from the civil rights movement itself. i'm a student of the sociology and the nature of how the lies that underpin hate, and the words of hate spread in digital spaces online particularly on social media. the ways in which bad actors are able to weaponized the spaces, the ways in which ad platforms ultimately amplify and normalize the lies that underpin hate, and lies and hate are inextricably interlinked. all the way from the again come take at the syllogism, the notion blood libel, the protocols of the elders of zion. we should underpin hitler's ideology and is hateful, his murders hatefulness. or even in the 21st century the great replacement theory. the great replacement ferry was used to justify the massacre of muslims in christchurch, new zealand, and jews of the tree of

life synagogue in pittsburgh -- >> can you just live and understands can explain what it is. >> was the great replacement theory is a theory that the reason, it's really about it now because you're being -- your hearing is being talked about in political rhetoric from mainstream politicians. blacks, minorities are being bussed into this country a deliberate plot to destroy the white race. and there's lots of different variants of the. one variant of it set me off on this journey. it was the summer of 2016 when a rumor conspiracy there was being spread online but we thought it's online, is that the big issue. who cares about online stuff? fsoc the real world. this theory was that the eu, the european union was trying to import muslims into the uk to rape 14-year-old white girls and destroy the white race work that conspiracy theory affected the referendum in the uk. it led to an earthquake in

european politics, the brexit referendum. but it also directly led to the assassination, the stabbing, shooting and beating to death of my colleagues joe cox was a 41-year-old mother of two who was savagely beaten, shot and stabbed to death on the cobbled streets of consistency very close to group and north england. when that moment happened and her attacker was screaming britain first, , death to trade, two things about what he was screened at the time, death to treat it was a slogan used for the grape of visitor, the idea that people are traitors because they are destroying the white race, destroying the nature, the soul of our country by importing people that look like us. and he's also saying britain first. written first was a name of the first political movement in the

uk. the reason why the cepi off on the path to what i do now was that to use or someone had told me that and i said, who gives a damn? they've got 1 million clicks. we have half a million members, and how wrong was i? because what i haven't seen and was so many others have not seen was that in the modern world the main place where we share information, when we establish and maintain our relationships, where we establish and socialize our norms of attitude and behavior, what is called or social mores, when we negotiate our values and where we negotiate what we call the truth have shifted to social media. and they operated with different rules, different mathematics, different rules of physics in the real world. in the real world in any space every walk-in, if people scream

the inward consequences happen. social media you get amplified. so it was normalize income making more visible, making feel like that's the expense the people should expect and that was was in normal way to behave. that again led to the dynamics underpin what was happening on january 6, 2020, when people are seeing the normalization of extremist rhetoric, of ideas that were once unthinkable in civilized society, the notion that, the very, the most sacred aspect of democracy itself which is that we give up voluntarily political violence in order to put the ballot box first. the ballot box determines our collective future as condition. that idea was being challenged. it's why january the sixth was so dangerous because it attacked the most fundamental value that underpins our democracy. we were seeing those, the lies

that just about that hatred, that justified that by listing spread at light speed to millions of people, for zero cost, and provided by algorithms, squashing the voices of those of us with tolerance and love in our hard and the city felt like everyone was hateful and violent and suddenly we saw that violence exploded in her streets just like where i lived near the capital. >> let me also bring it home to what we are expensing as well here in the u.s. you talk about some of these far right groups. i'm honored to hate a group -- let me go back. in 1979, 45 years ago next month in november, there was an anti-klan demonstration in

greensboro, north carolina. and so as the protesters were getting ready to organize, beginning of the margin can bring to start their march, the ku klux klan and neo-nazis pulled up in a pickup truck in front of, in broad daylight in front of the two cameras and the news media, and killed five of the demonstrators. and what made that, and is called the greensboro massacre. and what made that particular incident outside obvious he of the lives that were lost in the day, but what made it historical in this country is that was the first time the ku klux klan and these neo-nazis formed an alliance and worked together. today, , we see that, and so it kept evolving kept evolving and now it's the alt alt-right. it's the same group. so the same information that we were monitoring in the '90s,

when we are monitoring the far right and extreme groups, their viewpoints, their organizing now has become, commission the proud boys which is another variation in 2024. and now a lot of those ideas that they had, they actually now have become legislation. that's what's so dangerous about this moment that we are in. a lot of the things when we were researching them, a lot of the things that seemed so extreme 20 years ago, they now have made those, you can hear the same things. you can go to the internet and hear it, which is spread like wildfire. but you can click on any "newsnight," the night of the news and those things are now becoming soundbites. those things are the legislation that are being attacked. when you talk about your rights that have been eroded those are the things that were talking about an organizing in the late

'90s. so we are at a very real point. it's not just soundbites the sound cute. we are at a point where oppression is now being legislated. and they can be connected to the extreme far right, which can be connected to their organizing in the u.s., particularly since 1979. so that's where we are as a country. >> let's talk a little bit about that legislating hate, in particular i want to ask a little bit about the slew of bills that have been passed in states around the country that target the lgbtq community. damon, can ask about how these bills come some which have become law, intensify polarization, divide our country further? >> well, that's the whole purpose. i hate to even use the phrase culture war because it's a word

that feels academic and atmospheric when it's really about the lived experience, how it plans on folks. but these are laws and we often see at the lgbtq+ bills, bathroom bills as they call it. also in schools we are seeing a chilling of curriculum. we are litigating cases and to state right now, oklahoma and arkansas, and arkansas one of our clients, students and teachers at central high school and they're wondering can we teach and learn about the little rock nine and david dukes and civil rights history? and oh, they don't know if they can teach and learn about the tulsa race massacre, which still did open up a new investigation about yesterday, the department of justice. or the trail of tears, what happened to our native people,

right? we have partnered in some of those cases with the aclu, which ironically is defending the clans right to protest and march. our stand is we cannot allow the divisive bills to divide us, and we have claims of the 14th amendment, equal protection clause which most people think about in terms of race but also the first amendment, the freedom to learn, the freedom to teach. because the first amendment cast work for us, too. it can't work just for some people. we are fighting back and also trying our best to fight forward. but these laws have such a chilling effect. one of our clients is actually a white student and arkansas kiss, a multiracial group of clients, and she did a film short forrester she said it's not just like history, it's my history,, too. they don't want us to learn. you can say the same thing across gender, sexual

orientation, gender identity, race. they are trying to divide us as much as possible. here's the thing. this generation, which i guess generation out for people calling come right? if you're in high school or early college years, knows better. knows better, has a proud sense of self but also activity of interdependence. see, what i think these folks are afraid of is what was taught in the '60s at the height of the american civil rights movement of that time, and what we saw just recently as in 2020 protests. around the corner from office which is round the corner of black america lives class here in d.c. a multiracial intergenerational and interfaith group of people convening, connecting. people across sexual orientation. all demanding racial justice and

equity. that's what the fighting against. that's why they're so scared of us in that way. you asked about the impact. the impact is profound but i see it emboldening people. my daughter who i don't believe has developed her own sense of full identity, bush has a sense of solidarity because she's been in the rainbow club after elementary school. my role is to fight to make sure there can be a rainbow club so she can make our choice to at least stand in solidarity as her own identity forms. i think her young people fighting back and know how to do this. >> were shot, i want to bring you and as we talk about moving towards talking solutions and we think about black and brown coalition -- were shot. what are seeing now? what this is for me to know about how people are working together and the power of the? >> yeah. first of all, i really

appreciate listening to sort of where were asked, right, in the problem. try to think about what can we do. how do we think about the road ahead in terms of disrupting, dismantling, changing incentive structure that makes this possible. a couple of things are really important to me. first of all there's a lot of presence, visibility and awareness as the issue exist. but we can't mistake presence for power. what i mean by that is presence is visibility, awareness, retweet, shout out from the stage. it's the near times doing a story on it and giving us all the data behind it. sometimes we think presence means peoples awareness is enough and know something is going to happen. but that's not enough. when we missed the presence of how we can think black president would post racist by black celebrity announcing they have a new album coming out and the

internet stopping means that america loves black people as much as america looks black culture. and america can love and celebrate and monetize black culture and hate black people at the same time. those two things do not have to actually be in conflict. the question really is what do we do? want to give a couple of examples of work i think is really important but all interest on part. sometimes that the written will come sometimes it's an unwritten rule. shortly after donald trump was elected in 2016, we saw a new price of white national script all around the country. we saw a group starting to march and engage in new ways. i in some new ways with michael slager what do we do about this? how do we deal with this? you are not going to demand things in the white nationalist groups at some point, law enforcement and those places is showing up as the groups, but

those unable to disrupt and dismantle them. there are questions of how do these groups of infrastructure and how did he operate. we spent some time and we got a sense of where do these organizations money come from? how are the resource? was enabling them? who supporting them? we started to look at, , you can go under websites and by par familiar, so most hateful things possible. you could give money to paypal to pay for busing certificates. we started reaching out to the credit card companies and started reaching out to the banks, and the credit card comes would say no, this nothing we can really do about this. the banks would take you couldn't do it we get the point where i washington wn post reported safe we know you're creeping around this issue of the banks and credit card companies and the funding of white nationalist groups. you know there's nothing they can really do next i go okay. so we built this platform called

no blood money and we built this platform where we started dating both the white nationalist groups that had been getting funding and paypal, american express and all these companies. we spent some time still come back and forth with these companies and then charlottesville happened. and over the weekend at charlottesville we took what was private discussion and we turned on the public action. because in that moment where the issue was a deeply present we could have started yelling about the thing apart once again his ability to change the rule. there are written rules and their unwritten rules. and by that tuesday the credit card companies and paypal were giving us a list of white nationalist groups that suddenly there were no longer going to process money for. no law had changed, the power and instead change, , that millions were now and motion raising the voice of wonder why

this copies were a lot of money to go to these groups, why these companies were funded. that required infrastructure. the required organizing. it required strategy. it required focus and it required timing. all those things are incredibly important if we want to take on the forces that give the powerful, deeply ingrained and deeply profitable. when i talk about this work, over the course of the coming weeks we saw then sending us more and more. we started running you targeted ads over those companies, meaning if you showed up and you work at mastercard and to turn on your phones to google or facebook you might get an ad asking you to speak at your ceo and ask them why they were allowing fees to be processed white nationalist groups or i remember meeting with the folks at mastercard or visa is doing it, too. i do understand why you are not running at that visa, too. no, we are. i said all that to say that that

is one example. other examples is the incentive structure of big tech. what is amplified come what money can be made, how this information travels. right now you too is monetizing, has ads running up against anti-haitian hate. right now content that is attacking the haitian community will have ads for major funders, major corporations right up against it. those of type of things we have to disrupt, that we have to stop, we have to make it unprofitable. i want to end by pricing will always lose in the back rooms of it in the people lined up at the front door. this is not something but how much information we have or awareness. we need all of those but we need people in motion to take on the folks in power, to take on the decision-makers in power and to cut off their money. because once were able to truly

make racism, to make injustice, to make hate no longer profitable, we were actually see this sort of ways in which it operates and the ways in which it travels completely changed. by default it is a deeply profitable there will be all sorts of enablers and all sorts of people and all sorts of institutions looking to uphold a come working to profit from it and working to continue to make it a reality. [applause] >> thank you for sharing that. particularly, i think this is, elon musk souter center for countering digital hate. this room may not know about this lawsuit but i wonder if you can tell us about that and the outcome and how that fits into what he was just talk about. >> let me pick up on what he said about the incentive structure. here's one of the things that is fundamentally different to hate we seen in the past. it's not just politically profitable to be hateful. it is now economically

profitable for the producers and distributors of hate and allies that underpin hate to continue to do that. one of the things we studied, as a sinema sociologist, a scientist by training, a data site is so we look to the data on how much money and individual hate act that spreads hate online that's given a promotion makes each of these platforms. so one medium-size hate actor can generate between ten and $21 of revenue a year for year for the platform. that's shared to most platforms like youtube, 55 -45 in favor of the producer. someone is making bank at a just screaming nonsense and hate and lies about black people, about brown people, about muslims, about jews, about whoever else. we looked at that and we thought well, you know, i have try to runs a much bigger position for me. my organization is about, makes

less than ten minutes of the year. were 40 people globally. how can we make a difference? we focus on two things. we focus on the legislation in countries where countries are willing to legislate and say that increase the amount of hate in our society we will impose costs on you. so we'll make it less profitable by introducing costs to the spreading of hate. the uk and eu i was the first witness to give evidence in uk for the online safety act. that became law october 2023. we worked with european union on the digital services act in brussels, and incredibly boring place but very, very helpful to us in generating new costs for. and in the u.s. there are organizations which are backing up lawsuits ready to bring them against these platforms for that impinge on our collective civil rights but they are blocked at the moment us on the code section 233 communication decency act 1996.

god willing in in the next five years our next five-year plan, where five years old two weeks ago, next i guess we will go to war with a piece of legislation which has been used to justify so many arms, everything from the provocation of hate and allies that the definitive account of the mix young girls feel crap about the bodies and make themselves want to hurt themselves. right? so that stops there. the second thing is when i had to be advertising because the advertisers were 90% of the residents of these platforms. i'm not a writer guy. i'm not agree the speaker as others on spelling but i know economics and economics of these platforms, the decision-making of these executives, they are thinking how do we maintain the revenues come in from appetizers even the were doing the wrong thing? what we do is we do research that exposes those ads appearing of those youtube videos. when we did that with elon musk

we did a small study that showed when he took over the platform, the following week after he took over the lazy 202% increase in the use of the n-word on his platform than just the week after he took over. there's a 70 plus percent increase in anti-semitic hatred and at the of to speak you plus hatred and anti-muslim hatred. that research went on the front page of the "new york times." advertiser flooded out. the cost them $100 million in annual in annual revenue. he then sued us for that saying how dare you do that research? not for defamation, not saying we were wrong but for the actor doing the research itself. so when you hold up in a speech how much did the lawsuit costs. >> was it cost us $1 million to defend. what you know what? we won it. so i have a ruling -- [applause] i have a ruling that is lawful to hold up a mirror to hatred and say are you ashamed of yourself and did one who does

business with them? we won that and we protected our own first amendment right never forget that when does people talk about how to platforms are about freedom of speech, they meet a certain kind of speech. and demean the kind of speech that restricts our freedom of speech, our ability to walk out on the street and walk out on the digital highways that comprise how we communicate in the modern world without facing a tort of hatred in response. balancing those rights is a challenge of the next few years i knew we will collect of it i think we battle. [applause] >> wow. this is enlightening to me but it want to bring you back to hatred and racism is profitable. why? because there's an audience for it. this is what we need to understand. i appreciate all these losses, all these of civil and it's

super important, right? but because he won that case that's not the end of it. just because when kamala harris wins in november, that's of the end of the maga movement. they still exist pick you know what? that calls for action. after this election he catches care about this country work about rhetoric, care about when it's a sexy topic, right? elections take place,, presidential elections take place before your. >> house of representatives, senate race takes place over to you. your local mrs. pauly. constantly you have to keep all gas, no breaks -- your local municipality. you had to stay on it because that audience as always, when donald trump is a longer there, who's next? with elon musk, if i was going to be there. hatred has been in this country, in this world since it existed, since it existed. wonder the things i savona testified before congress when

we talked about when i talk about january 6th, get upset, right? i get -- because on january 6th when the building was finally cleared and set i sat there with some of my coworkers and i just tried in the middle of the rotunda, built by black people, built by slaves. and i had the honor to protect it, to protect their work that it was a moment for me. i said to my coworker, is this america? the answer is yes, because what is more american than beating the crap out of somebody and try to take something from the because you don't like it works that's what america was dead on. but it's not okay though. it's not okay. now instead of doing it through violence, which still happens, but a lot less than it did back in the '60s, '70s, it still happens now but now they're doing it like you said through

legislation, through laws. as they are evolving we need to continue to evolve our fight also. [applause] >> we just have a few minutes left. i wanted to bring you in an ask about how they continue to build this path towards the commended weaver acceptable what else have we talked about that you wanted to mention? >> first and foremost, one of the things that we talk a lot about in the drum major institute is no one can quote any other part or recite from the i have a dream speech. they can recite the part about my four little children. and certainly martin luther king, jr. met his little 4chan of jalandhar, martin, dexter and bernice, but in the very real sense he also meant each and every one of us.

we are all errors to the king legacy. -- errors. we are ambassadors and builders of the beloved community. everything that you are here today is ways in which we see the path forward. it is building from all of the people that you all are fighting for, for everyone that came before you, that thought for you. we are saying thank you. and also for everybody to understand that we all have a particular and unique role and a part in building that community. one of the quickest ways is to find your power and your passion, to always do and instead, they miss it or if one of things we'll say is you come from a place of power to be something rather than against. we've heard a lot today what the groups that are organizing against. we have to know what we are for.

we are for peace, for justice, for equity, for building out that beloved community. one of the reasons hey crimes are so significant is because they are not about attacking the individual, that their attacking. really is trying to send a signal to the entire community that you don't belong here. that's why when they are hate crimes that happen normally are there should be extra, there's an additional punishment in some states that we fought for, because we understand your targeting an entire community. one of the things we have to understand is legislative. we have to continue to push for laws that this is all up, that don't limit us in this country. we now have to undo laws that have been passed that are eroding democracy. but we also have to continue to stand up at anytime and organize

when you see these things happening. dr. king talked about i can't make a man let me but i can't legislate his heart but i can stop him from listening. we need a combination of both as we move forward to truly address this issue but it all begins in knowing exactly the history of these groups come to understand the ties that they have. when you see fascism, we used to monitor. that was the handbook of white supremacy and neo-nazis all over. now his daughter, that party is -- being the political party of france. when you to know and understand that, and acknowledge how hate has spread, we definitely have her work cut out for us but it e what everyone is in today whether you are here or tuning in is that there are also very real and tangible solutions that people are getting involved. people are