Rozhovor s Vlastimilem Veselým o svobodě projevu v EU, dezinformacích i NatConu

Well, I haven't experienced anything like this yet, and I hope I won't experience it either. Because the conference had to change the venue twice. This time, I was invited by Vlastimil Veselý, Director of the Society for the Defense of Freedom of Expression. We talked about the conferences of conservatives who recently participated and also about the conferences that will be held here next week. The panel of the European Ambassador or the candidates for the Eurolep is moderated by Marzena Kocjánová and commented by my colleague Dan Vávra. I hope we will also attract viewers to them. For the second, there will be a discussion panel, where the former Minister of Informatics, Mr. Blinář, the head of the foreign office of the CINEPRIME, Matyáš Zrnou, will participate. I think this is a deliberate tactic of the EU officials and maybe the European Commission to have as many possible explanations as possible, so that at the beginning the public would not be disturbed, but when it comes to breaking bread, there should be space to do it as they want. I am very glad that Mr. Vlastimír Veselý, Director of the Society for the Defense of Freedom of Expression, Good day. Mr. Veselý, you have recently attended several interesting conferences and you will soon be organizing one yourself. Let's talk a little about this and not just about this. So the first conference I would mention here was CPEC in Hungary, which was at the end of February. It was one of the largest conferences of conservatives in Europe. Although there was not necessarily a bloc that was dedicated to freedom of expression, there were speakers who often touched on these issues. Can you tell us what interested you the most? So you probably know the CPEC conference, Conservative Political Action. It is a monstrous event, I think the largest conservative conference in Europe, which attracted former prime ministers of Australia, Poland, Slovakia, current prime ministers, Orbán, and probably the prime minister of the Netherlands, plus a large number of conservative intellectuals, publicists, republicans of the United States, which probably did not have in our part of Europe, at least for a while. The event is huge. I really have to point out that the organization was professional and I think that anyone from Europe, from the conservative part of the spectrum, is worth building relations with American republicans, who would probably have the next president, so the CPEC is going. That was a clear impression for me. The second impression was sadder from the point of view of the Czech Republic, because our representation there was minimal, let's say, because this year we didn't have anyone in those stations in Foie, where it is just Mž, various things, Hungarian, Polish, Slovak, Czech representation, so here, too, the Czech representative was missing. So I was a little isolated there, although I wasn't there for the Czech Republic, there were more than ten of us there, but it shows a picture, a contemporary picture, of the state of the conservative scene in our country. And it was probably in Brussels in the past? At Natscon. Natscon in Brussels was, I think, two weeks or ten days earlier. I already experienced Natscon in London last year, which was focused a lot on the British scene. Brussels was already very European, very international. Yes, the Czech representation there was very small, and I was there the first day, I think, alone, then the next day I was there all the time, Jan Zagradil. I compare it to how extremely interesting the lectures are, how extremely interesting the conversations are in the corridors of people of the most vulgar type, as I say, publicists, not just politicians, but publicists, simply intellectuals. The whole scene is on a huge decline in Europe, and the Czech Republic is just behind it again. You asked me about an interesting speech, which I read in TopTackle, so at the CPEC, I would like to recommend to the viewer a Dutch independent journalist and lawyer, Eva Vlaardingerbroek, on the topic of migration. We have an article about it. Yes, her speech was censored on YouTube, so viewers could not get to her, but she is on the X-mascovite network, so at least they will get to her there. Of course, the speech was very emotional, charismatic, worth seeing. Prime Minister Orbán, certainly as the host, is behind it. I am, of course, closer to the NATCON conference, because it is smaller, there are about 300 posts. CPEC is much, much bigger, there are thousands of people, I would say 2,000 people. So the NATCON is probably more understandable, you can meet there whoever you choose. And in connection with the NATCON, one thing happened there, which may be included in the textbook, and if not in the textbook, I definitely guess, many conservatives in Europe, or maybe all over the world. Were there restrictions regarding this conference, an attempt to sabotage it somehow, because you were there? Try to tell us from your own point of view what was going on there, how it was going on. Well, I haven't experienced anything like this yet, and I hope I won't experience anything like this either. Because I had to change the venue twice for the conference. At least one place in a hotel was announced. Just before I flew to Brussels, I got a message about a change to another place, to another hotel. And before I got to my hotel in the late evening hours, I read the e-mails, and there was a third change, or a second change, and the organizers had to suffer a real martyrdom, because they had to prepare the whole logistics in a completely different place overnight. And now the biggest piquancy is probably that it almost didn't work out there either. Because about two hours, three hours after the start, the police came to the venue with an order from the mayor's office, who was reportedly concerned about a violation of public order. But the violation was not supposed to come from the participants of this conference, but from some demonstrators, groups on the sidewalk in front of it. So he ordered the police to close the venue and actually start the conference. In the end, this did not happen, perhaps due to some fortunate circumstances, because there were actually quite free lawyers present at the conference, from the Alliance Defend Freedoms. And Mr. Kouleman, who was there, was able to write a complaint to the Supreme Court of Russia, if I say it correctly. And he sat down in the late, almost night hours, and finally decided that the order from the mayor's office was not legal, and that the conference could continue. I personally think that one more thing played a role there. And the fact that the police officers who had the order in their hands and wanted to sign it and close the venue, were actually invited inside to see what was going on there. They had a normal daily conference taking place all over Europe. And on the other hand, there was a great threat of photographs, news, microphones, lights, cameras, and a huge number of people. And I think they got a little stuck on the podium, and that's why the conference was cancelled. And only then did they realize that they had invaded the entrance, so they didn't let anyone in. For example, the French President-elect, Éric Zemmour, couldn't come inside and make his speech. He had to come the next day. So he didn't let anyone in, and only people could leave the venue, but then they couldn't get inside. So that's what happened, but the conference could continue with some uncertainty about what could happen. Let's hope that such a fate will not happen in your conference. Let's talk more about it. You will have very interesting guests there, you will have European ambassadors there, they will answer questions about censorship, freedom of expression, European legislatures, and there will definitely be things that voters might be interested in. Yes, unlike NATCO and CPEC, which had a lot of topics, where the conservative voices in Europe and the USA are not heard, they are censored, they don't have the same equal conditions as other political currents, we will have the main topic, we will talk only about freedom of expression and legislatures, but also what we can expect from the candidates for the Eurovol. So we will have three discussion panels each with about 6-7 panelists. The first one will be the leaders of the candidates for the Eurovol. Usually there will be only one candidate, but there will be three of them. There will be Mr. Knotek for the co-leadership, there will be Mr. Vondra, the main European ambassador. So I think it will be a nice introduction, where the participants can take advantage of the event to stand up within the programme for the European ambassadors who will do something for the freedom of expression in the current period, but also to confront what they did before and how they voted. But it's a conference, so it's not just about the programme, it's also about meeting in the corridors over a cup of coffee, over a glass of wine and having an informal conversation. That's why people come to the conference, and that's why it's meant to be so that people can find something that they like or not like, but are interested in, so they can exchange their opinions. So the first panel will be the European ambassadors or candidates for the Eurovol. It will be moderated by Martina Kocjanova and my colleague Adam Vávra. I hope we can get the viewers interested in that too. The second panel will be the former Minister of Information, Mr. Mlynář, the Director of the Foreign Office, CNN Prime Minister Matyáš Zrno, Professor Drula, and Slovak representatives who will be commenting on Slovak affairs. There will also be a panel on the role of the state and whether the fight against disinformation is no longer being pushed to such an extent that it is impossible to object to Slovak language. And then there will be a third panel that will be more practical, and there will be a representative of the Czech Telecommunications Authority, which is in charge of the regulation of digital platforms through the legislative EU Digital Services Act. That will probably be a big topic. So again, whoever feels that this will be enough, all of us, who are consuming some content on the networks, have the opportunity to ask Mr. Zelený from the Czech Telecommunications Authority about what can be expected from the USA in the next few months. There will probably not be much, because the new Czech legislative and the law on digital economy There is speculation that it could be approved I think sooner than later. So the Czech Telecommunications Authority will not have much power to do anything until then, but it is worse for all of us who, for example, would like to block Facebook or YouTube, which can happen to any politician. And then the possibility of amendment is absolutely minimal and does not apply to what we have often heard. Do not worry, users from the USA will have more options to defend themselves. And in this connection, you initiated such a small, let's say, tasting. It is about five questions that you have discussed by political parties and groups and you ask them about censorship, freedom of speech, and so on. And gradually you publicize these answers to these questions and you will have a little surprise at the end. Try to bring it a little closer to us. We went through all 10 groups, I will say that some of them are independent parties, some of them are coalitions, so all 10 most often named subjects who, according to the survey, have a chance to get to the European Parliament. We asked the same questions. We got answers from seven of them. Only the Pirates, Stun, and Sobzdem reacted to all seven of them. Either they didn't react at all or they talked to us for time reasons. And those seven answers we will gradually publish. This is the first part. The second part, viewers can look forward to it, is the presentation of the title. Of course, we want to have five episodes out. Plus, as you have already pointed out, some of our assessments, just comparing those beautiful, beautiful formulations, how each party will defend freedom of speech, how to compare it to the voting as it was in the DSA, as it was in the European Media Freedom Act, where the number of votes against from the Czech side was at the absolute minimum and most of the participants who were sent were actually dedicated to these crazy orders. So I might say that some people laugh at it and say, look, they wrote it, it's empty, it's a word, you don't have to respect it. This is of course true, but given that they gave us the answer, it is captured, it will be saved for the future. And I think anyone has the opportunity, journalists, publicists, analysts, to confront them with these promises and then, of course, to use it. If it doesn't work and doesn't fit, then you have to return them to it and push them to explain why they are behaving differently after the election. So I think it makes sense and we should do it more often, not just freedom of speech, green deal, migration, Istanbul communes, and so on. You told me a little about those laws, I wanted to ask you about them. You have been criticizing them for some time now. Try to sum up the biggest challenges you face. So we are talking about the Digital Services Act, which is an order, that is, on the main page, and the European Media Freedom Act, which is again an order. Both of those names sound really nice, especially the European Media Freedom Act. The content is more complicated. And the most complicated thing is that to be honest, for some people, they don't know anything about it at all, it's just a couple of sentences, and it's not too simple and too superficial. I allow myself to use a parallel with the now very intensively debated Migration Act. And thank God that the Migration Act got into the prime-time times of television and now all those politicians are confronted with it, explain the interpretation, why there is something or there is nothing, they don't judge it. And why is it so difficult to find an unambiguous conclusion about it? Because the Migration Act is written very vaguely, very uncertainly, so it offers a lot of freedom when it comes to interpretation. And I think that's a deliberate tactic of the EU officials and maybe the European Commission so that there are as many examples as possible, so that the public is not unnecessarily worried at the beginning, but when it comes to breaking bread, there should be room to do it according to their wishes. The DSA and EMFA, that's basically the same thing. The regulations are very vaguely written, and you can find a lot of interpretations there, and there are sensible traps hidden there. So, first of all, both victims of imprisonment take the power of law from the Czech Republic and at the level of the European Commission they are actually sending powers that we should not give up. The DSA has the regulation of those big platforms, Facebook, XCOM, YouTube and so on. The media freedom act has the regulation of the media market. So it doesn't sound like much, but the European Commission takes the regulation of the media markets in the member states. And I don't just mean the public and legal media, but also the private media, which will have to behave according to some ideological narratives that the European Commission prioritizes. So I don't want to talk too long again and complicate the audience. You can explain it calmly, because I think it's important to know. The DSA has a big problem with its problematic content, which means that you can talk about a normal legal content in the Czech Republic, but the platforms in their rules, they already know the basic principles of the community, give themselves something for which the content is problematic for them and they will erase it, block it, because it is legal, because they will be led by some push of the Commission to some ideological obedience. There was a big debate about the word disinformation, but it's not there. You won't find it in the DSA today. There was some disinformation before the elections, because of the big debate, but it's just a refined process. Instead of the word disinformation, or the problematic content, there are terms like system risk or negative impact on public discourse. And there is even a formulation about a serious impact on the spiritual or physical well-being of the public. That's absolutely amazing. That's what the Ministry of Education wants to introduce into education, or gender ideology. And there is also a spiritual and physical well-being of the public. So it has similar roots, I think. And according to these very vague formulations, we are afraid that the Commission is able and has the intention to reveal some content that it doesn't like politically. For example, before the elections, as it happened in the United States with the famous Antwerp 1 coup, they will remove it because of the system risk. And they will have to do it, because they are threatened with 6% of the total turnover, which is a long time. So the holder of the truth or the decision on what is still valid and what is not, will be the Commission? The Russian Commission has the lowest right to deal with it and decide on it. That's the DSA, I think I said the most important things about the DSA, and you are not yet right-wingers. And with the European Media Freedom Act, again, it is similar, very vague formulations, regulation of the media market on the Commission's side. Similarly to the DSA, a group of certified non-profits called the Trustworthy Recognizer, which will be the Czechs, some non-profits. We even found out that they can be financed by the platform. Partially, for example. Even the referees who will decide the disputes outside the court can be partially financed by the platform. I think that's crazy. So the SCOs will play a very important role in this. They will announce the content and the platform must react. At the moment when the content is announced, the DSA will be responsible for the content. And the other one, the European Media Freedom Act, will create an organization or will create a statute of organizations that will evaluate the media. I think that's interesting for you. They will evaluate the media to see if it's transparent and if it fits the narrative of the commission, if it's valid, if it's European sensitive, and so on. And such media will be enchanted, that means that the platform will be responsible for spreading the content and not just to erase the content. And if it's true, they will be careful. And then there will be another group of media, I don't want to say that there will be a blacklist, but there will be another group of media that will not be evaluated by the media. And those platforms will not support the spread of the content, so there will be less traffic. We already have that. And secondly, if you want to erase some content, there will not be as careful as with the appropriate media. And we also think that there will be some mechanisms how to cut the second group of media under the insert, which was directly advised by Commissioner Jourová, who said that she would let them investigate and get rid of these media. So I think it's a very dangerous legislation that is hardly written about here at all. It's a new thing, I think it's been through the European Parliament and I feel that the European Council will approve it, but it's already said, Mr. Formality, that the Czech government will abstain or that it will be against it if it does not even reach an immigration pact. And it will take place in the order of a month, unfortunately, even before the European Parliament is replaced, because the new one, although I think it would be so complex that it would not even have to go through, but it will simply be late. So there will probably be some critical public discussion about it. Of course, they argue it, of course, the party that implements it argues that it brings more independence to the media, that the owners will influence the media so much that journalists will be protected, that it will not be possible to give any eavesdropping, but some who guessed correctly, well, it is perhaps not even possible now that the owners would have to give some eavesdropping and not use some kind of state power. And if it is good that the rights of private owners of the media will be limited, they can, for example, interfere in the change of the strategy of the media or the change of the editor-in-chief, I leave it to you. You mentioned an important element of this mechanism, namely the fact-checking organization. I know you have verified some verifications of the truth by these fact-checking organizations. What experience do you have, or if you can somehow evaluate our Czech environment, how we have it? I would probably not dare to evaluate fact-checking organizations in our country, I think there are not many of them. We know about the French AFP, of course there are the well-known manipulators, but that's just a party that I don't think they're worth it. We would personally vote for them. There is a demagogue here, who has a contract, I think, with Facebook, and he is quite intensively dedicated to this activity, but we have already found him quite laughable and laughable verdicts. In general, I would like to say that these are all subjective evaluations as people who, for example, do not have any great experience in the area they evaluate. They are not experts on migration or experts on Green Deal, that is, they evaluate specific policies. I often see students there, so people would have to have a huge erudition or life experience, which I think they don't have. And how well he described it in one article, for example, Marian Pichlibar, our viewers can refer to the article Praising Doubt, which can be found on our website, sospcz. There are several factors that play a role in fact-checking, and all of them actually show how very subjective it is. There are millions of statements that can be verified in their field, so just by the fact that the fact-checker chooses this one statement, he actually somehow enters it subjectively and influences the verdict a little. Then, of course, there are roles of sympathy or antipathy to the bearer of the statement. And no one just says it's absolutely non-neutral, we're not like that either, that's why we don't do it. The only thing you would blame is that we took about five statements that really flashed us in black as absolutely meaningless and absurd from the fact-checkers. So we disassembled it, why it doesn't make sense to evaluate such a statement, or why it was actually evaluated wrongly, with some concrete arguments. But let's not really get into taking tens of statements from fact-checkers and analyzing them again, because it often depends on the interpretation, it often depends on some, for example, not completely accurate expression of the statement itself. For example, there is a well-known fact-checking of some Lithuanian emissary, I think Mark Výborný, who once said that he drives a bus and throws it away for 3 crowns, and he didn't want it for 5.50 or 3.50, now the 50-day difference is a lot or little, it's true or not true. It's just terribly ridiculous, and to build on some decision about what is disinformation or fake news, to let it be decided by one organization, which can also be financed from some sources, which again lead it to choose only some people, that's completely false, and as a society we should refuse it so that someone plays the arbiter of truth. Simply, each of us should do the fact-checking himself, each of us should choose a medium that is trustworthy, that he believes in, but it is clear that, for example, he does not agree with someone else, so he chooses another medium, and with some of those more complicated children, which is often related to politics and some values, people always disagree or never agree, for example, the question of marriage, marriage, the question of some solidarity, the question of the sustainability of migration, it really depends on how the values are set and then it is impossible to vote for one liar or his opinion , and the other for the truth. That's what the public debate is about, about the cessation and endless search for the truth, which we sometimes only approach, we don't have it for sure and forever. And the frequent appearance of these organizations is such a magic word that is used as a sticker, I think that in the media space it is quite harmful to use the word disinformation. I don't know if, for example, the definition is probably some kind of single one, but from my point of view, the essence of disinformation is that someone has some intention to somehow lie, inform or lie the truth, but that there is simply the intention. For example, what do you think about it and when can you actually talk about something like disinformation? Well, before I say my opinion on disinformation or the attitude towards what our society as a whole has, I will say that the word disinformation is overused. It is overused in our country, but its value is therefore very varied and I think that the word belongs to the security field. Like, it's more of a topic for security services, for secret services, it's not just a topic that should be debated en masse in the media, as among journalists, among fact-checkers and so on. And now, in fact, we think that in order for something to become really disinformation, it must have many more criteria of fulfillment. So it's not just about the fact that it's false information, intentionally false, but there must also be some important social impact that can destabilize the society, not that just someone is paying, that his country is paid, so you can also say that it is, for example, intentional, that he knows it's not like that, but it's not disinformation. So intentional, sorry, important social impact, there should be some interest of a foreign actor, because the author of the disinformation is often a civil servant from his country, who wants to bring some uncertainty, some subversive narrative to another country, but that's nothing new, it's been going on for decades, all great people use it, so it's nothing special, but the foreign actor is simply important in it, and then there should play a role in it, so there should be some time silence, or a state of time nausea, when you just can't verify the payment for a long time, and someone has to decide, for example, that this is so serious, so dangerous, that there must be some kind of restrictive step, and it must be absolutely exceptional events, which, for example, no one has documented for us yet, when people who use disinformation use it in every other language, and we always say, please, let's send us, gather some five, ten of the biggest disinformation in the Czech Republic, who are here, as if they were moving the environment, they were terribly dangerous, so much so that it was really necessary to somehow stop them, what they are, and now they look like completely crazy, completely just such ridiculous things, such as the 50th country, or that Princess Diana, so conspiracy theories about cold death, and so on. On the contrary, on the other hand, for example, we referred to the English pact, as the fact that Prime Minister Rakushan has been here for a long time, we think, he has been in public, because there are no proper locations, alias Dublin offsets and so on, so that was information, absolutely untrue, we think he knows well how it is, what the pact is, so somehow it has a significant social impact, and to whom it benefits, well, to foreign actors, it benefits those specific legal migrants, who, of course, will suffer if the migration pact is really approved, whether it goes against the national security of the Czech Republic, in favor of those foreign actors, such as migrants, or the European Commission, which wants to pay for it. So all five rules have been fulfilled for us, but the second is not that we would like to let Prime Minister Rakushan kill us, we are not those who call for criminalization, here are those people who, for example, release false information, but it is necessary to find some reasonable measure of that, in fact, when we point out something for disinformation, or something for a disinformation medium, it turned out that it is used completely casually, a disinformation medium, who decided it, which are disinformation, where is some agreement, who made that agreement, on what basis, if there is some BXY, I will not name anyone, so he adds that this medium released disinformation back then, so that everyone can control it. Well, it's just a sticker that actually uses suppressed competition. And that competition, for example, is relevant to you in some competitive battle on the media market, but also about political competition, the political competition of equal parties, where everyone has the same chance, but does not, where several journalists are simply working to falsify someone. And finally, I would like to ask you about a project that you recently launched, which is about making prices for freedom of expression and their antithesis. I think it's about two months since you launched it, so describe to us what happened, what phase it is, and maybe how many nominations you already have. We said that the time when the topic of freedom of expression is only for a few intellectuals, maybe politicians, a few of us people who are trying to defend the values that used to be, of course, and today are simply cut off by various, for example, other orders. So the time is just around the corner for the topic to become mainstream. Simply everyone, the whole society could simply express it so that people would look around and consider brave people who do not fear to say their opinions, how they feel. So that's what the price for freedom of expression is aimed at. We said that we would not do it ourselves, we are not the smartest or the only right people who can decide about it. So we formed a group with, we think, quite a lot of people who have been dedicated to this topic for a long time. We have there, for example, members of the media councils, Mr. Matoch from the Council of Czech Republic, Mr. Petrov from the big media council, Mr. Bazalov from the Council of Czech Republic, we have Ombudsman there, and we have some puppet personalities there to prove a little today that this is the worst society. Marek Vašut is there. Marzena Kocjánová is there as a moderator of an organization that is actually regularly dedicated to the topic of freedom of expression. So we have these things in front of everyone, everyone has the opportunity to depend on someone in the freedom of speech to look around who is brave, who did something concrete, for example, by saving, speaking up for someone who should be persecuted, often thrown out of school so that it doesn't happen. And then you have the opportunity to fill out a simple online form on our website www.zasoboduprojevu.cz , where you can nominate up to four categories, you don't have to choose only one, but you can, that means one of the lists, or you can nominate a collective, an organization that you are involved in some activity. We can do it that way. Greetings to everyone who did not evaluate us. Then it can be anti-price, anti-price for the individual, that is, for example, a politician, I don't want to mention specific names. Yes, you have already mentioned one today. It is simply the value of freedom of speech .