ADL International Leadership Award Presented to Sacha Baron Cohen at Never Is Now 2019

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Sacha Baron Cohen is the well-deserved recipient of ADL’s International Leadership Award, which goes to exceptional individuals who combine professional success with a profound personal commitment to community involvement and to crossing borders and barriers with a message of diversity and equal opportunity.

Over 100 years ago Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote: “Sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant.” Through his alter egos, many of whom represent anti-Semites, racists and neo-Nazis, Baron Cohen shines a piercing light on people’s ignorance and biases.

https://www.adl.org/news/article/sacha-baron-cohens-keynote-address-at-adls-2019-never-is-now-summit-on-anti-semitism

copyright © 2019 ADL

Thank you very much.
Thanks to everyone who stood up.

Unnecessary but very flattering.

Thank you, Jonathan,
for your very kind words.

Thank you, the Anti-Defamation League,

for this recognition

and your work in fighting racism,
hate and bigotry.

And to be clear,

when I say racism, hate, and bigotry

I'm not referring to the names
of Stephen Miller's labradoodles.

[audience laughs]

Now, I realize that
some of you may be thinking:

"What the hell is a comedian doing
speaking at a conference like this?"

I certainly am.

[audience laughs]

I've spent most of the past two decades
in character.

In fact, this is the first ever time
that I've stood up and given a speech

as my least popular character:
Sacha Baron Cohen.

[audience laughs]

[audience cheers]

And, I have to confess, it is terrifying.

I realize that my presence here
may also be unexpected for another reason:

At times, some critics
have said my comedy

risks reinforcing old stereotypes.

The truth is, I've been passionate about
challenging bigotry and intolerance

throughout my life.

As a teenager in England,

I marched against
the Fascist National Front

and to abolish apartheid.

As an undergraduate,
I traveled around America

and wrote my thesis
about the Civil Rights Movement

with the help of the archives of the ADL;

and as a comedian,
I've tried to use my characters

to get people to let down their guard

and reveal what they actually believe,

including their own prejudice.

Now, I'm not gonna claim
everything I've done

has been for a higher purpose.

Yes, some of my comedy –

okay, probably half my comedy –

has been absolutely juvenile.

[audience laughs]

And the other half completely puerile.

But...
[audience laughs]

I admit there was nothing
particularly enlightening about me

as Borat from Kazakhstan,

the first 'fake news' journalist,

[audience laughs]

running through a conference
of mortgage brokers

while I was completely naked.

[audience laughs]

But when Borat was able to get
an entire bar in Arizona to sing

♪ throw the Jew down the well ♪

[audience laughs]

it did reveal people's indifference
to anti-semitism.

When, as Bruno, the gay
fashion reporter from Austria,

I started kissing a man
in a cage fight in Arkansas,

nearly starting a riot,

it showed the violent potential
of homophobia.

And, when disguised
as an ultra-woke developer,

I proposed building a mosque
in one rural community,

prompting a resident to proudly admit:

"I am racist against Muslims,"

it showed the growing acceptance
of islamophobia.

That's why I really appreciate
the opportunity to be here with you.

Today, around the world,

demagogues appeal
to our worst instincts.

Conspiracy theories,
once confined to the fringe,

are going mainstream.

It's as if the age of reason,
the era of evidential argument

is ending,

and now knowledge
is increasingly delegitimized

and scientific consensus is dismissed.

Democracy,
which depends on shared truths,

is in retreat,

and autocracy,
which depends on shared lies,

is on the march.

Hate crimes are surging,

as are murderous attacks
on religious and ethnic minorities.

Now, what do all these
dangerous trends have in common?

I'm just a comedian and an actor,

I'm not a scholar,
but one thing is pretty clear to me:

All this hate and violence
is being facilitated

by a handful of Internet companies

that amount to the greatest
propaganda machine in history.

[audience applauds]

The greatest
propaganda machine in history.

Let's think about it.
Facebook, YouTube...

...Google, Twitter and others –

they reach billions of people.

The algorithms
these platforms depend on

deliberately amplify

the type of content
that keeps users engaged;

stories that appeal
to our baser instincts,

and that trigger outrage and fear.

It's why YouTube recommended videos
by the conspiracist Alex Jones

billions of times.

It's why fake news outperforms real news,

because studies show that
lies spread faster than truth.

And it's no surprise that the greatest
propaganda machine in history

has spread the oldest
conspiracy theory in history:

the lie that Jews are somehow dangerous.

As one headline put it:

"Just think what Goebbles
could have done with Facebook."

[audience groans]

On the internet,

everything can appear equally legitimate.

Breitbart resembles the BBC,

the fictitious protocols
of the Elders of Zion

look as valid as an ADL report,

and the rantings of a lunatic
seem as credible

as the findings of a Nobel Prize winner.

We have lost, it seems,
a shared sense of basic facts

upon which democracy depends.

When I, as the wanna-be-gansta Ali G,

asked the astronaut Buzz Aldrin:

"what woz it like to walk on de sun??"

[audience laughs]

the joke worked because,
we, the audience, shared the same facts.

If you believe the moon landing was a hoax

the joke doesn't work.

When Borat got that bar
in Arizona to agree that,

♪ Jews control everybody's money
and they never give it back ♪

the joke worked because
the audience shared the fact

that the depiction of Jews as miserly

is a conspiracy theory
originating in the Middle Ages.

But when, thanks to social media,
conspiracies take hold,

it is easier for hate groups to recruit,

easier for foreign intelligence agencies

to interfere in our elections,

and easier for a country like Myanmar
to commit genocide against the Rohingya.

[audience applauds]

Now, it's actually quite shocking

how easy it is to turn
conspiracy thinking into violence.

In my last show, "Who is America?"

I found an educated, normal guy
who'd held down a good job,

but who, on social media,

repeated many of the conspiracy theories

that President Trump, using Twitter,

has spread more than 1700 times
to his 67 million Twitter followers.

The president even tweeted that
he was considering designating Antifa

who are anti-fascists
who march against the far-right,

as a terror organization.

So, disguised as an Israeli
anti-terrorism expert,

Colonel Erran Morad,

[audience laughs]

[in a foreign accent]
"Yalla. Let go"

[audience laughs]

Disguised as him,
I told my interviewee

that at the Women's March in San Francisco

Antifa were plotting to put hormones
into babies' diapers in order to

[in a foreign accent]
"make them transgender,"

[audience laughs]

And this man believed it.

I instructed him to plant small devices
on three innocent people at the march,

and explained that,
when he pushed a button,

he'd trigger an explosion
that would kill them all.

They weren't real explosives,
of course, but he thought they were.

I wanted to see, would he actually do it?

The answer was yes.

He pushed the button and thought
he had actually killed three human beings.

Voltaire was right when he said,

"Those who can make you
believe absurdities

"can make you commit atrocities."

And social media lets authoritarians
push absurdities to billions of people.

In their defense,

these social media companies
have taken some steps to reduce hate

and conspiracies on their platforms,

but these steps
have been mainly superficial.

And I'm talking about this today

because I believe that
our pluralistic democracies

are on a precipice
and that the next 12 months,

and the role of social media
could be determinant.

British voters will go to the polls

while online conspiracists

promote the despicable theory
of the "great replacement,"

that white Christians
are being deliberately replaced

by Muslim immigrants.

Americans will vote for president

while trolls and bots perpetuate
the disgusting lie of a Hispanic invasion.

And after years of YouTube videos
calling climate change a hoax,

the United States is on track,
a year from now,

to formally withdraw
from the Paris Accords.

A sewer of bigotry
and vile conspiracy theories

that threaten our democracy,
and to some degree, our planet.

This can't possibly be what
the creators of the internet had in mind.

I believe that it's time for
a fundamental rethink of social media

and how it spreads
hate, conspiracies and lies.

(Audience cheers; applauds)

Last month, however,
Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook

delivered a major speech

that, not surprisingly,
warned against new laws and regulations

on companies like his.

Well, some of these arguments
are simply...

...pardon my French, bullshit.

Let's count the ways.

First, Zuckerberg
tried to portray this whole issue as

"choices around free expression."

That is ludicrous.

This is not about
limiting anyone's free speech.

This is about giving people –

including some of the most
reprehensible people on earth –

the biggest platform in history
to reach a third of the planet.

Freedom of speech
is not freedom of reach.

Sadly, there will always be racists,

misogynists,
anti-semites and child abusers.

but I think we can all agree

that we shouldn't be
giving bigots and pedophiles

a free platform to amplify their views
and target their victims.

[audience applauds]

Second, Mark Zuckerberg
claimed that new limits

on what's posted on social media

would be
"to pull back on free expression."

This is utter nonsense.

The First Amendment
says that, and I quote:

"Congress shall make no law...
abridging freedom of speech."

However, this does not apply
to private businesses like Facebook.

We're not asking these companies
to determine the boundaries of free speech

across society,

we just want them
to be responsible on their platforms.

If neo-nazi comes
goose-stepping into a restaurant

and starts threatening other customers
and says he wants to kill Jews,

would the owner of the restaurant,
a private business,

be required to serve him
an elegant 8-course meal?

Of course not!

The restaurant owner
has every legal right –

and indeed, I would argue,
a moral obligation –

to kick that Nazi out.

And so do these internet companies.

[audience applauds]

Now third.

Mark Zuckerberg seemed to equate
regulation of companies like his

to the actions of
"the most repressive societies."

Incredible.

This from one of the six people
who decide what information

so much of the world sees:

Zuckerberg at Facebook,

Sundar Pichai at Google,

at its parent company Alphabet,
Larry Page and Sergey Brin,

Brin’s ex-sister-in-law,
Susan Wojcicki at YouTube,

and Jack Dorsey at Twitter.

The Silicon Six.

All billionaires, all Americans,

who care more
about boosting their share price

than about protecting democracy.

[audience applauds]

This is ideological imperialism.

Six unelected individuals
in Silicon Valley

imposing their vision
on the rest of the world,

unaccountable to any government

and acting like
they're above the reach of law.

It's like we're living
in the Roman Empire,

and Mark Zuckerberg is Caesar.

At least that would explain his haircut.

[audience laughs]

Now here's an idea.

Instead of letting the Sillicon Six
decide the fate of the world,

let our elected representatives,

voted for by the people
of every democracy in the world,

have at least some say.

Fourth, Zuckerberg
speaks of welcoming

"a diversity of ideas,"

and last year he gave us an example.

He said that he found
posts denying the Holocaust

"deeply offensive,"

but he didn't think
Facebook should take them down

"because I think there are things
that different people get wrong."

At this very moment, there are still
Holocaust deniers on Facebook,

and Google still takes you

to the most repulsive
Holocaust denial sites

with a simple click.

One of the heads of Google, in fact,
told me that these sites just show

"both sides" of the issue.

[audience groans]

This is madness.

To quote Edward R. Murrow:

One "cannot accept
that there are, on every story,

"two equal and logical sides
to an argument."

We have, unfortunately,
millions of pieces of evidence

for the Holocaust.

it is an historical fact.

And denying it is not
some random opinion.

Those who deny the Holocaust
aim to encourage another one.

[audience applauds]

Still, Zuckerberg says that
"people should decide what is credible,

"not tech companies."

But at a time
when two-thirds of Millenials

say they haven't even heard of Auschwitz,

how are they supposed to know
what's credible?

How are they supposed to know
that the lie is a lie?

There is such a thing as objective truth.

Facts do exist.

And if these internet companies
really want to make a difference

they should hire enough monitors
to actually monitor,

work closely with groups like the ADL
and the NAACP,

insist on facts, and purge these lies
and conspiracies from their platforms.

[audience applauds]

Now, fifth, when discussing
the difficulty of removing content,

Zuckerberg...

Mark Zuckerberg asked,
"where do you draw the line?"

Yes, drawing the line can be difficult,

but here's what he's really saying:

removing more
of these lies and conspiracies

is just too expensive.

These are
the richest companies in the world,

and they have
the best engineers in the world.

They could fix these problems
if they wanted to.

Twitter could deploy an algorithm

to remove more
white supremacist hate speech,

but they reportedly haven't

because it would eject
some very prominent politicians

from their platform.

[audience groans]

Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing.

[audience applauds, cheers]

The truth is

these companies
won't fundamentally change

because their entire business model

relies on generating more engagement,

and nothing generates more engagement

than lies, fear and outrage.

So it's time
to finally call these companies

what they really are:
the largest publishers in history.

So here's an idea for them:

abide by basic standards and practices

just like newspapers,
magazines and TV news do everyday.

We have standards and practices
in television and the movies.

There are certain things
we cannot say or do.

In England, I was told that Ali G

couldn't curse
when he appeared before 9 p.m.

Here in the US,
the Motion Picture Association of America

regulates and rates what we see.

I've had scenes in my movies cut
or reduced to abide by those standards.

If there are standards and practices
for what cinemas and TV channels can show

then, surely
companies that publish material

to billions of people

should have to abide
basic standards and practices too.

[audience applauds]

Take the issue of political ads,

on which Facebook have been resolute.

Fortunately, Twitter finally banned them,

and Google, today I read,
is making changes too.

But, if you pay them,

Facebook will run
any political ad you want,

even if it's a lie.

And they'll even help you
micro-target those adds to their users

for maximum effect.

Under this twisted logic,

if Facebook were around in the 1930s

it would have allowed Hitler
to post 30-second ads

on his solution to the "Jewish problem."

So here's a good standard and practice:

Facebook, start fact-checking
political ads before you run them,

stop micro-targeted lies immediately,

and when the ads are false,

give back the money
and don't publish them.

[audience applauds]

Here's another good practice:

slow down.

Every single post doesn't need
to be published immediately.

Oscar Wilde once said:
"We live in an age

"when unnecessary things
are our only necessity."

But...

But, let me ask you,
is having every thought

or video posted instantly online,

even if it's racist
or criminal or murderous,

really a necessity?

Of course not.

The shooter who
massacred Muslims in New Zealand

live streamed his atrocity on Facebook

where it then spread across the internet

and was viewed likely millions of times.

It was a snuff film,
brought to you by social media.

Why can't we have more of a delay

so that this trauma-inducing filth

can be caught and stopped
before it's posted in the first place?

[audience applauds]

Finally, Zuckerberg said that
social media companies should

"live up to their responsibilities,"

but he's totally silent about
what should happen when they don't.

By now, it's pretty clear

they can't be trusted
to regulate themselves.

As with Industrial Revolution,
it's time for regulation

and legislation to curb the greed
of these high-tech robber barons.

[audience applauds]

In in every other industry,

a company can be held liable
when their product is defective.

When engines explode
or seat belts malfunction,

car company's recall
tens of thousands of vehicles

at a cost of billions of dollars.

It only seems fair
to say to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter:

Your product is defective,

you are obliged to fix it,

no matter how much it costs

and no matter how many moderators
you need to employ.

[audience applauds, cheers]

In every under-- sorry

In every other industry
you can be sued for the harm you cause.

Publishers can be sued for libel,
people can be sued for defamation.

I've been sued many times!

[audience laughs]

I'm being sued right now

by someone whose name I won't mention
because he might sue me again!

[audience laughs]

But social media companies
are largely protected from liability

for the content their users post –

no matter how indecent it is –

by Section 230 of, get ready for it,

the Communications Decency Act.

It's absurd!

Fortunately, internet companies can now
be held responsible for pedophiles

who use their site to target children.

So I say,

let's also hold these companies

responsible for those who use their sites

to advocate
for the mass murder of children

because of their race or religion.

[audience applauds]

And maybe fines are not enough.

Maybe it's time to tell Mark Zuckerberg
and the CEOs of these companies

you already allowed one foreign power

to interfere in our elections.

You already facilitated
one genocide in Myanmar.

Do it again and you go to jail.

[audience applauds]

In the end, it all comes down to
what kind of world we want.

In his speech, Zuckerberg
said that one of his main goals

is to "uphold as wide a definition
of freedom of expression as possible."

It sounds good.

Yet our freedoms
are not only an end in themselves.

They're also the means to another end –

as you say here in the US:

the right to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness.

But today these rights are threatened
by hate, conspiracies and lies.

So allow me to leave you with a suggestion
for a different aim for society:

The ultimate aim of society

should be to make sure
that people are not targeted,

not harassed and not murdered

because of who they are,
where they come from,

who they love or how they pray.

[audience applauds, cheers]

If we make that our aim –

if we prioritize truth over lies,

tolerance over prejudice,

empathy over indifference,

and experts over ignoramuses –

[audience laughs]

then maybe, just maybe,

we can stop the greatest
propaganda machine in history.

We can save democracy,

we can still have a place
for free speech and free expression,

and most importantly,
my jokes will still work.

Thank you very much.

[cheers and applause]