I missed a powerful article by Harmony Grant, Pike's neice, posted on his National Prayer Network website February 26: CLOSING THE BORDERS TO FREE SPEECH. Grant points out that advocates of this measure, for example Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, explicitly say they want to "prevent" so-called "hate crimes" pre-emptively, i.e. through suppressing speech. As Grant says (links added):
...the reality of these laws is dark as any Orwellian tale. Hate crime laws intensify punishment for crimes motivated by bias against specially protected groups. This would be bad enough; our government representatives have no right to create more (and less) protected classes, and they certainly have no right to mine our thoughts and beliefs, then punish what they deem incorrect! But hate crime laws get even worse. In hate law countries such as Canada, they are quickly broadened to punish pure speech, even if no crime is committed.
Grant also cites the case of Geert Wilders and his film Fitna:
Most of the film isn’t even his own speech; it’s made of quotes from the Koran and scenes of an Imam calling for Jews’ deaths. Now Wilders is being prosecuted for hate speech, six months after the court declared his speech valid. To demonstrate the hostility of the rest of Europe to free speech, Wilders has been barred from entering Great Britain, told he would ”threaten community harmony…and therefore, public security.”Soon the only place for dissidents like Wilders to be kept from disrupting ”community harmony” will be within the four walls of a prison cell.
In a passage of particular interest to VDARE.COM readers, Grant writes:
Obviously, this should disturb every American. It raises special concern for those worried about immigration. More and more, immigrants are the poster children of hate law advocates. I have researched hate law news for the National Prayer Network since 2006, and have seen a noticeable shift in hate law propaganda, from anti-homosexual toward anti-immigrant violence. Indeed, a few years ago the federal hate bill was named for Matthew Shepard, a homosexual allegedly attacked because of his orientation. Today, it’s named for a Mexican-American.
The Ant-Defamation League claims that Ted Pike's opposition to "hate" legislation is motivated by anti-semitism. But there's nothing like that in Grant's article, which seems to me to be entirely reasonable, rational - and terrifying. (As I said recently, I have no doubt that if the Binghamton immigration center shootings had been done by a white male, VDARE.COM staff would have been in police custody)
And who else is opposing this atrocious legislation?
