The president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, announced a set of measures aimed at countering the spread of hate, terrorism and fascist expressions in the country:
“We in the National Assembly and in response to the request that you – President Nicolás Maduro – have made, have decided to suspend the parliamentary recess that would begin on August 15, we are going to dedicate ourselves to the task in this session period during the parliamentary recess to approve a package of laws that you have requested, in order to be able to care for and defend our population from hatred, from expressions of social hatred, from terrorism and from the spread of fascist ideas and ideas of hate on social networks”, he detailed.
In this regard, one of the key measures proposed is the discussion in second instance of the Law of Supervision, Action and Financing of Non-Governmental Organizations and Non-Profit Social Organizations “which are regulated in almost all parts of the world, but not in Venezuela,” he said.
He explained that “there are non-governmental organizations, such as the Red Cross, that function by providing a service to people, but there are many non-governmental organizations that are the front for the financing of terrorist actions and actions such as those of the so-called commandos.”
Making a parenthesis in his exposition, Rodriguez denounced that “Julio Borges has spoken from a platform, saying that it was necessary to rearm the commanditos and that to finance these commanditos they already had approved money from the agency. Which agency? The United States Agency for International Development called USAID, which is the main financier of the Carter Center.”
Rodríguez also reported that the Law Against Fascism, Neofascism and Similar Expressions will be addressed in the second instance, with the purpose of actively combating these currents that represent a threat to social cohesion in Venezuela.
Likewise, he stated that “the Law Against Hate will be reviewed to incorporate the elements related to the sowing of hatred in social networks. And I believe, President –Nicolás Maduro-, and I leave it for discussion, that Venezuela needs to regulate the operation of social networks. We are not the pioneers in this matter. More than 70 countries, almost 40% of the countries approved by the United Nations, have regulated the operation of social networks.”
With this premise, he presented an example of countries that have carried out actions to put social networks under regulation:
“The European Union began to discuss in 2019 and there are already laws and regulations that in some way regulate the operation of these entities. France started in 2018. Great Britain made a draft regulation of social networks in 2020 that forced impartiality in political issues. France has required since 2018 that social networks be regulated when electoral campaigns occur. Ireland fined Twitter in 2020 because it was involved in a political campaign and at that time the fascist Elon Musk was not the owner of Twitter. It is now where the use of this social network to attack countries and to attack governments has been most exacerbated. In the United States, the state of New York, the state of Arkansas, the state of Florida have also regulated social networks,” he stressed.
Given this, he indicated the importance of defending the people and especially children “who are now being subjected to an infection of hate by social networks,” he stressed, taking as an example when in the 1950s women were manipulated into consuming cigarettes.
“In the 1950s, they managed to force women who did not smoke to start smoking after World War II, and they succeeded, and millions of women died of lung cancer and breast cancer as a result of this propaganda in favor of cigarette consumption by women. What will happen in the future of these Venezuelan girls and boys who are infected by this hatred?” argued Rodríguez.
