zuckerberg's comments this week, but how I think they're starting to realize that was with the exception of a platform like telegram with the exception of the new X under Elon Musk, a lot of these social media companies have played ball various governments for quite a long time.
I think what they're finally starting to realize is that none of it will ever be enough, and I think this case in particular will be a bit of a wake up call for some of those those companies, some of those tech bros that's going along with this stuff won't necessarily save you in the long term, depending on who's in government and what acts they have to grind at any particular time.
Yeah, that's right, and we should talk a bit about what Mark Zuckerberg said recently, he sort of gave a semi apology for his quite extensive use of censorship during the COVID pandemic, particularly when the Biden administration arrived on the scene, you know, constantly making requests to take down things that they consider to be misinformation, sometimes things that were satirical.
I mean, we've spoken about that stuff kind of endlessly, but it's interesting to have Mark Zuckerberg admits to it in a way, you know, because we've been told that this wasn't happening for so long. Yeah, and his apology also included reference to the Hunter Biden story, which Facebook demoted as not newsworthy remarkably, and on the basis that it was diffs information, and of course it transpired that it wasn't disinformation, it was a worthwhile story that ought to have been reported.
I do think that this discussion around disinformation shows us how the term can be used in a political way, and I think that Zuckerberg's response and his apparent may occulpa, you know, obviously comes too late because the flow of information around COVID was so important to open debate around how he responded to that moment.
And what COVID did is, I think, set a precedent, and the precedent was that in some limited way, even that the authorities can control what we do and don't say, and it's worth noting that the US government was completely unapologetic around attempting to compel Facebook to sense a particular material. There hasn't been any mayor culprit on their part in relation to the Hunter Biden story.
They seem completely unapologetic about controlling the way that Facebook allows us to receive information, and I think my worry is that what we've seen in the aftermath of COVID is a more creeping acceptance of the criminal law to regulate what we say, it just seems that that is gradually gathering momentum now in a way which we haven't seen previously covered on spiked, you know, thousands of people are being arrested every year for what they say.
We have normalized the fact that the police can show up and arrest you for something that you post online, and that seems to be the apex of what we're experiencing. Definitely. Tom, do you want to come in on that?
No, I also think that the Facebook example is a reminder of how the relationship between government and social media companies became very blurry during the pandemic certainly, which is even in America, you know, bound by the first amendment and so on, where it would be incredibly difficult to have any kind of legal mechanism.
By which you could force social media companies to crack down on speech and so on, there was this hand in glove arrangement, when you basically had either discussions going on in private or a lot of brow beating in public to try and force the tech platforms to crack down on certain forms of speech that the government didn't like it was essentially outsourcing state censorship to the private sector in an instance where states has to ship because of the first amendment isn't allowed.
And it's a reminder that despite Zuckerberg's mayor, he was a pretty willing participant of this for quite a long time, right at the beginning of the pandemic, Facebook site clamping down on various forms of misinformation as it's, you know, no, nothing moderators saw it. He was even deleting not him personally. His company was even deleting event pages for anti lockdown protests, or grounds that they would break local social distancing rules, which really raised a lot of tricky questions.
By the time of about 2021 when the Biden administration comes in, Robbie Suave from reason, got his hands on loads of internal emails between metterum and the CDC to the point where one point they were basically just sending various claims and trending topics and so on to the CDC to vet them. They were referring to them as their colleagues thanking them for helping them with the debunking and so on. It was very chummy what was going on.
But going to that point I made earlier, I think what he and others have started to realize it was never enough during this time you still had Biden giving press conferences saying Facebook is killing people you have a surge in general suggesting that more hats have been done on legal front to make them play ball.
They would always kind of brandish the possibility of their companies being broken up or them taking away their rights under section 230 which protects them from liability for what they use as say on their platforms.
So I think a lot of these tech companies they're quite unprincipled. They're led by people who primarily just want to make money. But what has happened over the years is they have succumbed to pressure even from governments or just from the great and good to sense more and more categories of speech more and more individuals.
I think now the penny is starting to drop that this they've really got nothing out of this. It hasn't made the problem go away if anything. It's made the demands on them even louder and more extensive. Definitely and it is just worth underscoring that you know the reason this is a problem or the reason holding companies like Facebook liable for the content they post it's not because we care particularly about the fate of Mark Zuckerberg or his you know monopoly over social media.
It's because it will internally you know intern it will come for us it means that we will be limited and what we can say on those platforms that's the you know that's the real crux of the matter that is often missed in the in the debate around you know big tech versus
government regulation it's it's it's us who are the objects of regulation that users not Mark Zuckerberg really because they dress it up as you know we're coming after the those people that's not bullets about you say and also it's a reminder that we're basically in a situation where the extent of freedom of speech online because it is so monopolized by a handful of companies is basically relying on the whims of the handful of billionaires.
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Check it out. The West German town of Zollingen was rocked by a deadly Islamist attack last week. Three people were killed and eight people were injured in a knife-ingspree. IS, Islamic State, have claimed responsibility for this. It was happening during a festival of diversity, celebrating the town's 650th anniversary. Tom, I mean, what have you made of this? It feels like Islamist terror is making a return to Europe, but it doesn't seem to puncture the front pages for very long.
And it hasn't really gone away either. Something that's worth stressing because this attack feels in many respects like the culmination of something that was coming in Germany, but also across Europe for some time now. I mean, there was this attack. There was also, of course, the manheim stabbing in Germany back in May, I believe, where someone stabbed.
There's a multiple stabbing at kind of anti-Islam rally, ended up leading to the death of one police officer in the injury of many more, believed to have an Islamist motivation. But there's also been a string of foiled plots. Many of them ISIS linked or Hamas linked. There was a Hamas linked plot back in December, which was foiled in Germany.
Since then, there's been a string of cases, which haven't made the news over here, but a group of teenagers who were found to be kind of plotting attacks on churches and so on, having amongst themselves pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. There was a case of a plot believed to be against the Swedish parliament, which was going to be hatched from Germany, which was foiled.
There was an individual, I believe, from Iraq, who believed to basically be awaiting his orders, willing to carry out ISIS linked plots and so on. So there's been this whole string of these, which haven't made the news over here, but obviously have been creating this drum beat towards what we saw over the past week in Sauling. And there was another plot that was during the Euros, which was foiled just before the England and Spain final.
So this is something which, there's a depressing inevitability towards all of it. But what is also depressing is the fact that we now treat these attacks like it's sort of just bad, whether like it flares up from time to time, but it's not much that can really be done about it.
I think we really need to drop that not least because I think it lets the government off the hook for the role they've played in failing to keep people safe and for maintaining policies, which have raised the likelihood that something like this can happen, not least because in this case, this was a Syrian asylum seeker who should have been deported, but wasn't. So all of these questions are raised by this.
And to just dismiss it as, well, it's going to happen from time to time, seems to let a lot of people off the hook. Yeah, he basically managed to stay for long enough that his deportation order expired, which is pretty shocking. And they just, he wasn't at his refugee accommodation when they turned up to get him. That seems to be too easy loophole to exploit, I'll say. Yeah, and that's therefore the end of the matter. Yeah, it is extraordinary.
And what continually shocks me in, perhaps it shouldn't, is the unwillingness of the establishment across Europe to confront Islamism as an ideological threat. I mean, it was striking actually when the German coalition came to power a couple of years ago, it actually disbanded a working group on Islamism and replaced it with a working group on Islamophobia. And it feels like that sort of encapsulates exactly the problem here. There's just a real cowardice around this issue.
As you say, Tom, we treat it as a problem of bad weather, or perhaps it's a technical problem. The German government is currently going off to knives, seeing that knife-ownership is a big problem. OK, I'm not in favor of people owning knives, but that clearly isn't what motivated this attack. Zalling in ironically is known for manufacturing knives. It's called, in Germany, the city of blades. It hasn't had a terror attack like this in its 650 years of existence.
It's the Islamist factor that has made this happen. Luke, what have you made of that sort of, make that sort of cowardice in face of Islamist terror? Yeah, I think cowardice is the right word. I mean, we didn't mention the Taylor Swift concerts that were canceled. And the details that are emerging about that plot seem absolutely unbelievable.
That they were targeting tens of thousands of people intending to kill many thousands of young people at a pop concert, something we've seen in this country as well. And so we don't seem willing to talk about the absolute barbarism that's sitting under the surface in Europe.
And I'll just mention the riots quickly, because I do think that was a remarkable moment where, in the immediate aftermath of what we knew about the Southport stabbings, which was that young children, young girls had been targeted at a Taylor Swift dance class. People suddenly believed that this was an Islamist attack. And everyone said, this is only the result of misinformation online. And for me, that was a really interesting moment, because the real question is, why did people believe that?
And the people believed that, because it looked exactly like an Islamist attack. We know now that it has nothing to do with Islam, but it looked like an Islamist attack. And I think that's what we're failing to grapple with. It's the fact that people are so frustrated about the failure to look this problem in the face. And I think that's where some of the anger around the riots come from, not to legitimize them in any way at all.
But I think there was a moment where the idea that this was simply misinformation that sparked these riots, that had simply no basis in reality. I think that was an interesting moment that highlighted our unwillingness to say that this did look like an Islamist attack. It did look like a lot of the other attacks that have happened in this country and abroad, which were directly connected to Islamism. So I do think there needs to be a reckoning. I don't know what that reckoning looks like.
It's about recognizing Islamism in the different forms that it arises. It's not just in the form of terror attacks, but it does take the form of anti-Israel protests that we've seen in this country. We've seen Islamist sentiment expressed on those marches, the idea that we should remove Israel from the map, from the river to the sea, et cetera. These are all disturbances outside primary schools when particular lessons have been taught.
The batley grammar school, all of these instances seem to just come and go, and we seem to just live with them. And until we have some kind of public discussion around how we respond to that ideological threat, I think we're in a very dangerous place indeed. Definitely Tom. And I think part of the, what makes this so shocking is because of the fact that we're now getting into the period where it's just explicitly downplayed.
And I think the riots for all the horrendous things that came out of that has also provided a pretext for which the Islamist problem can be downplayed. Despite the fact that we talked about them the show last week, I mean, to suggest that the majority of the threat comes from Islamism is to almost understate it.
I mean, it's overwhelming if you look at the, certainly, the body counts, certainly, the amount of MIFI case load, which is concerned with Islamist terrorism versus any other variety of it. And I think now that's what we're going to see. We're just going to see long and upon-risk discussions that we saw from Keir Starmer this week about the threat from the far right and so on.
All the while, this other form of the far right, if you want to say, it's certainly it's most lethal form on Britain streets in the 21st century is going to be completely ignored. And also, I think some of the tricky questions are going to be ignored around the fact that, whilst there has been at least some discussion about the kind of homegrown terrorism component the way in which the people even brought up in Western societies grow to load them and hate them.
There was also this security question around borders because we have seen a string of attacks of relatively recent arrivals. And there was even, this is everyone's forgot about this now, but the terror attack in last October and Hartley Paul, where you had, generally, I believe we've been kind of floating around Europe being denied asylum everywhere you went, ends up in Britain, and is in refugee accommodation becomes obsessed with Hamas in October 7th.
And then up stabbing one of his housemates deaf himself for refugee in asylum sick. And this isn't just a threat to people who are already living in this country. Because he converted to Christianity, he wasn't too happy with that. And then he went out into the street and stabbed a man to death. Everyone's forgotten about that case completely. We weren't allowed to report it at the time. It was all shrouded in a mystery.
It's only recently kind of made its way through the courts and been clear that it was terror. It was actually branded a terrorist crime. But there's been no discussion about that whatsoever. And I dare say that's going to be the pattern that's going to be repeated in the years to come. So Sir Keir Starmer delivered a rather grim state of the nation speech earlier this week. He warned that things are now so bad that they can only get worse before they get better.
Notably, he also said that there was not just a fiscal black hole in terms of the public finances, but also a social black hole. And he blamed the conservative government for creating that. And also for their snake oil populism, which he blamed for fueling the riots. Really, was anything in particular in that speech that caught your eye? Lots of clanging metaphors.
And look, I think the first thing to say about it is what's been very interesting about Keir Starmer's program so far is this attempt to depoliticize his own program. So every turn, every minister announcing any policies, as I said, this is what we have to do. Yeah. And we have to do it because the prisons are full. So we have to let people out early. There's a black hole. We have to raise capital gains tax. Whoever they're going to announce or raise fuel to you, whatever they're going to do.
The point is that they're depoliticizing their own approach. So they're saying, this is the only way we can get through this. It's going to be painful. Sort of like a doctor performing an operation. Yeah, this is something that's got to happen. We're going to pull your teeth out, but it's going to be better afterwards. And I think that distancing themselves from politics has been really interesting because Keir Starmer is not a politician. He's not a leader. He's a lawyer.
He's someone who can craft communication quite well, but it's all very technocratic. And actually, you have seen in these first few months real political decisions being taken by this Labor government, ending the Winterfuel allowance, which has caused consternation and anger across the country, public pay increases in faces of the trade unions that's made people angry. And these are political decisions. But they're being dressed up as technocratic ones, and ones which we have no control over.
We have to get things working again. It's all very technocratic and legal. He's going to have to move on from that at some point. And be honest with the public that there are political decisions being taken. And he's going to have to come forward with some kind of political justification for what he's doing. Because otherwise, he's not a politician. He's just a manager. So I'm not being made of it. And it does feel like we're very much trapped in that kind of politics of there is no alternative.
And even in a, it's even become more unimpressive in the new forms that it comes in. I mean, it feels like we've had a series of political tribute acts. So you had new labor. Then you had cameras as the kind of heir to Blair. Now, if you look at some of the reporting around the way in which Rachel Reeves and Kirsten are trying to frame the politics of this, they're explicitly lifting it from the coalition.
The way in which they're very effectively managed to pin all of their economic decisions as the inevitable consequence of labor not leaving any money in the coffers effectively. They're completely aping argument in that style. And if anything, doing it, doing it worse, oddly, I thought it's fascinating to do it to call a speech. I mean, for someone who's so terrible at public speaking, he gives a lot of speeches, Kirsten, not a combination.
But it's called a speech in which the top line of it is essentially things are going to get worse is even on a kind of superficial political messaging level is so incredibly inept as well as terribly uninspiring. It gives you no sense that he's got any sense of how to get us out of the much deeper economic hole that we're in that even he doesn't necessarily want to admit to.
But it's interesting, but not at all surprising, that the wills are kind of starting to come off or at least start to shake a little bit a lot very, very quickly. I mean, his approval rating has plunged.
I mean, currently the proportion of the country who believes that the government are doing on balance a good job is only, I think, slightly below where, or is it only slightly higher where Theresa May was at the same point in her premiership, after she'd lost the 2017 election, would not lost the election, but lost her majority in that election.
So it's a kind of reminder that this very short-lived enthusiasm we saw amongst the commentary in the wake of the election, the way in which people were talking about, you know, what was it, 34% of the votes with low turnout translated about 20% of the country, that this was a transformative, exciting, wonderful government that was going to write all the wrongs of the previous 14 years. It's just collided with reality very quickly.
I hope we're not going to see any more of those sort of sexy starma type of, and still aroused. It is. Yes, people. One of the big political choices Starma has made, or he's confirmed, based on a few leaks, is that they're going to ban smoking outdoors. Now, that does, again, this is posed as something technocratic. It's something we have to do for the health of the nation, but really it betrays their politics, right? I mean, Starma is miserable. He is authoritarian.
He is Puritan, and all of those things. You're quiet. I mean, who knows how this is going to work? I mean, this comes off the back of the Tories failed attempt to ban smoking generationally. Remember one of their last policies was to phase out smoking by making it illegal for people before this date to buy cigarettes. People after that date to buy cigarettes, and that turned out to be a complete mess. This looks at least as though it resembles the smoking ban of the past.
They're just moving it outdoors. But again, the problem is, how do you, firstly, how do you stop someone smoking outside? Do you seriously walk up and give them a fine, even in particular, or whatever? But you're right. This isn't an impulsive move to do something about public health, which just involves taking away someone's freedom. And when governments want to do something about a perceived problem like public health, banning is always the easiest thing to do.
Extend a ban, make something more illegal, and it's thought that that will solve the problem. I mean, I do think that it's incredibly authoritarian, and especially the way again that these sort of things become normalized. We remember the discussions around the indoor smoking ban. And people, a lot of people say, well, we look back at that now. What a sensible choice we all made was, and that a wonderful thing to do.
But it did lead to significant closures of venues up and down the country, led to people losing their jobs. It led to a very significant change in our culture. And what's being proposed now would mean the closure of Shisha bars, who would no longer be able to have Shisha outside, it would mean the infrastructure that was built up around COVID, people building things outside, so people could be outside, would now be redundant. It's huge economic cost.
And it's another state, and it's another move which shows complete indifference to business owners who have attempted to go along with the mad rules that have been up and down since COVID. It's just another two fingers to them. Yeah, I mean, do you remember when Blair wanted to create a European style cafe culture? Those were the days of... Finally, it's happened. I don't normally look back fondly on the new labor years, as you know, bastions of liberty, but they go.
It's worth remembering as well that, as part... I believe this is going to be part of they're going to revive tobacco and vape spill, which is supposed to be really soon at legacy. And then, because the election he himself calls ends up nixing his supposed legacy policy and handing it to the Labour Party. But I believe the generational ban is almost certainly also going to be a part of that. They're going to revive that.
That's one thing to watch out for, I think, because that plan to raise the smoking age by one year every year until now can smoke. It's so demented in terms of how do you possibly police that? I think the next move will just be to say, we just need to ban it for everyone. But this is also a reminder that at least part of the deal when it was first raised by the Tories was existing smokers are going to be left alone. But this is a sign that that's definitely not going to be the case.
And there's just no... For years, the sort of anti-smoking lobby draped themselves in a lot of very disingenuous arguments. This is entirely about second-hand smoke, for instance, which didn't even make sense with the original smoking bags. They also banned it on, like, open-air train platforms and allow people to work with and to smoke in their own transit vans, even though they're alone. It was obviously towards just paternalism.
But again, the health arguments, what possible risk are you to someone to be in a few feet of them in the outdoors in a big audience? It's complete. It's not even negligible. It's non-existent. And yet, they're still making these cases. But increasingly, this is clearly just about what these policies are always about, which is just pushing people around, and imposing the tastes of the most miserable people in society on everyone else.
But this idea that everyone just wants to live as long and as healthy a life as possible, and that you absolutely mad if you would possibly prioritize pleasure to a certain degree, it just doesn't compute with the people who are setting these policies, unfortunately. And it's a sign of things to come.
I mean, the fact that we're open, it's just a matter of course that we're going to usher in the total prohibition of cigarettes despite prohibition being such a dreadful policy historically, and that that's just common sense apparently. There will be no pushback, even from the conservatives. Let's face it. Yeah. It feels like, if they announce it's a done deal pretty much, unfortunately.
And I do think just listening to the discussion today so much of it is about a general disgust with people's life choices. So you hear people say, well, I don't want to sit in a pub garden when someone's making a call. This is going to ruin my lunch. And you sort of think, oh, you're living in a democracy and in a country where we have freedom to do. And I just think this so much of this is about people's expression of distaste with smoking and with disgust at smoking and people's life choices.
And that's not what the law is for. It's not for sending messages to people about how disgusting they are. I think it is just a sign of anything else. The health arguments being nonsense, the economic arguments being nonsense. These arguments about the NHS as well are complete. But the idea that the biggest drain on the NHS is people who die earlier is absurd.
Like there's plenty of evidence to show that actually it's non-smokers who tend to cost the state more over time for kind of obvious reasons. But it's also just how miserable it is.
And the kind of culture that we're losing by letting these things just move through, like just a country of genuine sort of live and let live of not being so health obsessed, of not being so myopically focused as a government on policing the minutiae of people's lives and actually maybe try and take on some of the bigger problems that confront us. On the political level, on the cultural level, everything, it just shows how kind of rotten and intolerant things become so quickly.