{"id":1990,"date":"2017-09-17T16:42:59","date_gmt":"2017-09-17T20:42:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=1990"},"modified":"2017-09-17T16:42:59","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T20:42:59","slug":"new-us-law-blurs-the-line-between-hate-speech-and-hate-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=1990","title":{"rendered":"New US Law Blurs the Line Between Hate Speech and Hate Crime"},"content":{"rendered":"
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New US Law Blurs the Line Between Hate Speech and Hate Crime<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n
by<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>michael s. rozeff<\/b><\/a><\/div>\n
September 16, 2017<\/b><\/div>\n
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Eleven years ago,\u00a0this essay<\/b><\/a>\u00a0argued against hate-crime laws. One argument read \u201cPeople can eventually be accused of hate crimes when they use hateful speech. Hate crimes laws are a seed that can sprout in new directions.\u201d This has now come to pass, I am sorry to say. This week, the Congress passed\u00a0S. J. Res. 49<\/b><\/a>, and President Trump signed it, making it part of the U.S. legal code.<\/div>\n
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The law rejects \u201cWhite nationalists, White supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and other hate groups\u2026\u201d But why? Because of their ideas? Because of their expression of these ideas? No government that stands for freedom and free speech, whose charge is to protect rights, should be singling out specific groups by name and by law declaring them as outlaws or threats because of their philosophies. If they have committed a crime, such as defamation of character or incitement to riot or riot itself, then charge them and try them. But American government has no legitimate authority to single out some of its citizens in this way. This, furthermore, is an exceedingly bad precedent. Who\u2019s next?<\/div>\n
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The resolution is too specific, but it\u2019s also dangerously vague. The term \u201cother hate groups\u201d has no known definition. Suppose that this term is defined by a group like the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC currently names\u00a0917 groups<\/b><\/a>\u00a0as hate groups (see\u00a0here for a list<\/b><\/a>). Their criteria are not restricted to violent actions. They comprise\u00a0SPEECH<\/b>. They say \u201cAll hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.\u201d They are very clear about this: \u201cHate group activities can include criminal acts, marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting or publishing.\u201d<\/div>\n
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This Congressional resolution is a declaration that certain kinds of groups, some named but many, many others open to inclusion, are to be attacked by the U.S. government. The law urges \u201cthe President and the President\u2019s Cabinet to use all available resources to address the threats posed by those groups.\u201d The term \u201cthreats\u201d in the first paragraph is vague, dangerously vague. However, the very next paragraph singles outfree speech<\/i>\u00a0actions when \u201chundreds of torch-bearing White nationalists, White supremacists, Klansmen, and neo-Nazis chanted racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant slogans\u2026\u201d The same sentence joins this with violent actions \u201c\u2026and violently engaged with counter-demonstrators on and around the grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville\u2026\u201d<\/div>\n
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This law regards free speech as a threat, linking it to violence, painting them with one brush. There can be no justice that can stem from such a completely sloppy and inexcusably amateurish legal treatment. This linkage is made clear in paragraph seven with this language: \u201c\u2026communities everywhere are concerned about the growing and open display of hate and violence being perpetrated by those groups\u2026\u201d There is no distinction made here between the \u201copen display of hate\u201d and \u201cviolence being perpetrated\u201d. As I predicted 11 years ago in arguing against hate crime laws, hate speech is being identified with hate crime.<\/div>\n
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I am just as uncomfortable with the notion of defining and singling out \u201chate speech\u201d as some sort of new danger or threat or harmful activity or crime, to be dealt with by government or courts of law as I was 11 years ago with the idea of \u201chate crime\u201d. The standard categories of crime are quite enough without adding to them a government laundry list of prejudices and aversions that everyone is not supposed to express or feel, under penalty of government law.<\/div>\n
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Reprinted with permission from\u00a0<\/i>LewRockwell.com<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New US Law Blurs the Line Between Hate Speech and Hate Crime by\u00a0michael s. rozeff September 16, 2017 \u00a0 Eleven years ago,\u00a0this essay\u00a0argued against hate-crime laws. One argument read \u201cPeople can eventually be accused of hate crimes when they use … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1105,203,1106,1104,595],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1990"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1991,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1990\/revisions\/1991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}