European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has long been accused by critics of exhibiting totalitarian tendencies.
Speaking at the Democracy Summit in Copenhagen, she called for a new “European democracy shield” against “disinformation”. She likened this to a “virus” that the EU should work to “vaccinate” citizens against so that they become “immune”.
In her May appearance, Von der Leyen pointed out that the development of artificial intelligence has been very fast and that it is now possible to create fake – but very realistic – movie clips and images (deepfakes) and that these fakes can be used, among other things, to shape opinion during election campaigns.
According to the EU leader, this is why Brussels has already put in place some guidelines on AI and ethics, and she stressed that the Union needs to do even more than today to fight both AI fakes and what it calls disinformation.
– It takes resilience. As technology evolves, we need to build up societal immunity around information manipulation. Research has shown that pre-bunking is more successful than de-bunking. Pre-bunking is the opposite of debunking. In short, prevention is preferable to cure, she argued.
– Think of information manipulation as a virus. Instead of treating an infection once it has taken hold, that’s the de-bunking, it is better vaccinate, so that our body is inoculated. Pre-bunking is the same approach, von der Leyen continued.
Recurring virus likenesses
According to the President of the European Commission, “disinformation relies on people passing it on to others” and it is therefore necessary that “people know what malign information’s influence is” and of the different disinformation techniques.
– As that knowledge goes up – our chances of being influenced goes down. And that builds up the societal resilience that we will need, it said.
Von der Leyen declared that EU leaders “must be vigilant and uncompromising” and ensure that “malign information or propaganda” must be quickly removed and blocked. She also pointed out that social media giants are also obliged to act in accordance with EU law.
Censorship of dissenters
The conference took place before von der Leyen was re-elected as President of the European Commission, and she said she wants to set up a “European democracy shield” to track down and delete “fraudulent” online content together with member states’ national authorities.
Critics argue that in practice this is more about stifling dissent within the Union, as has repeatedly been the case in controversial policy areas such as migration policy, cultural policy, COVID policy, climate policy and foreign policy. In this context, it is pointed out that it is ironic that von der Leyen likens disinformation to a virus that needs to be vaccinated – as criticism of the experimental mRNA vaccine was systematically censored during the coronavirus crisis. The EU chief was also a driving force behind the mass vaccination campaigns, advocating for the injections of the mRNA preparations to become compulsory.
