Things are continuing to deteriorate in Europe. Now, MEPs are lashing out at their citizens, blasting them as “fake” activism.
Things are getting ugly over the debate surrounding Europe’s copyright directive. We’ve been following this debate for a considerable amount of time now.
Just last week, we saw rumblings that the copyright directive is was going to be finalized in days. This is thanks to Germany caving on their opposition to the legislation much to the outrage of German citizens and the business community.
Right on cue, days later, an announcement was made that said that the copyright directive has been finalized. Within hours of the finalization, digital rights organizations slammed the legislation as the worst version yet.
Two days after the legislation was finalized, European’s flooded the streets to protest the laws. With many more mass demonstrations planned, these efforts to express disapproval for the laws did not go unnoticed by lawmakers.
We’re learning that lawmakers have now lashed out, attacking European’s for having the audacity to disapprove of the laws. In a post made on Medium (Warning: reg walled) titled “The Copyright Directive: how the mob was told to save the dragon and slay the knight”, lawmakers accused European’s of running “misinformation campaigns” and being part of a disturbing “political culture”.
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“The ability of some of the platforms to carry out campaigns [against the legislation] is a good thing,” Karim said. “But the way some of these have been carried out really has been against the grain of how a democratic society should function.”
Individual staff members had been targeted, he said, by “elements that have misled the public about what we’re trying to achieve, and we’re sure will mislead the public as to what we have actually achieved. It strengthens our resolve to make sure we don’t allow European citizens to fall victim to that sort of misinformation.”
Axel Voss, the MEP who steered the measure through the trilogue process, echoed concerns about campaigns against the changes.
“There’s a great deal of misinformation floating around: the idea [the copyright directive] is going to damage the internet, restrict the internet, that the internet will no longer be the same – none of that is true or relevant.”
The idea that anyone but large platforms would be affected by one of the proposals, Article 13, was “absolute twaddle”, he added.
With comments like that, it is definitely evident that there is no interest in compromise or reaching out to citizens to gauge how to move forward from here. Instead, leaders have decided that, rather than offer messages of unity, they have opted to attack any and all political opponents – a situation American’s are all to familiar with at the moment.
Already, European’s have posted pictures on social media showing off the protests. As we noted, a lot of people are sarcastically saying how everyone who are showing up are bots who obviously don’t exist. Others even joked about how high the re-spawn rate is. Already, there is negative feelings directed at politicians. Now that European politician’s have launched an attack on European citizens for daring to question the legislation, it’s likely that things are going to get even uglier.
As it stands now, the attack by politicians reinforced the idea that politicians are against the interests of their own citizens, so the rift between the two sides is only going to widen. We’ll keep monitoring the situation for developments as they arise.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
