Principled Perspectives: Hate Speech

Showing posts with label Hate Speech. Show all posts

Friday, January 31, 2025

NJ Should Pass on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Definition of Anti-Semitism

New Jersey Spotlight News reports that there is Strong support in Assembly for adopting IHRA definition of antisemitism, but adds that “Aspects of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition are controversial.” Indeed. NJSN reports:

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition underlines widely accepted aspects of antisemitism, including statements that the Holocaust was a lie or exaggerated, or claiming that Jewish people control the media. What has proved controversial is the part of the definition that specifies certain criticisms of Israel — that Israel is a racist state, and that Israelis should be held to a different standard than other democracies — as antisemitic.

“This has nothing to do with Jews. This is about protecting Israel,” said Raz Segal, an associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University. “It silences Palestinians who, for example, will say that Israel is a racist state, which is a very legitimate critique against any other state in the world, including the United States.”

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition includes this example:

"Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor."

Of course, identifying "the Jewish People" as a collective is racist, by definition. A group of Jews has no right to a state that legally prioritizes Jews over non-Jews. A legitimate state recognizes individual rights equally for all. If the above IHRA example is taken literally, then the state of Israel is a racist endeavor. All individuals have a right to their own personal self-determination, whether acting individually or in voluntary agreement with others as a group. But none should be favored or disfavored under the law.

So, is the State of Israel designed to guarantee only the Jewish people their collective right to self-determination?] If so, Israel is racist. But Israel's Declaration of Independence states:

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be the Jewish people their right to self-determination and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

Despite the opening nod to "the Jewish people [and] their right to self-determination," that paragraph doesn't sound racist to me. In fact, Israel, while majority Jewish, includes 20% Palestinian, ranging from Arab descent to Christian orientation, as well as Muslim. There are atheists and the non-Jews also, all of whom live in equality under the law. But the point is that accusing Israel of being a racist state, or of having racist policies or laws, does not necessarily make that person anti-Semitic. The IHRA definition of antisemitism seems to shield racists who happen to be Jewish from criticism. But a racist who happens to be Jewish is still racist, and people should be free to call that person out without being accused of being an anti-Semite.

The IHRA definition of antisemitism includes some uncontroversial manifestations. For example:

Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.

Yes, this is anti-Semitic. But such views are racist across the board. Substitute “Jews” with black and “Jewish” with black (or any other ethnic group), and you still get racism. Racism is the idea that a person's beliefs, character, choices, and moral standing are inherited through body chemistry—such as skin color, genes, or blood—and thus should be judged by the actions of ancestors of his ethnic group. That definition already describes anti-Semitism. It doesn’t need a special exception.

The IHRA’s definition of antisemitism is a bad, biased definition. It seems more designed to shield Jews from criticism than to present an objective definition of anti-Semitism.

I should clarify that NJ’s adoption of the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism would not have legal teeth, as there are no hate speech laws in the state, which would be anti-free speech and unConstitutional under the First Amendment. NJSN reports:

A bill that would have New Jersey adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism has overwhelming support in the state Assembly, with three primary sponsors and 56 co-sponsors out of 80 possible representatives.

Supporters say a clear definition of antisemitism would protect Jewish people and make hate speech easier to spot and stamp out.

But it is clearly a step toward censorship, especially given the prevalence of DEI initiatives in NJ. The government should never be in the business of “stamping out” any speech, either explicitly through laws or implicitly through biased legal language.

Related Reading:

Racism—Ayn Rand

Fighting Racism With Collectivism is No Way to Exterminate Racism

Facebook Backtracks on Free Speech Policy; Political Extortion?

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

Cohen: Hate-Crime Laws are "Totalitarian Nonsense"

Free Speech, not Self-Censorship, is the Answer to 'Offensive' Free Speech [UPDATED]

HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship (Inalienable Rights)--Nadine Strossen

Saturday, May 8, 2021

‘Hate’ and Authoritarianism in New Jersey: Much Worse than Pollster Patrick Murray Acknowledges

In Hate is thriving in New Jersey, New Jersey Star-Ledger Guest Columnist Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, warns of the rising activities of so-called “hate groups” and related “hate” crimes and “hate” speech. I won’t discuss those vague terms here, except to say that Murray seems to imply that “hate” refers to the collectivist notion of identifying people by ethnic, racial, or other unchosen group characteristic and then viewing other groups as dangerous or the enemy. He doesn’t mention individualism or individual rights as the only antidote. He doesn’t give any evidence that this rise in “hate” is any more than a temporary blip, although he calls it’s rise “stunning. "

But however serious the rise in hate activity, Murray’s right to call it out. Ignoring it or downplaying it only allows it to grow into something really dangerous beyond some isolated incidents (He reports that “bias incidents,” which peaked at 876 in 2008, then fell to 367 in 2015, reversed and rose steadily to 1441 last year in NJ).

My focus here is on what Murray believes is the root cause of the rise in “hate” activity:

In any society — be it the United States, Great Britain, or Myanmar — a certain, and not insignificant, percentage of the population is willing to submit to authoritarian leadership in times of instability. This trait always lurks beneath the surface. At the same time, a segment of the public is prone to believe that one group — their group — is inherently better than others.

The intersection of these two traits — authoritarianism and intolerance [collectivism] — is the root of hate activity’s rise today. Stemming the rise of authoritarianism is a key component in reducing white nationalist activity. This question is what can we do about it.

A sizable segment of the public has replaced any prior trust in our political system with an unqualified faith in charismatic authoritarian leadership.

My emphasis. Well, I can certainly agree that there has been a rise in “intolerance.” Just look at the rise of “identity politics,” which has found a home on the Left. Critical Race Theory dominates the Democratic Party. CRT holds that “race” -- i.e., skin color -- defines each person according to groups (collectivism), divided between “oppressed” and oppressor, with “whites” the oppressor and “people of color” the oppressed. I can think of no ideology that is more designed to feed intolerance (and injustice) than a theory that focuses on groups rather than actual people -- individuals. The recent growth of “white nationalist activity” referenced by Murray is a direct reaction to the Left’s racism/collectivism, which itself is a reaction to the individualism that forms the core of Americanism. Note that the reversal of the downtrend in bias incidents began in 2015, just as Critical Race Theory burst onto the cultural landscape, and just two years after the official founding of Black Lives Matter (CRT had been growing in academia for decades). This, in my view, is no coincidence. While Right collectivism is certainly a long-term danger to America, as of now it is a far lesser danger than Left collectivism, which has already achieved vast political power, both in NJ and in Washington.

Authoritarianism is certainly a major threat--much bigger than Murray is willing to admit. We’ve been witnessing “an unqualified faith in charismatic authoritarian leadership” in New Jersey since Governor Phil Murphy usurped the authority of the legislature in March of 2020 by declaring a public emergency over COVID-19. As I wrote last June,

When a governor can declare a state of emergency, commandeer whatever “emergency” powers he feels like, make “law” by executive order, enforce his edicts, often unequally, however and against whomever he chooses, usurp county and municipal governments, and extend the emergency declaration in perpetuity, without limit or [legislative] accountability, we no longer have the rule of law. We don’t even have the “rule of men”. We have the rule of one man--i.e., a dictator. No branch of government should ever have the power to both make and enforce laws.

The U.S. Constitution and the NJ Constitution, both of which Murphy swore to uphold, gives only the legislature the power to make law. Yet Murphy recently extended the “public health emergency” into the 14th month, extending his unconstitutional "law-making" -- executive order -- authoritarian rule another 30 days. He can continue this indefinitely. You’d think there would have been a massive public outcry by now, followed by a by-partisan legislative move to reign Murphy in by repealing the unconstitutional law that allowed Murphy to seize this power.

Not so. While some members of the legislature are grumbling, Murphy continues to act unabashedly as lawmaker and law enforcer. As Jonathan D. Salant reports for NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

As Gov. Phil Murphy prepares to face the voters this November for a second term. a Stockton University Poll released Wednesday said that nearly 6 in 10 New Jerseyans approved of the job he was doing in office.

Murphy’s approval rating stood at 58% with 36% disapproving, according to the poll. It was Murphy’s highest rating ever in the Stockton poll. It was also the first poll on his job performance released this year.

While the poll did not specifically ask the question, John Froonjian, executive director of the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton University, attributed the high poll rating to Murphy’s handing of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Crises give leaders a chance to show their chops,” Froonjian said. “There’s a sense that people got that when the chips were down, he stood tall and did what he had to do.”

My emphasis. Murray’s fear of rising acceptance of hate and authoritarianism in NJ is well-placed, but misdirected. Rather than look at fringe “hate” groups, he should look at the rise of racism and collectivism in the Democratic Party, which dominates the political scene in NJ. He should look at the number of NJ voters who are apparently willing to accept the authoritarianism of the Murphy Administration—58% of voters. This, not in the first panicky weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, but well over a year into it. To say this is a “not insignificant percentage of the population [that] is willing to submit to authoritarian leadership in times of instability” is a gross understatement. It is no longer a “trait” that “lurks beneath the surface.” It no longer lurks beneath the surface. It’s massive -- a majority -- at least in New Jersey.

Now that’s something to wring our hands over. And it’s coming mainly from the political Left. Murray advocates, as a way to undermine intolerance and authoritarianism, “a civic revival in this country.” He supports the NJ Assembly’s proposed Laura Wooten’s Law, which mandates civics education in middle school and creates a civics curriculum for required high school history courses. That would be great, if it recognizes that the whole point of our political system is checks and balances aimed at protecting individual rights, not majoritarianism. A "civics teachable moment" would be a great starting point. Examine the New Jersey constitution as it relates to Murphy authoritarianism, and his disregard for both the authority of the legislature and disdain for individual rights.

NJ Governor Murphy’s COVID-19 Double Standard Toward the Demonstrators

Governor Murphy Doubles Down on his Double Standard

Steve Politi’s Cold Collectivist Attack on Two NJ Gym Businessmen Points to Broader Danger to Our Liberty

New Jersey’s Political Attack on Takeout Food Delivery Service Providers

The Scary Ease with Which Some Americans Accept Authoritarianism

Democratic Governors Threaten Business Owners Who Reopen Ahead of Schedule by Robby Soave for Reason.com

Friday, October 2, 2020

Heading Toward Criminalizing Political Expression

The 2018 municipal election in Edison, New Jersey, featured some ugly electioneering. In 9 months later, we're still asking who sent racist 'Make Edison Great Again' fliers, Craig McCarthy and S.P. Sullivan reported for NJ.com:

The flyers landed in township mailboxes less than a week before Election Day, carrying racist attacks and pledging to “Make Edison Great Again!”

"The Chinese and Indians are taking over our town!" the fliers said. On one side were pictures of candidates for the local, non-partisan school board, Jerry Shi and Falguni Patel, stamped with the word "Deport."

The bald bigotry of anonymous campaign mailers targeting two minority candidates in the state's fifth-largest town -- known for its ethnic diversity and its tumultuous municipal politics-- lit a firestorm in the local campaign and drew media coverage from around the globe.

So far, so good. Such filth should ignite a public firestorm. But ultimately, such bigoted viewpoints are stupid and ignorant, and should be brushed of as the unserious drivel that they represent. But then:

Now, the town council is being asked to pen a resolution calling on Attorney General Gurbir Grewal's office to investigate the mailers, according to an email from a former mayoral candidate, Keith Hahn, sent to all township employees and obtained by NJ Advance Media.

But NJ Advance Media has learned the Attorney General's Office has already been quietly investigating for months, identifying at least one person of interest but no clear suspects.

I left these comments:

The bald bigotry . . . lit a firestorm in the local campaign and drew media coverage from around the globe.

As well it should.

But why are prosecutors getting involved? This is scary--a whole different issue from a public outcry. These are political flyers sent out as part of an election campaign. Are we getting to the point in America where expressing oneself can land one in jail? Are we going to allow ignorance to override freedom of speech, the basic moral right of intellectual liberty and the only means of fighting back against bad ideas?

It’s bad enough that the Attorney General is wasting taxpayer money trying to find out who sent these flyers. It’s truly outrageous that our tax dollars are being used as a means of putting all of us at risk of prosecution for expressing ourselves in the electoral process, should the prosecutors disagree with one’s message.

There was a joke popular in the 1980s. It went something like this: “An American tells a Russian that the United States is so free he can stand in front of the White House and yell, ‘'To h--l with President Reagan'’ with no fear of getting arrested. The Russian retorts: '’So? In Russia, I’m free to stand in front of the Kremlin and yell, 'To h--l with President Reagan’ with no fear of getting arrested.” Is that where we want to go?

Please don’t insult me by telling me this is about bigotry or racism or “hate speech,” not free speech. The flyers are free speech. The public firestorm is free speech. Government investigation is censorship, the tool of every tyrant. To paraphrase the Star-Ledger from its 8/15/18 defense of press freedom, “the real enemy of the people is never free speech. It is a government that wants to be the sole arbiter of truth.”

Let's not become Russia. Stop the investigation. It is un-American.

The Danger of ‘Hate Speech’ Laws is Exposed

How to Overcome Bigotry in a Free Society

John Farmer's Understanding of Free Speech Rights as Non-Absolute is Dangerous and Wrong

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Facebook Backtracks on Free Speech Policy; Political Extortion?

Just recently, I lauded Facebook for resisting “escalating pressure ahead of the 2020 presidential election” by raffirming “its freewheeling policy on political ads [and] saying it won’t ban them, won’t fact-check them and won’t limit how they can be targeted to specific groups of people. “[P]eople,” said Facebook, “should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public.” (See my post Facebook Stands Up to the Would-be Censors.)

It didn’t take long for Facebook to backtrack on its principles. But how much can we blame them?

In a NJ SPOTLIGHT article, Why Ocean County Facebook Page Was Shut Down: Charges of Anti-Semitism and Murphy Complaint Colleen O’dea reported:

Facebook has taken down the controversial page of an Ocean County group that has been accused of posting racist and anti-Semitic content, 10 months after the New Jersey attorney general’s office first called out the site for hate speech.

In a post on its website, Rise Up Ocean County (RUOC) decried the removal by the social media platform of its Facebook page Wednesday morning as “arbitrary and capricious” and asserted, as the group’s anonymous leaders have in the past, that there was “no hint of anti-Semitism” in posts to the page by its administrators. The group contends it opposes overdevelopment and growth in Lakewood and surrounding Ocean County communities and not the group it says is largely responsible for that — the Orthodox Jewish community.

State Attorney General Gurbir Grewal disputes that contention. Last spring, his office first asked Facebook to monitor RUOC’s page as it announced renewed efforts to combat a rise in reported hate crimes and new guidelines that expanded the definition of bias incidents. These continue to climb in the state, with preliminary data released by Grewal last month showing a one-year jump of 65% in reported bias incidents, for a total of 944 in 2019.

On Jan. 3, after RUOC’s Facebook page was down briefly but then republished, a joint statement from Grewal and Gov. Phil Murphy contended that the group had “an explicit goal of preventing Orthodox Jews from moving to Ocean County” and indicated that the state had followed up with Facebook that week, expressing continuing “concerns” over the page.

Shortly after Facebook removed the page Wednesday, Grewal and Murphy contended in a joint statement that RUOC’s page had been violating the social media platform’s terms of service for months.

“We appreciate that Facebook has now decided that this kind of hateful rhetoric has no place on its platform,” the statement read. “There remains much that should be done to stop the spread of hate on the Internet. The Murphy Administration will continue to call out hate whenever and wherever we see it, we will persist in demanding meaningful reforms to address the proliferation of hate online, and we will continue working to make New Jersey a safe and inclusive place for all of our residents.”

Who the hell are Grewel and Murphy to determine what “hate” is? The Murphy administration has effectively declared, “Unpopular opinions are not welcome in New Jersey.” Does that really make New Jersey more “inclusive?” Does it really make NJ “safer?” Not safer from powerful politicians whom you offend.

I posted these comments:

As a private company, Facebook has a right to manage its content, although I think it made a big mistake. My concern is that they were politically and prosecutorially pressured to do so. State officials with the power of a governor and attorney general trying to shut down private speech for so undefinable a rational as to “stop the spread of hate” smacks of government censorship-by-proxy. Every individual has the fundamental right to express themselves, no matter how offensive or unpopular or “hateful” their speech. When government officials start shutting private citizens up because of ideas they deem unacceptable, they have adopted the tactic of dictators.

As the ACLU’s Nadine Strossen persuasively argues in her book HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship, free speech is an inalienable right. Punishing and silencing speech “solely because its message is disfavored, disturbing, or vaguely feared to possibly contribute to some future harm . . . is at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive.” I would add immoral. “The best way to resist hate and promote equality is not censorship,” Nadine convincingly argues, “but rather, vigorous ‘counterspeech’ and activism.”

I strongly concur, as do many thinkers from across the political spectrum. When government officials silence RUOC, directly or indirectly, they violate their free speech rights but also deny opponents the opportunity to challenge, rebut, and refute through their own counterspeech and activism. However “hateful” RUOC is deemed, it is not the threat we should be concerned with. I consider the pressure tactics of Grewal and Murphy to be an abuse of their power and back-door censorship. They, not RUOC and its ilk, are the real threat to civility, freedom, and inclusiveness.

I wish Facebook had roundly resisted the pressure in no uncertain terms. I don’t excuse them for caving in. Then again, with a state governor and attorney general breathing down their necks, maybe its not so easy.