Background
Dr Sanjana Hattotuwa is a Sri Lankan who works with Kate Hannah on the "Disinformation Project". You have probably seen him on the odd video (and I do mean "odd"). In my opinion, he is a raving lunatic and a conspiracy theorist. According to him, everything that is wrong with the world is due to Donald Trump, "cis-gendered" white males, colonialism and racism.
His main mission seems to be to shut down activism and "hate speech" on social media, particularly because, according to him, it caused the riots in Sri Lanka in 2018. He blames Mark Zuckerberg for that and clearly hates him with a passion. He claims that when Zuckerberg was called to speak to Congress in 2018 it was to explain his guilt for the riots (in fact, it had nothing to do with that). And yet, he claims to have "pioneered the use of social media for activism in Sri Lanka".
Let's summarise. He claims to be the one who started radical social media activism, and that it was radical social media activism that led to the riots in Sri Lanka, so obviously that was Zuckerberg's fault. Are we getting some idea of how his mind works yet?
After suffering through a 90-minute audio recorded during a “Workshop” of the Disinformation Project, at which Sanjana Hattotuwa was the speaker, I have made the following summary.
Please note that the audio was extremely hard to hear, no doubt a result of it being from a concealed recording device because they demanded that there be no recordings.
Also, bear in mind that the guy speaks like a raving Psycho with a broad Sri Lankan accent, and a full word-for-word transcript would be impossible. Anyway, here’s the gist of what he had to say:
Workshop by Dr Sanjana Hattotuwa of the Disinformation Project. The Rees Hotel and Apartments, Queenstown
Kate Hannah: There are to be no recordings or photos taken because Dr Hattotuwa will only get more threats if people get to hear what he says. (Hannah reminded people again near the end that there are to be no recordings)
Hattotuwa:
- There is a mindset of distrust in government and mainstream media.
- It spreads like malaria.
- The racism in New Zealand is identical to back home in Sri Lanka.
- The way that cis-gendered males act is abhorrent, it is horrible, it is aberrant, it is racist, and it is chilling how they relate to cis-gendered women.
- Prime Minister Ardern is raped every day.
- After she gave her talk at Harvard it worsened.
- We in Sri Lanka have a colonial mindset. We used to think of the US as a true democracy. We were horrified at what happened in 2016 and 2021.
- There are no safeguards in this country, the disease is spreading, I know because I have studied it for 20 years.
- We are seeing a lot of transgressive transgressions transferring from anti-vax to anti-government. It is intergenerational now, it is too late, it has already happened. (He repeats several times the words “transgressive transgressions”.)
- It is undermining our local body elections and impacting education and the public good.
- It is affecting policies on climate change and how people recognise democracy.
- Nobody of my colour has not been the victim of racism.
- They reject everything that is different.
- It is a cornucopia of violent misogynistic rubbish.
- All of these white men are just kids who never grew up, and they are in control of our lives.
- There is a shameless audacity to think that what constitutes a war crime is remotely related to what we have experienced.
There is an interjection as one woman shouts out “rubbish”, and complains that Hattotuwa has put up a slide showing horrible images and has put it next to an image of Voices For Freedom, implying that the two are related when they have nothing to do with each other.
- The Fire and Fury “documentary” was a gift to us, the media captured people saying horrible things in their own words, we can now use this against them as evidence of the protesters’ hatred.
- Freedom of speech is a real problem for democracy. We need to stop speech from going viral on social media. And we need hate-speech laws.
He seemed to love the sound of his own voice, and often repeated his favourite words. He seemed to delight in showing how clever he is, or thinks he is. Boy did he labour the bit about how he knew about these things because he is an expert who had studied them for 20 years.
The way he speaks though is fanatical. If he had a German accent he would be a dead ringer for those memes of Hitler in the bunker.
He said that they need to protect local body elections from people with hidden agendas. Isn’t it funny that it is people like him who are amongst the ones saying that they need to expose candidates standing for local body elections because they are hiding their true motives, and then in the same breath they demand that nobody be allowed to record what they say at their own meetings about those people, in case people find out their own motives?