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Speech by Alain Berset, Secretary General of the Council of Europe

Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to the Council of Europe.

Today we open No Hate Speech Week, and the second edition of our Democracy Hackathon.

For the next three days, this is your home. Make yourself comfortable in these premises.

I know you are going to be busy. But I hope you also take a moment to look around.

Most of the great things this organisation has done began exactly like this. In a room, with people who were told it could not be done.

***

You came here to build with some of the most powerful technologies humanity has ever invented.

But I want to begin with the oldest.

Before the printing press. Before the internet. Before AI. There was democracy.

Democracy is the original hack.

For most of history, power belonged to the few. Democracy broke it open, rewrote the code, and handed it to the many.

***

But all code has a weak point. Democracy’s is hate.

Hate turns us against each other until all we can see is what divides us.

So let’s see where we stand.

Please take out your phones. We have a question for you on the screen.

[Wait… then read question and answers]

[POLL QUESTION 1]

When you hear the word “hate,” what do you picture?

• Concentration camps
• Racist abuse online
• A woman forced offline
• A pride flag burning

There they are. Look at that.

All of it is hate. And it often starts the same way: someone, somewhere, deciding another human being is worth less.

***

For those who built this house, hatred was not a word. It was the first answer on your screen.

This generation of Europeans came out of the Second World War, and they swore “never again.”

The Council of Europe rose from it.

They knew hate never truly dies. It waits. Until we stop watching.

But they could not have imagined the technology that was coming.

***

Hate used to need a crowd. Now all it needs is a server.

One person. One bot. One algorithm that figured out long ago that outrage keeps you scrolling. That is all it takes to reach millions.  

Today, hate is infrastructure. Built by us. Fed by us. Running on our attention.

It does not need our hatred. It only needs our indifference.

Indifference is what lets it spread.

It always starts with a lie. “The camps never happened.” “Women belong at home.” “Send them back.” And the list goes on.

Nobody has to believe these. They only have to wear us down.

That is when hate does its real work. It hands us someone to blame: the scapegoat.

It is the oldest move there is.

A society that reaches for scapegoats is a society where people have stopped talking to each other.

***

Hate rushes into the space where the conversation broke down.

Rebuilding that space is exactly what the New Democratic Pact for Europe is for.

We launched this effort a year and a half ago.

The ambition of the Pact is to rebuild trust in institutions and strengthen democratic resilience across Europe. And to do so in an age of permanent crisis and technological change.

The consultation runs until the end of this year.

What you build here during the hackathon will feed straight into it.

***

This is a matter of democratic security.

Democratic security is Europe’s first line of defence. We cannot defend it with yesterday’s playbook.

We need to adapt to these new conditions.

The answers will come from a room like this one.

Twenty teams, from all over Europe. Four problems, set by Democracy Reporting International, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and the universities of Munich and Strasbourg. Three days.

Because you cannot out-argue a machine. You have to out-build it. And then build it to last.

Democracy is not built for speed. It is built for time.

The choices we make today must still hold in 10, 20, or 30 years.

***

So let us look ahead. Ten years from now.

Time to take your phones out again. This is our final question.

[Wait … then read question and answers]

[POLL QUESTION 2]

What will the internet look like in 2036?

• A playground for trolls and bots
• Whatever the platforms want
• Something we can’t imagine yet
• A democracy, if we build it

Look at that.

The first three are predictions. Only the last is a choice.

***

By Friday, the winning teams will have started to prove which one. They will leave with real support to keep building.

Let me end here.

Hate is ignorance. Fear of each other. Fear of tomorrow.

Don’t be afraid. Be open. The only defence against ignorance is curiosity.

That is what fills this room: people too curious to leave the world the way they found it.

They will call you naïve. Every generation that ever changed anything was called naïve first.

Alors soyez naïfs. Soyons naïfs.

And for the next three days: hack the hate, and renew democracy.

Thank you.