Valery Fadeev: the ideology of human rights has become a weapon of the West

— Valery Aleksandrovich, how universal is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the anniversary of which is being celebrated this year?

— The issue of human rights is very multifaceted. The Declaration itself is good. And the pathos of the Declaration lies in the opposition to oppression and tyranny. And everyone agrees with this. And when you look at the specific implementation of the ideology of human rights, and this is the ideology, the most powerful ideological system, then the question of particulars arises. Some began to talk about the imperialism of the ideology of human rights. Because this ideology allows you to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. There are many such examples. For example, sad events in the same Libya. What do you have there, tyrant? Let us overthrow him, and you will have freedom and democracy. The dictator was overthrown, killed – no freedom, no democracy. Sluggish, and sometimes not sluggish, civil war.

Yes, the question arises to what extent these human rights are universal and to what extent they can be a tool for influencing other countries. And then the next question arises, what is sovereignty. In the West, many say: it is high time to throw off the veil of sovereignty. And our president talks about sovereignty. This is his main political conceptual concept. And in fact, we underestimate the position of our president when he talks about sovereignty. These are not words. This is an ideological concept that resists external interference. One of the instruments of this intervention is the ideology of human rights. This is a tough international political ideological struggle.

— But not now cancel the Declaration of the Rights of Man?

– No. But we need to deal with regional details. Let’s say family. A very different understanding of the family now. We are used to the fact that the family is a man, a woman and children. In the West now they say: no, the family is different. The LGBT ideology is overwhelmingly developing. This LGBT can be inserted into the Asian world, into the Arab world, Islamic? Not only that, you can’t put it in. There is also another idea of ​​the family. A family in many countries can be like this – a man and many women. Will we oppose this or not, if they live like this for centuries? Fifteen thousand years. Are we going to correct their lives, point out to them that they live wrong? I think no, we won’t.

– But this is happening?

– It’s happening. There was such a recently deceased sociologist Inglehart. He organized a grandiose sociological study, it has been going on for 30 years. Over a hundred countries are participating. He explored values. The meaning of this study is something like this: there are countries that support progressive values, such as LGBT, childfree, euthanasia. And there are archaic, not supporting. But, said Inglehart, the world is progressing. And soon we will all support LGBT, childfree, euthanasia. Well, if we do not support, will they bomb us? How about Libya? I do not answer yes, but this answer suggests itself. And in fact, this project, of course, is not sociology, but propaganda.

A very important question is how to make sure that the foundations of the life of entire civilizations do not get out of a single progressive trend? The first point of the Declaration is the “right to life”. And in the famous Arab charter: “every person has the right to life and to a decent burial.” And for them, this is very important – for them, burial is no less important than human life, since this is a transition to another, another world. In Africa, it is believed that an individual is impossible without society – a person without a community is nobody, he, as it were, does not exist. In Europe, it’s not like that. In Europe, the ideology of the autonomous individual. Should we impose our positions on each other?

If the pathos of the Declaration is shared by all, then there are a lot of details. When it was accepted, everyone agreed with the pathos. despite the fact that the ideology of the autonomous individual is the basis of Western ideology. But then it did not interfere with life. Now it’s starting to get in the way. Because with the help of this ideology, the powers that be, the Americans, in the first place, interfere in other people’s affairs. This needs to be removed. The declaration should unite, not serve as an instrument of discord.

— What happens to human rights in connection with total digitalization?

– My position here is that I see a huge danger in the disappearance of the very right of a person to privacy. This may entail anthropological changes. Privacy is not an invention of this century. She has always been. In tribal times, a person had a secret of private life. And in 2011, Zuckerberg said that the right to privacy is no longer part of the modern content of the social contract. That is, he said bluntly: we, the owners of the largest IT companies, are canceling the right to privacy. And we have it written in the Constitution. Are we going to change the Constitution under Zuckerberg? Now the question is, why are they embarrassed by the secret of private life?

Billions of people are on the Internet. And there they leave a huge amount of information about themselves. This is called “behavioral excess”. It seems not necessary to read some media on the Web or order tickets, but people leave this information about themselves. The owners of IT companies guessed that this is a huge capital. It was behavioral surplus that allowed them to make new giant profits.

“The issue of manipulation comes up here.

“Private companies, and after them state institutions, begin to manipulate people to achieve some goals. In the most innocent case – in order for a person to buy something.

But this is an innocent case.

We do not think: when we type a search query, we are sent a huge amount of information. But this information is censored by the search engine. And by what algorithm this information is adjusted to a specific person, we do not know. But this is manipulation. In social networks, according to certain algorithms, a circle of friends is created. “Friends” are slipped in, pictures that are capable of shifting a person in the ideological field. So-called echo chambers are created when people like him gather around a person, and a person begins to think that the world is those who are around him. And the world for a person turns out to be extremely distorted, and how it is distorted, a person does not even know. All this must be stopped.

– How?

– You can gently, you can demand the disclosure of algorithms. My position is radical. I believe that it is necessary to move towards a ban on commercial and not only commercial exploitation of behavioral excess.

“But banning recommender algorithms will make networks uncomfortable.

So, people will leave the social network. And if you ask how corporations will earn, then how they used to earn, so they will. This means that they simply will not earn on our behavioral surplus. They will manipulate us less. And if social networks can’t make money on advertising, it’s okay. And even the next step is to let the social network close. People will visit each other more often, “friends” will turn into real friends.

– Our citizens, however, voluntarily share personal data and do not see the connection between the fact that they left the data somewhere and the calls of fraudsters “from the bank’s security service.”

– The text of the warning should be on the first page of the agreement that the person signs. Not in small print somewhere behind “and now I give you the right to use my personal data in any way”, but on the first page. It should be written in big bold type: “When you sign this, your data can get to anyone, including criminals. Leaks are very common, or your data can be sold to those companies that will pester you with advertising … “. Well, and so on. Let something like this be written. Explanatory work is needed.

— And how can these fears be removed with the help of the Declaration of the Rights of Man?

We are at the beginning of this work. A big serious discussion will take place at a legal forum in St. Petersburg in May. I will not dare now to say what legal solutions are needed. But they will be, this year we will prepare outlines. And I hope that our proposals will be so reasonable that we can even prepare a report to the president. It is one of the duties of the HRC – to prepare reports to the President on burning topics.

– In the protection of digital rights, there is also a confrontation – between our world and globalization, which just needs the abolition of privacy.

— With regard to globalization. It has ended in the form in which it has existed for the past decades, in a form beneficial to the West. Now it’s over. And to be specific: February 24 last year.