The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, presented this Wednesday the Forum against Hate, an initiative that will analyze how hate messages can provoke a process of dehumanization towards the people who receive them. Likewise, in his speech he announced the new tool ‘HODIO’ that will allow measuring the presence of hate speech in the digital environment.
The event, organized by the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, began with the performance of the song, My life, there is no right, by singer-songwriter Ismael Serrano. Subsequently, the President of the Government began his presentation by commemorating the victims of 11M -today marks 22 years since the attacks- alluding to the fact that "the disease that killed them was hatred” and posed a question to those present: "How many people have you hated? "Hating a person is not that easy," he clarified.
He has warned that in order to hate, it is first necessary to take a very concrete step, “to stop seeing the other as a human being”. Hatred begins with “a process of dehumanization in which the other person is no longer perceived as an equal,” something that occurs both in everyday life and in the digital environment. The president has warned that this process can progressively escalate to physical violence, and has stressed that hatred does not arise spontaneously, but rather “is cultivated, promoted, and manufactured,” comparing it to “a virus created in a laboratory”.
Sánchez has also highlighted that this phenomenon has become a political tool and that, in many cases, it has a marked masculine component. He recalled that there has been a 41% increase in hate speech, recalling what happened in Torre Pacheco where the aggression of a neighbor provoked a “hunt” against Maghrebi people, fueled by messages of racial hatred that, he affirmed, were encouraged by far-right political parties.
Given this situation, the head of the Executive has defended the need to act in the digital space with new measures. In this context, he has announced the tool ‘HODIO’, promoted by the Spanish Observatory of Racism and Xenophobia, which will allow systematically measuring the presence, evolution, and scope of hate speech on networks used in Spain.
He/She has finished his/her appearance mentioning some words from Gisèle Pelicot: “May shame change sides” and has sentenced saying that one must speak “more of love and less of hate”.
Debate tables against hate
The need for this forum is due to the fact that this beginning of the year has been marked by cases of harassment directed against women in public spaces. Among them are political analyst Sarah Santaolalla and the spokesperson for Más Madrid in the capital's City Council, Rita Maestre, who have reported attacks by ultra agitators both in the digital space and on the street.
Present will be the political analyst Sarah Santaolalla, the actress Abril Zamora and the social worker Mohamed El Harrak, who will share their experience on this worrying issue that, increasingly, is growing more on social media and in which harassers usually remain unpunished.
At the conference, different roundtables will be held where debates will focus on topics such as the protection of fundamental rights, the regulation of online content, and the promotion of more inclusive societies, with the aim of fostering international cooperation – with the intervention of the high representative for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, Miguel Ángel Moratinos- and developing tools that help curb the dissemination of messages that promote discrimination or violence.
