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The Current Transcript for April 18, 2018

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

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VOICE 1: He's warrior type of politician and so he built his whole story on the notion that Hungary's under attack and he's the only one who can defend it.

LAURA LYNCH: That self-styled defender of Hungary is Viktor Orbán, recently re-elected as Prime Minister. He started his political career as a liberal leaning, defender of democracy. Now, journalist Andras Petho says he's become the opposite and Petho has first-hand experience of what that means. That's coming up in an hour. Before that though, we're going to spend our first hour peeking into the darker corners of the internet, corners that lead to crime and tragedy.

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VOICE 1: She was only 16-years-old and just wanted to make friends. We now know that adult men found Desiree on social media, reached out to her, pressured her and used her to make money.

LL: Desiree's mother, Yvonne Ambrose, telling U.S. senators how her daughter was lured into sex trafficking and the role a website played in exposing her to a short, hard life. Ambrose and others campaigned successfully for a new law making online companies liable for any content related to sex trafficking. But some, including sex workers here in Canada say it's making things worse. We're starting though with another facet of this many-sided issue.

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VOICE 1: It's not wrong what I did, like I said, people got saved. My family got saved too.

LL: How the internet may have shaped the views and actions of a killer. I'm Laura Lynch sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

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Mosque shooter's search history shouldn't be a cause for online censorship: expert

Guests: Barbara Perry, Cara Zwibel

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VOICE 1: I wanted to save people from terrorist attacks. Maybe thanks to what I did hundreds of people will be saved. Maybe 200, maybe 300 people, you never know.

LL: The voice of Alexandre Bissonnette, the young man who entered a Quebec City mosque last year and shot worshippers as they prayed. Six people died and 19 were injured. Alexandre Bissonnette pleaded guilty last month to six counts of first degree murder, as well as six counts of attempted murder for the shooting on January 29^th of last year. His sentencing hearing is taking place this week, and as he explained to investigators, he felt he was saving lives by killing Muslims. On Monday, the prosecution presented a report on the contents of his computer. It revealed that in the weeks before the attack, he'd spent time on the Twitter feeds of right-wing U.S. commentators, alt-right conspiracy theorists, and white supremacist neo-Nazi leaders. Bissonnette's online actions raise questions about what role this kind of content played in this case and whether Canada needs to do more to crack down on hate speech online. Barbara Perry is a global hate crime expert and professor in the department of social sciences and humanities at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. She is in Oshawa, Ontario. Hello.

BARBARA PERRY: Good morning, Laura.

LL: What are you thinking as you listen to the words of Alexandre Bissonnette on that tape?

BARBARA PERRY: Well I'm thinking that it really fits the standard tropes of Islamophobia that we've been hearing for the last decade at least — longer than that actually — in terms of you know talking about the threat posed, the threat of terrorism associated with Islam, and patterns of immigration that we're seeing in recent years. So it's terrifying in its implications and its consequences, but I think also closely connected to a lot of mainstream narrative as well.

LL: Well how much do we know about the Twitter feeds and the websites that he was visiting?

BARBARA PERRY: Well I think what's coming out and even early on after the incident and after the murders in January I think it was becoming quite clear that he was active on social media both in terms of his own tweets in favour of Trump's positions for example, but also in terms of the individuals in the groups that he followed that also suggested this sort of far-right leaning sort of sentiment around immigration law, around Islam, and I think even around feminism as well which is something that we've not paid a lot of attention to yet.

LL: Can you give me some examples of the sites that he was looking at?

BARBARA PERRY: Well Trump quite frequently, you know, following his Twitter feeds, Marine Le Pen, some of the alt-right, Richard Spencer for example.

LL: Marine Le Pen being the leader of a right-wing French party, yes, Richard Spencer.

BARBARA PERRY: Right, right, from the alt-right. So those sorts of groups and individuals.

LL: And what generally would he have been reading from these people?

BARBARA PERRY: He would have been reading I think a lot of narrative around anti-immigrant sentiment, the risk that is posed by increasing immigration in terms of impact on social services and impacts on employment opportunities, but also in terms of the very physical risk associated with, you know, if you listen to Trump for example, not just associate with Islam, but with Mexican immigration as well.

LL: Or about what they believe to be that risk.

BARBARA PERRY: Right, right. Yeah, how it’s represented.

LL: Let's come back to Canada then, how does Canada define hate speech?

BARBARA PERRY: We don't have a very clear definition. Really, now what we have to rely on are sort of the propaganda offenses, what we refer to as hate crime offenses. Propaganda offenses under Sections 318 and 319 which really refer to propaganda and in narratives that incite hatred, that incite violence, but they're not invoked very often. There's a pretty high standard of proof there, and they also need to be vetted by the attorney general before the Crown can pursue charges under that legislation.

LL: And just to be clear, that's section 318 and 319 of the Criminal Code.

BARBARA PERRY: Of the Criminal Code.

LL: Talking about criminal laws. So was there hate speech according to the legal definition on the sites and the Twitter feeds that Alexandre Bissonnette was visiting?

BARBARA PERRY: Some of them sort of bordered on that. I mean, you know, Trump for example, Marine Le Pen weren't sort of the extreme if you will in terms of calling for you know extermination of a community. But some of the other sites I think he might have seen that kind of language that talked about the need to purge the community, the nation, whichever nation they were talking about, purge the nation of this threat, and some of the language that they would have used in terms of dehumanizing Muslims in terms of vilifying them and characterizing them as predominantly, if not, exclusively as terrorists.

LL: Now as you said this is a pretty high bar in the Criminal Code. Just because a website or a Twitter feed has inflammatory content it doesn't necessarily mean it also is hate speech. So why are you still concerned about the information on these sites and feeds?

BARBARA PERRY: Well the legal standard is different I think than the sociological standard, the moral standard. We've seen the impact and the consequences that these sorts of websites can have on individuals who are looking for answers and Bissonnette is certainly not the only one who is drawn to these sorts of sites because they perhaps correspond to preconceived notions or else sort of provide answers to questions, maybe not about their own individual circumstances, because by all reports he was relatively privileged, you know maybe a bit of an outsider. But I think he was more concerned about you know sort of the environment around him and I think maybe not coincidentally that you know this did happen in Quebec which has probably had you know sort of more issues around Islamophobia and around you know sort of the whole debate around religious accommodation and the rhetoric that revolved around that as well which again frames Muslims as outsiders.

LL: And that concerns you because?

BARBARA PERRY: Because it feeds into this sort of anti-immigrant sentiment. It feeds into hostility towards the other. And I think as we've seen in this case it can lead to violence and it certainly has.

LL: Well that's a critical issue though. I mean that you say leads to violence, how much do we know about the connection between radicalization and exposure to this kind of extremist viewpoint online? That's the critical issue, right?

BARBARA PERRY: Yeah. Yeah it absolutely is and we're just starting to unpack that now, especially for the far-right, we haven't really looked very closely at those groups so we're in the midst or about to begin a study that looks at exactly that, those links between online and offline. There are certainly, if you look in recent months, at the you know the calls for the rallies and some of the websites from the extreme far-right groups you certainly see commentary there that is inciting to violence, you know, ‘let's get them’. Some of these groups are now armed as well which suggests you know the willingness to engage in violence which they frame as defensive violence rather than offensive violence; protecting their and culture protecting their community.

LL: As you say you're just starting to look into this, I'm wondering how much blame you think could be placed on these sites instead of factors like mental illness or instability or other factors?

BARBARA PERRY: Well in this case it's interesting you know we always look for signs of mental instability and in this case you know the evidence of that is quite limited. Yeah he was depressed, had some anxiety apparently, but that's very different then you know sort of strains of mental illness we generally associate with criminal behaviour. I think he was vulnerable. No doubt he was vulnerable. I wouldn't say mental illness played a role here at all because it appears that you know he wasn't only engaging these ideas online but in fact was quite vocal about them in some of the social forums that he engaged with at the university. You know some of his, I don’t know if you want to call them friends, acquaintances, said that he was you know typically prone to you know this kind of language that we're referring to here around Muslims, around immigration, around feminism as well.

LL: OK, we talked already about the Criminal Code provisions, how adequate do you think our current hate speech laws are?

BARBARA PERRY: I don't think they're very powerful. And I think again the high standard, I understand, I recognize the need for the high standard, but I think that especially with what we're seeing around online hate right now that; I mean we're seeing the conversations going on around the world really about how do we regulate this, how do we stop this? And it's not just a legal problem it's a technical problem as well because you shut them down one spot they pop up you know under another domain in another country. So I think it goes beyond legislative interventions.

LL: Let's stay with laws and regulation for a second; what changes do you want to see in the legislative framework?

BARBARA PERRY: Well I think that we repealed Section 13 some time ago, two years ago, three years ago now which would have protected communities from offensive and hateful and hurtful speech. So I think there's been some talk I think in some circles about resurrecting legislation similar to that. And I think that you know we need to also be able to perhaps not legally regulate but you know find mechanisms to encourage the platforms themselves, the carriers themselves to require them to take action when these sorts of cases are brought forward. We're seeing a number of cases around YouTube in the last little bit and some of the really horrendous music on there and demands that it be taken down.

LL: You raise Section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act which was dropped. In the past the federal Liberal government has said it would consider bringing back. We contacted the office of Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould which sent us the following statement: “While we continue to review all areas of the criminal justice system, hate speech is comprehensively sanctioned by Canada's criminal law framework. Reintroducing Section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act would require careful examination before making any legislative changes.” Now that sounds like a cautious approach. What do you make of that?

BARBARA PERRY: It's a very cautious approach. Well there was certainly no you know investigation before it was repealed. It was a very quick action. But I mean I agree I think it does need to be you know a slow movement. But it definitely needs to be on the agenda to have those conversations not just behind closed doors but to engage the public in those conversations as well.

LL: All right we will leave it there. Thank you for your time.

BARBARA PERRY: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.

LL: Barbara Perry is a global hate crime expert and professor in the department of social sciences and humanities at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa. We reached her in Oshawa, Ontario. My next guest argues that stricter hate speech laws aren't the answer to stopping the spread of extremism online. Cara Zwibel is the director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association's Fundamental Freedoms Program. She's in Toronto. Hello.

CARA ZWIBEL: Hello.

LL: When you heard what prosecutors had found on Alexandre Bissonnette's laptop, what went through your mind?

CARA ZWIBEL: I mean I don't find it so surprising and I'm not sure that it's a good basis for a discussion about, you know, increasing censorship or blocking online. Some of the sites that he visited are quite mainstream. I thikn we’re at a situation right now where we're looking at the president of the United States Twitter feed as potentially you know a site of hateful commentary and promotion of hatred. So it's a kind of a strange world. And I think that the list of sites that he's visited and his kind of activity online doesn't lead me to think we need to undertake some big legislative agenda around blocking these sites or empowering social media companies.

LL: You heard our previous guest talk about some of these sites inciting people to violent actions, so why not try to tackle it with legislation?

CARA ZWIBEL: Well because I think that we've seen that there's a risk of capturing too much. There's a risk that when we try to deal with sites like this or with speech like this we may also end up capturing things that we don't want to capture and that there are opportunities both online and off for dialogue and debate and discussion and for counter speech for some of these harmful things. I mean I've always felt that I'd prefer to know. I'd like my racist where I can see them. I'd prefer to know that these are the views that someone espouses rather than trying to silence those views. And in many cases we've seen that the laws that are designed to try and take that kind of content down or to shut it down actually ends up you know amplifying its voice. We get prosecutions of individuals who then use the prosecution as a as a platform for freedom of expression, they make themselves martyrs on the because of free speech.

LL: Can you give me an example of what we don't want to capture in that net?

CARA ZWIBEL: Well I mean you know there are plenty of offensive things that the president of the United States says. But I'd like to know that he's saying them. I think it's important.

LL: But you suggest that a law might sweep up President Trumps tweets if it's worded broadly enough.

CARA ZWIBEL: I mean I think it's unlikely to do that. But if he wasn't the president the same kind of content that he's putting out there could very likely be captured. That's the other issue is that the way that these laws and filters might be applied will vary depending on sort of your audience and you know and the individual so I think it would be very difficult obviously for a company like Twitter to just shut down the president's account. But someone else who's tweeting the exact same kinds of things may very well be subject to that kind of censorship.

LL: Germany has recently introduced a law to combat hate speech that requires large social media companies to remove illegal content from their sites, in most cases within 24 hours or they face heavy fines. Supporters say it's necessary to curb the rampant growth of abusive hateful content. So what do you think of Germany's approach?

CARA ZWIBEL: You know I haven't had a chance to see how it's working in practice. I know it's relatively new. Certainly I think that social media companies do have some obligation to be mindful of what's going on their platforms and to be paying attention to where laws are being broken. But I also think that we have to realize that it's a very difficult determination to make when something has crossed over that legal line. We have courts that have looked at these issues in Canada that disagree with one another about when something falls over that line into promotion of hatred under the Criminal Code or under human rights codes prohibitions on hateful speech. So you know to ask a social media company within 24 hours make a determination about whether something is over the legal line I think that there's risks there and certainly if the failure to act is going to be associated with hefty fines we're going to likely see companies taking down more content rather than less, you know, erring on the side of caution. And again I think there are risks associated with removing some of that content and some of that discussion. I don't have an easy answer for this problem.

LL: But then let's come back and look at Canada's laws. You say the courts disagree. There's a high bar when the courts are dealing with hate speech. Are the laws actually doing much then to prevent the spread of online hate?

CARA ZWIBEL: Well I mean the laws are rarely used and that's you know a determination that's made I guess at sort of a political level. And I think it's probably the right decision to rarely use those provisions because every time you do use those provisions you open up the possibility first of all of striking the law down. So most people who are charged under these criminal provisions will bring a constitutional challenge and argue that you know their rights to free expression are being unreasonably restricted. Generally those arguments have failed before the courts but you still have the opportunity to the individual to make that argument. But I'm not sure that the laws are being used effectively but I'm not actually sure that there's an effective way to use them. I'm not sure that this is a legal problem.

LL: So when Barbara Perry argues that the Canadian Government should reinstate Section 13 of the Human Rights Act that dealt with online hate speech, you don't think it should be reinstated, I take it.

CARA ZWIBEL: No, I disagree. And I also take issue with the idea that it was you know done quickly with little thought. I mean the actual legislation that repealed it may have passed quickly but there was a significant amount of work that looked at Section 13. The Human Rights Commission did a study to look at the use of that provision and the recommendation from a very well respected academic named Richard Moon was that you know we should repeal this provision. It doesn't sit well with what Human Rights Tribunals generally do. They're generally charged with you know protecting people from discrimination and the way that hate speech laws need to be interpreted in order to protect freedom of expression is in this very narrow way. So you end up having a situation where you have groups coming to a tribunal who have been you know maligned and are the subject of very damaging statements and the tribunal says it’s bad, but it's not bad enough.

LL: OK. We have run out of time. I'm sure that this discussion will continue, but I thank you for your time today.

CARA ZWIBEL: Thank you.

LL: Cara Zwibel is the director of the Fundamental Freedoms Program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. She joined us from Toronto. The CBC News is next. Then, critics say that a new U.S. law aimed at fighting sex trafficking is actually endangering sex workers on both sides of the border. I'm Laura Lynch, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti. You're listening to The Current.

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Canadian sex worker says new U.S. trafficking laws are a risk to her safety

Guests: Elliot Harmon, Jelena Vermilion, Signy Arnason

LL: Hello, I'm Laura Lynch, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current.

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LL: Still to come, a populist wave has propelled right-wing leaders into political office around the globe in recent years. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán's re-election earlier this month is just the latest example. We'll ask what that means for press freedom in that country and whether there's a growing democracy recession around the world. But first a sweeping new law aimed at preventing sex trafficking.

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VOICE 1: She was only 16-years-old and just wanted to make friends. We now know that adult men found Desiree on social media, reached out to her, pressured her and used her to make money. She was preyed on and sold online by pimps who took advantage of her. Desiree didn't know what backpage.com was or the harm that would come from this website.

LL: That is Yvonne Ambrose testifying last September before a U.S. Senate Committee. She was speaking in favour of new legislation to fight online sex trafficking.

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VOICE 1: On December 23, 2016, a 32-year-old man by the name Antonio Rosales was looking through backpage.com for a child to have sex with. He knew backpage.com was the site to go to find underage girls to have sex with. During the search he came across the picture of my 16-year-old daughter, under the posting: “new girl in town looking to have fun,” which was posted by her pimp. Desiree was driven to Antonio’s with the intent of having sex with this man who was twice her age. This was the last night of my daughter's life

LL: Yvonne Ambrose's daughter Desiree was murdered in 2016. That website she mentioned, backpage.com, is now shut down, after its CEO pleaded guilty last week to several charges including facilitating prostitution. But it is websites such as Backpage that were the impetus for a controversial new law. On April 11th, President Donald Trump signed a bill package into law, called the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, known as FOSTA. The law means websites will be held liable in the U.S. for content related to sex-trafficking, such as ads. The law has broad bi-partisan support. But not everyone is celebrating it. Some sex workers, including here in Canada say the new law makes their consensual sex work more dangerous. And activists for internet freedom say it puts the net as we know it at risk. One of the guiding principles of the Internet is the "safe harbor" rule which declares that a website is not legally responsible for information on its platform that is provided by others. By targeting websites and service providers for the sex-trafficking activities of its users, FOSTA is creating a loophole that free speech advocates say can and will be misused. Elliot Harmon is an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. We reached him in San Francisco. Hello.

ELLIOT HARMON: Hi Laura. Thank you so much for having me.

LL: Why do you believe this law is the wrong solution in tackling sex trafficking?

ELLIOT HARMON: So the first thing that needs to be said from the beginning is that sex trafficking is a horrible problem and Congress should be applauded for trying to do something about it. Unfortunately there is a great risk with this kind of legislation of actually doing more harm than good. The approach that is essentially what's embodied in this law is not about fighting sex traffickers; it is about shifting more liability for trafficking and other activities to which we can get into web platforms, places online where we meet and gather with each other, under the idea that that will cause platforms themselves to reduce the amount of sex trafficking on the internet.

LL: I just want you to explain something, Yvonne Ambrose referred to backpage.com, what is that?

ELLIOT HARMON: Backpage.com has certainly been in the centre of lots of the discussion around FOSTA. It is a classified ad site where in my understanding a fair amount of advertising for sex work takes place which unfortunately has included victims of trafficking. There have been in the past year a lot of accusations about Backpage itself directly contributing to criminal activity. And the reason why this is very important is that under current law before Congress passed FOSTA the Department of Justice already has all of the ammunition it needs to stop a platform that is itself participating in criminal activity. And now we've seen with Backpage being seized by the FBI without the need for FOSTA.

LL: OK we'll get to that in a second. But then tell me about what this new law will do to backpage.com com? Use this as an example.

ELLIOT HARMON: What the law will do or I guess what I should say it is now doing since it's been signed is basically three things. One, it will expand existing federal criminal sex trafficking law to target online platforms where trafficking takes place. But this new law will expand the existing criminal provisions to target any platforms where trafficking takes place. And the way that it's worded is so broad that could actually include platforms that don't even know about trafficking activity is taking place.

LL: Can you give you some examples?

ELLIOT HARMON: Sure. Well the most striking example of the impact of this law has been Craigslist; very shortly after the law was passed completely taking down its personal ad site. And I think that's a pretty good example of the unintended consequences of FOSTA. There is this myth that it's very easy for a platform owner to remove one or two specific posts related to trafficking. In reality it's very, very, very difficult especially at scale. So what platforms will do especially for a smaller company like Craigslist is just shut out entire sites altogether. The effect that it's having on the internet isn't scalpel, it's a hammer.

LL: Well, OK then to play devil's advocate, wouldn't that be a good thing if it actually helped to get rid of sex trafficking?

ELLIOT HARMON: Here is the underlying problem. When platform owners’ kind of moderate discussion in their community it requires a really careful balance of what posts you allow versus what ones you moderate. It is complicated art. When you shift substantially more liability to the platform which is what this law is doing, they cannot moderate with precision. They have to become much more restrictive in what they allow and when that happens, when platforms clamp down on legitimate speech, everyone is not silenced equally. The people who are most likely to be censored under this law are people who are marginalized in other aspects of society too. And unfortunately the people who are most likely to be silenced are trafficking victims themselves.

LL: How so?

ELLIOT HARMON: So let's imagine for a second, not to get too graphic on the radio, but if you were running some kind of web platform, some kind of general interest discussion board, and you needed to put some restrictions in place to make sure that no advertisements for sex trafficking were possibly happening on your platform. Again not to get too graphic but you can think about the certain phrases, certain key words that you would probably program your filters to restrict. Here's the problem when platforms over rely on this kind of automated filters without appropriate human review is that let's say a trafficking victim going online trying to get help or trying to tell her story would likely use those same words and phrases that you've programmed to trigger somebody being silenced.

LL: Does that happen?

ELLIOT HARMON: This happens a lot. And I've talked quite a bit with experts in trafficking who indeed say that these websites where sex work takes place are often the best hope that trafficking victims ever have of being found by law enforcement or by NGOs that can help them. Congress has taken away one of the best chances that some of these people have of ever being found.

LL: And I gather another concern of yours beyond this is that it may open the gates toward other kinds of attempts to limit online expression.

ELLIOT HARMON: Yeah we're very concerned about a number of ways that SESTA could be just the first stepping stone to a much more restrictive internet.

LL: Elliot Harmon, thank you for your time.

ELLIOT HARMON: Thank you Laura.

LL: Elliot Harmon is an activist and writer with the Electronic Freedom Foundation. He is in San Francisco. FOSTA is a U.S. law, but its ripples are spreading across the border. Jelena Vermilion is an Ontario-based sex worker. She is with me in Toronto. Hello.

JELENA VERMILION: Hi Laura. Thanks for having me.

LL: This law just took effect last week. Is it already affecting your work?

JELENA VERMILION: Absolutely. I'm a part of many private Facebook groups that connect sex workers from across the globe. And the sort of general discussion between us is that we've all seen a reduction in the amount of inquiries we've been receiving for business. And it's really affected personally for example since Backpage went down on April 8th when it was seized by the FBI I haven't received many inquiries. It's definitely been a fluctuation. I have had to post other advertisements on additional websites but they've been sort of hit or miss because of course this transitory period is proving to be tumultuous.

LL: Can you explain to me why sites like Backpage are important for you?

JELENA VERMILION: Absolutely. So it gives us the ability and autonomy to screen our clients. It gives us a filter, if you will, between meeting a client and deciding whether that's safe for us. So if I put up an advertisement and I have a dialogue that I start with a prospective client I can screen based on my interaction and correspondence with that person. The grammar they use, the language they use, their ability or willingness to respond to instruction - just simple human psychology. It's a really good tool for sex workers to have to be able to vet their clients. It's a real big safety issue. At this point being able to vet our clients as possible from other websites, but the reason why such a large impact is because Backpage was used very largely and it was the site; it has been known as the site not only by people who traffic in people for sex work but also people who work consensually engaging in sex work.

LL: Was it a failsafe thing for you? Did it always protect you?

JELENA VERMILION: I have not experienced violence as a sex worker of over five years working full time. I do have to say that part of it is my own personal degree of privilege. I am a person who is able to say no, who has the ability to say no to work if I feel like the safety isn't there, whereas not all workers can and especially with the lack of vetting possible now it's going to be even more difficult for people to vet their clients.

LL: If you don't have an ability to vet, what other options do you have?

JELENA VERMILION: Taking risks, that is the other option, frankly. I have very explicitly heard or rather read workers in the Facebook groups that I mentioned earlier seeking advice on how to more safely walk the streets because they're now considering walking the streets.

LL: OK. So this law doesn't yet apply in Canada, isn't it possible that Canadian platforms will step into the void left by back page?

JELENA VERMILION: It is. [Unintelligible] is currently trying to sort of replace the Canadian market that Backpage once had. It's also worth being said that even though it is an American law there's two pieces of legislation that are pertinent to this issue. So it's actually the Cloud Act which is the clarifying lawful overseas use of data which actually gives the United States rights to all websites regardless of where they're hosted and even if you're not American. So this in conjunction with FOSTA-SESTA really damns sex workers and people trying to advertise online because they can be essentially liable to become a felon for advertising their own personal services for survival.

LL: You're saying it could reach across the border?

JELENA VERMILION: It can if I could explain. So the history of the narrative around trafficking and smuggling; first of all we have to refer to the Palermo Convention which was signed in 2000. It distinguished between the smuggling of migrants and the trafficking of people because trafficking itself is a term that's kind of colloquially used too loosely, trafficking refers to any industry in which a person is trafficked and sex work is just one of those industries. People have wages withheld in the agriculture industry and the textile industry for example. But the Palermo Convention it did not define in the wording the terms of sexual exploitation which is why individual countries can legislate the purchasing or sale of sexual services individually. However because this law FOSTA-SESTA is federal it really does affects people because of the website being based in the U.S. and also the Cloud Act effects any “.com” website, any website ending in “.com” now is under U.S. jurisdiction. It can leave the users criminally or civilly liable and it just makes it that much more like dangerous for sex workers to seek safety.

LL: It seems that the goal of this legislation was well-intentioned.

JELENA VERMILION: Absolutely.

LL: It was to protect sex trafficking victims. Do you think the law would keep anyone safer?

JELENA VERMILION: I think practically it will protect less people than it will harm. So for example we've talked earlier about Craigslist which is I'd say less formal Backpage if you will — more seedy. A study in September of 2017 by the University of West Virginia and Baylor University concluded that the overall homicide rates for female victims fell by 17 per cent after Craigslist erotic services section was introduced.

LL: What should be done then to curtail sex trafficking and keep consensual sex workers safe?

JELENA VERMILION: I think that having an infrastructure like Backpage or a website like Backpage that is monitored more federally might be sort of a compromise. But of course you'll have people, libertarians I'm sure speaking about you know that not having the government moderate our public forums. So I'm not saying I advocate for that. I don't know what the solution is frankly. But I know that as a sex worker for the last five years I have been able to seek safety from Backpage. It has helped me. It's been the main source of my income for the last five years. I have been able to maintain my safety as a result of using the website.

LL: OK, so back page just shut down, this new law comes in, how worried are you now about yourself going forward?

JELENA VERMILION: I'm quite worried. My longevity is in question. I'm a special individual because I have had a wide variety of experience in the industry. I've done pornography. I've done fashion modeling. I've done you know press media. And I'm concerned. I have immediately advertised on other websites. I've immediately updated my site and my e-mail in order to adhere to the new laws and privacy concerns. And I am worried how moving forward I will be able to maintain the influx, the income in order to keep myself afloat as a Trans woman.

LL: Thank you very much for coming in.

JELENA VERMILION: Thank you for having me, Laura.

LL: Jalena Vermilion is an Ontario based sex worker. She was in our Toronto studio. The Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act does have supporters in Canada too. Signy Arnason is the Associate Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. She is in Winnipeg. Hello.

SIGNY ARNASON: Hi.

LL: Why do you support this law?

SIGNY ARNASON: Well I think for us you know our focus are on children and youth and we know that you know through both the U.S. hotline, the cyber tip line there, as well as cybertip.ca which we operate as Canada's national tip line as well as in speaking with police both within Canada and the United States, and they're quoted numerous times talking about Backpage being the number one site used by traffickers to exploit their victims and often many of those are under age. And you know it was enormously problematic, it was in your face, and you know the normalization of the sexual access to children in youth was hugely problematic. So we certainly support the shutdown of Backpage.

LL: But that doesn't have anything to do with this law that was an FBI shut down of a website. Why do you think this law will help?

SIGNY ARNASON: Well I'm not an expert on the law. The intention was to talk about why having something like this platform and there have been others as was mentioned earlier Craigslist had to make a switch to what they were doing because we used to see reports coming in from that site as well. But you know when you have these classified advertisement sites positioning children and youth and we know that many of them are on there and it's enormously problematic then we have to be addressing that because we're sending the wrong message that children are accessible and sexually available.

LL: How big is the problem of online sex trafficking in Canada?

SIGNY ARNASON: Well you know we know that police spend a lot of time addressing this particular area. We know that Backpage it was the number one place where they would harvest leads and address this issue. In terms of our tip line you know we've received 1,700 confirmed reports — that's over 10 years. But we also intersect on the other side of this issue and it's all interconnected. You know 95 per cent of what we get into cybertip.ca deals with child sexual abuse imagery and videos and we know that you know children and youth involved in human trafficking are also while being abused they're also recorded and that is shared online. So the problem is enormous. You know we're getting 10,000 reports a month coming in from Canadians. And you know it's steadily increasing so the online sexual exploitation of children which includes child trafficking is a huge issue.

LL: Now you heard Jalena Vermilion speak before you about the negative effects of the law. How do you respond to what she had to say?

SIGNY ARNASON: Well she's coming at it from an adult lens. I mean she mentioned in order to protect yourself she has the ability to say no, well children and you don't have the ability to say no. If you look at it there was a 2013 report on human trafficking that came out from Nunavut called the Nunavut Report and in there they referenced that the majority of survivors of human trafficking were introduced into the sex trade between the ages of 13 to 16. You know that's not OK. And you've got you know youths whose brains aren't fully developed, they're being totally vulnerable, they're being manipulated, and introduced into this world that they may end up staying in as an adult. But they were coerced and you know exploited when they were introduced into this you know as a child. So we have to be concerned about that.

LL: But let's just talk about a couple of the other things that we've heard so far that Jalena also points out that sex workers are now talking about going back out onto the streets if they can't use these websites to be able to check out their clients. Do the benefits outweigh the dangers she says sex workers will face?

SIGNY ARNASON: Well someone's going to fill this gap. There's no question in my mind. There's going to be someone coming in behind and filling what may end up being a void for sex workers. But the problem is that Backstage was not just about that. They were also about trafficking children and youth which is illegal. So they're making money off of that and that needs to be shut down and addressed. So you know there can be mechanisms and ways by which you can keep sex workers safer but when you've got something as well-known, as overt as Backpage profiting and making money off of what we know involved many children and youth in human trafficking you know the site needed to be shut down. So there's no question in my mind that someone is going to fill that void.

LL: What do you mean someone's going to fill that void? I don't quite understand.

SIGNY ARNASON: Someone's going to come in and set up a site that's going to allow for sex workers to know be able to communicate online versus having to walk out onto the streets.

LL: I guess that's the central thing that we're discussing here is whether this new law is going to prevent these kinds of websites from even operating. But there is another point that I want to raise from our first interview is that there are concerns that actually law enforcement was able to do a good job of going after those who traffic children in sex because of these very websites and now they won't be there anymore, what do you say?

SIGNY ARNASON: Well I go back to the idea that we are completely normalizing the idea that youth are sexually available. And I think law enforcement is, and they've said it in numerous interviews, they're more than capable of dealing with other platforms. They have to manage the dark web. If they can manage the dark web, they can manage to shut down of Backpage. So they are completely sophisticated and more than capable of managing the transition to something else in another area. When you have something as overt that deals with the sale of children and youth it needs to be addressed.

LL: Ms. Arnason, thank you.

SIGNY ARNASON: Thanks for having me.

LL: Signy Arnason is the Associate Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. She was in Winnipeg. Coming up in our next half hour we talk to a journalist about the state of press freedom in strongman Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. I'll give you a hint: it's not good. I'm Laura Lynch, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti. You're listening to The Current.

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How right-wing populist leaders are eroding democracy: author

Guests: Andras Petho, Daniel Ziblatt

LL: I'm Laura Lynch, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current.

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VOICE 1: Budapest waking up on Monday to a more powerful government with even bolder anti-immigrant, anti-EU ambitions. Hungary's right-wing strongman Viktor Orbán has won a third straight term, an overwhelming majority, and the power to change constitutional laws. The result could deepen divisions within the EU and for the country's liberals it may signal a crushing four years ahead. Top of Orbán’s agenda, a move to ban NGOs that support migration, particularly those backed by U.S. financier George Soros.

LL: That was Reuters on April 9th, reporting on the election of Viktor Orbán to his third term as Hungary's prime minister. Civil libertarians in Hungary say the strong majority Mr. Orbán and his Fidesz party received will mean a deepening assault on immigrants, the political opposition, and the media. This past Sunday, tens of thousands protested against Viktor Orbán's government in Budapest. Investigative journalist Andras Petho has been digging into Viktor Orbán's politics and finances. He is the founder of the website Direkt36.hu. Earlier this month he was accused of being one of 200 "Soros mercenaries," called for their alleged association with Orbán's public enemy number one: global philanthropist and political activist George Soros. Andras Petho joins me from Budapest, Hungary. Hello.

ANDRAS PETHO: Hello.

LL: Can you start by telling me a little bit about direkt36.hu? What does it do?

ANDRAS PETHO: Yes. Direkt36 has been around for three years, a little bit more than three years, and we are an investigative reporting organization, we are a non-profit, and what we do is that we dig deep into political corruption stories or you know abuses of power in general.

LL: And so does that mean that you have written directly about corruption in Viktor Orbán's government?

ANDRAS PETHO: Yes. Yes we've covered quite extensively how people close to Mr. Orbán, including his family members have been benefiting from state projects, from public money, often projects funded by the European Union which is you know a frequent target of Mr. Orbán's attacks.

LL: Now we've heard about the Hungarian government's animosity toward the American financier George Soros. Why has George Soros become the club that's wielded by the government against its perceived enemies?

ANDRAS PETHO: Well that's a good question. I think for that you need to understand a little bit more Mr. Orbán and his approach to politics. I mean he's a kind of a warrior type of politician. He's always in action and, you know, he's been part of Hungary in Hungary's politics since the regime change so nearly three decades. And so he built his whole story on the notion that Hungary is under attack and he's the only one who can defend it. And you know the enemies changed all the time. You know sometimes he was defending the country against the communists, and then you know it was Brussels, and then the IMF, and now it's George Soros. And you know certainly you know the values that Mr. Orbán is promoting are quiet different from the way that Mr. Soros and his foundation is promoting. I think it's also probably that you know he's a good target. He doesn't live here in Hungary. He doesn't really you know contrary to the government's attacks.

LL: What threat does George Soros represent according to Viktor Orbán?

ANDRAS PETHO: Well the government is saying that and this has become their main message ever since the migration crisis in 2015 that George Soros and his organizations are promoting migration and so that's why that's why it needs to be stopped. That's the government's version.

LL: Even though as you say Soros doesn't live there he does fund a university there and he's been accused by other regimes in the past of funding revolution as in Ukraine. So this isn't the first time that he's been held up as a symbol of a threat. But can you tell me what about the relationship between the Hungarian weekly Figyelo and the government of Viktor Orbán?

ANDRAS PETHO: Figyelo was bought by a businesswoman and historian a little bit more than a year ago who is quite close to the government. He's openly supporting the government and she used to be a close adviser to the prime minister. This has become a pattern in Hungary you know that the government is not controlling most of the media directly but through you know business people close to the government.

LL: So you have your name published in this magazine in a list of what are called Soros mercenaries operating in Hungary. What did you think when you saw that?

ANDRAS PETHO: It was a strange feeling. I mean of course it's not nice to see this happening. At the same time it wasn't that unexpected, that's surprising. I mean this was a kind of natural outcome of the rhetoric of the campaign, you know the government. And Mr. Orbán was talking about these so-called Soros mercenaries the run up to the election and so I think it was just a matter of time when you know somebody came up with some names, actual names.

LL: But there is a relationship between Direkt36.hu and Soros, correct?

ANDRAS PETHO: Yes. Yes. You know like every conspiracy theory; I mean it also had some element of truth. I mean but this was not a secret. Direkt36.hu is a proud recipient of grants from the Open Society Foundations.

LL: Which are run by George Soros, yes?

ANDRAS PETHO: Yes. Yes, which was founded by George Soros. But we also received grants from other foundations and actually most of our revenue is coming from our own readers, partly crowd funded organization, we have received support from thousands of Hungarians who are living here.

LL: So are you George Soros mercenary?

ANDRAS PETHO: I don't think so. But yeah it's just ridiculous.

LL: In light of the political atmosphere in Hungary, what does it mean to the safety of people who are being named as these agents for George Soros?

ANDRAS PETHO: Personally I and my colleagues haven't received any threats or verbal threats but I know that other organizations who have also been targeted by the government and government controlled media, you know, sometimes they get phone calls from people who are calling them traitors or sometimes they get phone calls from people who want to get the phone number of George Soros. So there are some bizarre situations.

LL: Does what's happened here with the naming as a mercenary; it seems to sort of put you in the crosshairs of this government, does it change anything about the way Direkt36.hu will investigate Viktor Orbán and his government?

ANDRAS PETHO: No, in fact we decided to respond to these so-called list in a low key manner. And you know I think the best response that we can do is to you know to continue our job and you know to demonstrate to the public that what we are doing is in the public interest. Investigative journalism is about holding powerful people and organizations to account and that's what we are doing and I think that's why we became you know one of the targets of this campaign. So I think the best response is to keep doing what we are doing.

LL: I thank you for your time sir.

ANDRAS PETHO: Thank you for having me.

LL: Andras Petho is a Hungarian investigative journalist and cofounder of the website Direkt36.hu. We reached him in Budapest. We contacted the Hungarian embassy in Ottawa to ask about press freedom in the country. We were told the new Hungarian government has not yet entered office, and were referred to earlier statements by the government on press freedom. Last month, a spokesperson said he reserved the right to decide who he regarded as a journalist because, in his view, some journalists are just activists exercising a journalistic activity. The re-election of Viktor Orbán was greeted with joy in right-wing circles and despair by progressive and moderate Hungarians. Yet Hungary is not an anomaly. When you look at the political landscape around the globe, right-wing populists lead everywhere from the Philippines to Italy, from Russia to the United States. In his speech to the French National Assembly in Paris yesterday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke about economic uncertainty, stagnant incomes — and the pernicious anxiety that can lead to political polarization.

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LL: In too many countries, populism is spreading and democracy is eroding, symptoms of a malaise that afflicts our integrated world, Trudeau said. Daniel Ziblatt has studied the rise of anti-Democratic forces around the globe. He is a professor of government at Harvard, and co-author with Steven Levitsky of the new book, How Democracies Die. We reached Daniel Ziblatt in Boston. Hello.

DANIEL ZIBLATT: Hey there, nice to talk to you.

LL: How has Viktor Orbán’s political philosophy changed since he entered politics?

DANIEL ZIBLATT: Well he's a fascinating case because he's somebody who came on the scene really in the dying days of the communist era in the early 1990s as a liberal dissident and actually went to Oxford with a scholarship from George Soros and started really as a liberal dissident, founded of a political party in the mid-90s, sort of briefly became a Christian Democrat sort of in the West European world, and then kept pushing further and further to the right. He was briefly prime minister in the late 1990s, voted out of office, and then when he came back in to office in 2010 after the financial crisis he had pushed much further to the right taking on many of the kind of ideological characteristics that we see with him today.

LL: How do you identify politicians who do start out being not overtly authoritarian but become so over time?

DANIEL ZIBLATT: You know it's a tricky issue. In our book how democracies die we identify a litmus test a set of characteristics to kind of warning signs of politicians before they come into office show clear anti-democratic tendencies. So if they go after the media, if they accuse their rivals of being enemies, if they condone violence, these sorts of things. In many cases it's quite easy to in fact identify political views ahead of time. In the case of Viktor Orbán it's a little trickier because he began as a liberal. So our litmus test is not a perfect test, I mean it doesn't identify everybody before they get into office.

LL: Those warning signs were very public with Viktor Orbán and yet he won the vote anyway. So how do you explain that?

DANIEL ZIBLATT: Yes well once he's been in office clearly he's violating these criteria. Yeah I know this is the grave dilemma of our era. You know throughout the Cold War the way authoritarians came into power is through military coups. Three quarters of democracies died during the Cold War at the hands of men with guns. Since the collapse of communism the way authoritarians come to power is through elections and so it's a real dilemma. On the one hand there's certainly a mantle of legitimacy when somebody comes to power elected by publics but then you know that doesn't necessarily make them democratic if in turn once in office they attack and go after Democratic institutions.

LL: Right. But as I said he's winning anyway despite all of that. How does his right-wing philosophy play into those kinds of authoritarian populist movements we see rising around the globe?

DANIEL ZIBLATT: One thing I should say is that the 2018 elections there's been accusations by election observers of violations of basic procedures. So that helped him win. Before the 2014 election, election districts redrawn and gerrymandered in a way so that it made it easier for him to retain office so these elections have not been entirely free and fair and have been tilted in his favour so that's just one thing worth saying. More broadly though to your point about how this feeds into the kind of global trends that we're seeing, I mean one of the interesting things about Orbán as well is that he's very explicitly articulated a vision of what he calls illiberal democracy. 2014 he gave a speech in front of a group of students in Hungary in which he said “to be a democracy does not necessarily mean you have to be a liberal democracy.” And so he's tried to carve out a niche for himself and his regime type that's been emulated in Poland, to some degree in Czech Republic, and other parts of the world where the features of democracy are embraced, namely the will of the people, the majority, but other features of democracy, namely respect for pluralism, respect for diverse views, respect for civil society, rights for minorities, these have been not emphasized to the same degree. So he's carving out a niche, and this suggests a kind of new set of challenges for the system.

LL: So is the world undergoing a democracy recession?

DANIEL ZIBLATT: Well it's interesting my co-author Steve Levitsky wrote an article years ago called The Myth of Democratic recession and I think he still stands by that. And that's based on very careful research. If we look you know certainly democracies are more challenged today than they have been in the media post-Cold War era when democracy was the only game in town. But according to you know various organizations, Freedom House, different organizations that count the number of democracies in the world, the number of democracies in the world you know exploded after the early 1990s, continue to rise, and then in the mid-2000s basically began to flat line; meaning some democracies are dying, some democracies are coming to existence and enduring, but we’re certainly not in an era where democracy is growing around the world. I should say however that the election of Donald Trump in the United States has maybe changed this to some degree. You know the United States and other Western countries as well have often been advocates of democracy around the world since the 1970s. And the Trump administration is pretty indifferent to this. And so you know the international environment certainly has changed. I think going forward it's certainly clear that we really run the risk of Democratic recession.

LL: Tell me about how that affects your own country then, the United States.

DANIEL ZIBLATT: You know we have similar dynamics that work. The U.S. is certainly a much older democracy than many of the countries that have faced similar threats of Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Philippines, the countries you mentioned at the outset, so there's a lot more room for confidence that there's avenues for the opposition to organize and to win elections. But certainly the U.S. is suddenly facing and many people view that the current administration is using a lot of the same strategies that Viktor Orbán has used while in office; trying to capture the referees the law enforcement institutions of the state, sidelining being very critical of opposition media, and potentially attempting to kind of tilt the playing field through electoral reforms. There's been some talks of that haven’t gone very far. Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser, regards Viktor Orbán as a great hero. He's been quoted as saying he's a great hero. So you know there are these links. Again I think American democracy is much more stable, much older, so you know I don't think tyrannies around the corner. But all of this has made Americans, I think it should, make Americans more alert and realize they can't take democracy for granted.

LL: But in the United States that you would have a man like Henry Ford who was a well-known anti Semite multimillionaire who toyed with the idea of running for president and that he existed but he didn't win elected office, how have American politics changed since those days to make things riskier now in your view?

DANIEL ZIBLATT: Yeah there's a tendency and a mistaken tendency to think that there was some golden age of American democracy now we've abandoned that. The truth of the matter is there have always been figures on the political landscape; Henry Ford you mention, Joe McCarthy, Huey Long who was governor of Louisiana who had clear authoritarian tendencies, George Wallace who was a segregationist governor from the south who sounded very much like Donald Trump on the campaign trail. These figures though you know were very popular. Public opinion polls showed them sort of garnering around 35 per cent support throughout the 20th century. But these guys all stayed very far from office. We never had one of these figures at the top of a major political party. And what changed we argue in our book is essentially part of it is how we select our presidential candidates has changed. You know the shift to a primary based system where before the general election voters select their own party's candidates has made it easier, has lowered the threshold for demagogues to get into the top position, and that reform came in the early 70s. You know of course the U.S. has continued to withstand… you know there haven't been demagogues leading party until 2016 so something really changed in 2016. And I think there are lots of factors that go into this but a big part of the story has to do with the inability of Republican Party establishment leaders to distance themselves from candidate Trump. And you know many have essentially although despising him and not liking him, including Republican voters; one out of four Republican voters in the presidential election thought that Donald Trump was not fit to serve as president yet they still voted. So something has really changed.

LL: I want to play you a bit of President Trump's speech at the CPAC convention in Washington in February 2017.

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VOICE 1: Never underestimate the people. Never. I don't think it will ever happen again. And I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. It's fake — phony, fake. [Applause.] A few days ago, I called the fake news “the enemy of the people” — and they are. They are the enemy of the people.

LL: What does it mean for democracy when a leader starts calling parts of society, in this case the media, the enemy of the people?

DANIEL ZIBLATT: It's frightening. You know especially in the United States a very old democracy where this is really entirely unprecedented. You know going back…You know a lot of people say that's just words, this is just hot rhetoric. You know similarly when President Trump and candidate Trump said you know there's election fraud is rampant in the United States, elections are totally rigged, there’s no empirical basis for this among my political scientist colleagues who studied this. So this is just rhetoric some people might say. But we make the case in our book you know that really words do matter because if you look at public opinion among Republicans attitudes towards the press and attitudes towards elections they've transformed in the last two years precisely as candidate and president Trump has used these words. And so you know significant percentages of Americans or of Republicans now think that elections are rigged when in fact there's no evidence of this. And this comes in large part from somebody in a powerful position like President Trump saying that elections are rigged, similarly when somebody says the media are the enemy of the people, the media are just making up stories, significant portions according to Pew surveys show that significant portions of Republicans now you know we're talking 40, 50 per cent of Republicans say that the media are making up stories about President Trump. And so if have large segments of the population in any democracy basically accepting these two key critical pillars of democracy media and elections are basically illegitimate it's hard to imagine sustaining a democracy in that context. So that makes us very wary.

LL: And Trump and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán have something in common in targeting the press. Why do they want to target the press?

DANIEL ZIBLATT: Yeah. You know a lot of people talk about a kind of authoritarian playbook. There is no authoritarian playbook as far as I know. But what's certainly true is that people are you know they're emulating each other but I think when you have a political leader in any part of the world who's not fully committed to democratic norms, norms are a kind of form of constraint instead of unwritten rules, not committed to democratic norms. When confronting people who are critical of them it's hard to contain yourself. It's certainly tempting to try to tilt the playing field, to go after the opposition, to try to capture the referees of the political system. The problem is that those tactics are exactly the thing that lead to a kind of escalating politics that ultimately lead to a slow democratic decay.

LL: You propose a solution in your book to those who might be concerned particularly with what's happening in the United States to try to prevent a deficit and democracy there. Can you briefly tell me what you are suggesting?

DANIEL ZIBLATT: Yes in the last chapter of our book we proposed a set of solutions. We begin by diagnosing the problems and then we think underlying many of our problems in the United States and in other countries as well facing similar challenges is exactly as Prime Minister Trudeau mentioned high levels of polarization. The sources of polarization in different countries vary, but the root causes after a polarization each side views each other as. And so we proposed a set of ideas for how to address polarization. Some of these include you know the Republican Party itself needs to be transformed. The Republican Party is a kind of highly homogeneous political party, continues to be a very diverse multi-ethnic American society, that's one thing. Second point is you know what Democratic Party politicians and voters do. And we argued that they need to resist the temptation to fight like Republicans. There's a lot of talk among Democrats you know we need to emulate the strategies Republicans in order to prevent being taken advantage of. We argue in our book that’s really the mistaken strategy that you know in certain conditions certainly necessary to fight hard, but we think Democrats and all citizens of politicians need to fight in ways that reinforce democratic norms rather than undermining.

LL: We've got about 30 seconds left. Given the polarization in the United States right now, how much confidence do you have that those gaps can be bridged in the name of reviving democracy?

DANIEL ZIBLATT: Yeah I mean again I think you know we began this conversation talking about Hungary and I think the United States is certainly a much stronger position. I mean there are these kind of echoes. The U.S. you know has a robust civil society, a robust Democratic Party opposition, and so I think if people begin to learn that much more is at stake, you know, that there's a lot to potentially lose, then you know we only hope and we encourage and that's one of the purposes of writing the book is to show that you know we can't take democracy for granted. It's necessary for citizens. But certainly a lot hinges on elections.

LL: We will leave it there. Thank you very much, Daniel Ziblatt.

DANIEL ZIBLATT: Yeah, thank you very much.

LL: Daniel Ziblatt is the co-author, along with Steven Levitsky, of the new book, How Democracies Die. We reached him in Newton, Massachusetts. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. Guest host Ali Hassan speaks with Canadian actor Cynthia Dale about her new role in the musical, Fun Home. She also discusses her long run on Street Legal, a show that's getting ready for a TV reboot. I can't wait. Years ago I was an extra on that show. If you look at the past archive you can see me in the background there. And remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. Use it to browse through past episodes of our show, search for stories you missed or hear the day's top stories right from your smartphone or tablet. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. We opened the program today talking about the influence hate speech online may have had on Alexandre Bissonnette, the convicted murderer who killed six people at a Quebec City mosque last year. Aymen Derbali survived the attack, but just barely, and he testified earlier this week at Alexandre Bissonnette's sentence hearing. We'll leave you with an excerpt from The Current's documentary: It was a Sunday. This is Aymen Derbali describing the attack to producer Susana Ferreira. I'm Laura Lynch, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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AYMEN DERBALI: I didn't think it was an attack.

SUSANA FERREIRA: Until he looked over and he saw a man to his left.

AYMEN DERBALI: But I didn't see his gun.

SUSANA FERREIRA: The man had his back turned to him, and he started firing shots.

AYMEN DERBALI: He fired twice at the roof.

SUSANA FERREIRA: And this is when something in Aymen clicked into place. Something was very wrong and he needed to do something.

AYMEN DERBALI: I was surprised. I decided at that moment.

SUSANA FERREIRA: Let me catch his attention. So the mosque itself—the men's prayer room is a large open area. But there are pillars.

AYMEN DERBALI: I decided to jump to the next pillar to be in his vision and to try to distract him.

SUSANA FERREIRA: And he started to lunge at him, to act as though he was going to attack him, to really capture this man's attention.

AYMEN DERBALI: Because all the people, they're in front of him.

SUSANA FERREIRA: Aymen told me that he looked in his eyes and he could see that he was nervous.

AYMEN DERBALI: He saw me and he decided to fire.

SUSANA FERREIRA: Aymen got shot. He got shot.

AYMEN DERBALI: In my leg, the other one in my chin and two bullets in my abdomen. Yes, in my abdomen.

SUSANA FERREIRA: He fell down and he started to black out.

AYMEN DERBALI: I was unconscious. Some brothers who were still there didn't escape. They told that he fired me on the ground. Fired me like three times to be sure that I am dead.

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