Vanishing Liberties by Philip Giraldi, a Fellow of the American Conservative Defense Alliance, is forthright, and scary, partly because Giraldi understands the technological situation. Arguing:
If the seemingly unending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ever do come to a close…the most serious long term damage from the conflicts will be to the fundamental freedoms that Americans have cherished for more than two hundred years.
he points out that:
Hate crimes and laws targeting the internet provide a framework that relies on advanced monitoring technology to criminalize behavior that would have been considered off limits for privacy reasons ten years ago.
For instance:
New legislation in Germany will require all internet users to be licensed with a backtracking feature that will enable the government to determine where any internet transmission originated…It is particularly interesting to note what German politicians and officials said in support of the new legislation. One commented that it is necessary to stop the internet from becoming a "lawless chaos room." Another described the internet as a "source of criminality, terrorism, and much similar filth."
Giraldi continues:
Can there be any doubt that the monitoring of the internet to control "terrorism" and "filth" will in fairly short order also be used to repress the viewpoints of individuals and groups that are considered to be politically unacceptable? And what better weapon to use against dissidents than the criminal justice system, most particularly the hate crime legislation that is becoming both increasingly more common and more draconian in both the United States and in Europe?
He then proceeds to a lucid and well informed exposition of the philosophical problems with Hate Crime legislation:
hate crimes create an unconstitutional special tier of justice while the ability to try someone twice constitutes double jeopardy.
Documenting how far the repression has been carried elsewhere
An Australian… was arrested and charged when he wrote a letter complaining that the numerous Israeli art students selling their wares in Perth might be engaged in espionage.
Giraldi points out that the alleged limits on the current bill are likely to be permeable:
America’s new HR 1913 "Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Act" together with Senate bill S-909 claim only to prohibit actual crimes and not regulate free speech, but it isn’t necessarily so. The Senate bill specifically includes "conspiracy to commit a hate crime" as a criminal offense. The legislation is drawn so loosely that a district attorney can proceed in virtually any case where there is even a suspicion that something hateful might have motivated the perpetrator. How some activist judges will exploit the lack of any strict guidelines can easily be imagined
He then very courageously turns to the question of what is motivating this campaign, occurring as it is throughout the Western world:
The Anti-Defamation League, which has been a strong supporter of all hate crime legislation, has made it clear that it considers criticism of Israel to be anti-Semitism and therefore a hate crime. Some leading supporters of the laws have also explicitly included any opposition to Zionism, which they equate to denying Israel’s right to exist, and any comparison of Israeli behavior with Nazi Germany. Pro-Israeli groups have been extremely active in promoting hate crime legislation because of their belief that such laws can be used to mitigate criticism of Israel.
This view, once the province of advanced thinkers like the Rev. Ted Pike and Kevin MacDonald, is destined to become mainstream — for the simple reason that it is true. Does anyone imagine that a parcel of noisy Homosexuals could have got every Democratic Senator not actually dying up in the middle of the night to vote not just for this atrocious legislation but also for a parliamentary maneuver to pass it which was itself an outrage?
Of course, it is not surprising that someone who is aware of the process by which America has been inveigled into and then trapped in Muslim wars should detect the pattern.
Giraldi gloomily concludes:
In five years, all internet will likely be monitored and regulated, following the German model. Hate crime legislation will make it illegal to criticize any group or country if it can plausibly or even implausibly be construed that such criticism reflects bias, permitting judges to silence anyone who opposes the status quo. Together, the technology and the new laws will quite possibly put the websites that readers of Antiwar.com peruse daily out of business.
Peter Brimelow likes to say that, when a University student in England in the late 60s, he and fellow anti-communist students quite seriously expected to end their days in Gulags on the North Slope of Alaska, then developing. For a generation the specter went away. Now it has come back.
