Propaganda
Writers obsess with the power of words: do words change anything? Or does poetry, in audens phrase, make nothing happen? But there is a legal dimension to this as well. Across the word we see unprecedented amounts of propaganda aimed to destroy peoples lives. Such propagandists usually hide behind ‘freedom of speech’ and the legal idea that ‘speech has no victim’. But what happens when, for example, Russian propagandists become an integral part of a military machine committing war crimes and even genocide? Are they aiding and abetting crimes against humanity- and can that be proven in a court of law? This panel will explore the potential for legal accountability for russian state and other propagandists- and the deeper question of what do words really do.