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May 10, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Late on Friday, the United States announced its endorsement of the “Christchurch Call to Action to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online,” which “commits” governments and tech companies to taking measures to prevent and suppress “the upload of violent extremist content.”

“The Biden administration’s actions are disturbing at best,” Dan Gainor, Vice President of Free Speech America at the Media Research Center, told LifeSiteNews. “We recently found out that the Postal Service is monitoring what we say online. And the administration is trying to hire contractors to do even more domestic spying. Now, they will have the power of this phony, non-treaty to pretend their actions have some legitimacy.”

The Christchurch agreement was created in response to terrorist attacks in 2019 against two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, which were livestreamed online and went viral. The “call to action” was adopted during a Paris meeting by countries Canada, Indonesia, Ireland, Jordan, Norway, Senegal, the UK, and the European Commission, and tech companies Amazon, Facebook, Dailymotion, Google, Microsoft, Qwant, Twitter, and YouTube, according to a New Zealand government press release. 

“Other countries who have adopted the Call but were not at the meeting are Australia, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden,” the release continued. Many other countries have joined the statement since.

The Christchurch agreement’s “action plan” outlines government commitments including considering “appropriate action” to prevent online “extremist content,” such as “Development of industry standards” and “Regulatory or policy measures consistent with a free, open and secure internet.”

The online service providers, for their part, are to arrange for, among other things, “Prioritising moderation of terrorist and violent extremist content, however identified,” and “closing accounts where appropriate.”

Christchurch Call to Action participants such as Facebook and Twitter are already engaging in the censorship of content and banning users for the claimed risk of “inciting violence,” even when such a risk isn’t apparent, and even as it has left up numerous accounts and posts directly advocating for the murder of former President Donald Trump and his supporters. 

For example, Twitter banned Trump in January after he had tweeted “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

He also posted a tweet announcing he would not attend Biden’s slated inauguration. Twitter claimed that “these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks.”

Gainor noted to LifeSiteNews that while the call for action against “violent extremist content” “sounds great in theory,” “it’s vague, and that is open to abuse. We’ve already seen this administration has no interest in going after violent Antifa, only people who lean right. Since the left considers speech it doesn’t like to be violence, this is a dangerous step.”

During the Christchurch summit press conference in Paris, led by French President Emmanuel Macron and far-left New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Macron called the internet a “crazy propaganda device in service of division,” and claimed that a “war against all” is desired by “far right terrorists” as well as “Islamist terrorists.”

He also noted that Facebook has already decided to cooperate with governments to “deprive Facebook users of facilities when they are identified as dangerous.”

At the time the Christchurch agreement was issued, the Trump administration declined to join, citing “freedom of expression and freedom of the press as reasons it would not be joining the agreement,” as CNN reported.

The Trump administration’s statement continued: “Further, we maintain that the best tool to defeat terrorist speech is productive speech, and thus we emphasize the importance of promoting credible, alternative narratives as the primary means by which we can defeat terrorist messaging.”

The Biden White House continues to insist that “more speech” is the “preferred way to defeat violent extremist speech,” and that “In participating in the Christchurch Call, the United States will not take steps that would violate the freedoms of speech” that are “protected by the First Amendment.”

“When you say you aren’t going to restrict free speech and follow it with ‘but,’ then you are planning on restricting free speech,” commented Gainor.

The Biden administration’s decision to join the Christchurch Call comes soon after reports from “multiple sources” that it is “considering contracting outside firms” to monitor supposedly “extremist” online speech “in order to circumvent legal restrictions on the surveillance power of federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS),” as the New York Post related.

CNN noted that the DHS is “banned from activities like assuming false identities” to access private messaging apps used by “extremist” groups “such as the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers.”

America’s joining of the Christchurch Call also comes soon after the United States Postal Inspection Service, a law enforcement arm of the USPS which most Americans don’t even know exists, was revealed to be spying on Americans’ social media.

Revealingly, the DHS issued a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) bulletin on January 27 advising that “some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence.”

In an apparent reference to conservatives, the DHS said that Domestic Violent Extremists (DVEs) are “motivated by a range of issues, including anger over COVID-19 restrictions, the 2020 election results, and police use of force.” The DHS claimed that such individuals are responsible for “attacks against government facilities.” Two weeks ago, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency created a new section specifically for surveillance of a small number of people and groups protesting coronavirus restrictions.

America’s joining of the Christchurch Call also comes soon after the United States Postal Inspection Service, a law enforcement arm of the USPS which most Americans don’t even know exists, was revealed to be spying on Americans’ social media.

Fox News’s Trace Gallagher told Tucker Carlson that this revelation “baffled” legal experts “for two reasons: One, because by surveilling American social media accounts, the U.S. postal service is monitoring lawfully protected speech, which of course raises constitutional concerns.”

“And two, if Big Brother mailman is looking for criminal activity, that would normally be the FBI’s job, and yet according to a memo obtained by Yahoo News, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service is running what it calls the Internet Covert Operations Program, or ICOP. And the primary objective appears to be collecting data about planned protests, in the document obtained by Yahoo.”

Gallagher continued, “In the document obtained by Yahoo, Big Brother Mailman was looking for inflammatory posts about the worldwide Rally for Freedom held back in March. That's where thousands of people around the world protested COVID lockdowns. But instead of looking for potential nefarious behavior across the board, the main surveillance was of Facebook and ‘right-wing leaning Parler and Telegram.’”

“And the memo did mention the right-wing Proud Boys, and said without citing intelligence that some people on Parler intended to ‘do serious damage.’ But there was no mention of any left-wing groups like Antifa, surprising considering the lion's share of the protest violence over the past year has been caused by left-wing groups.”