Posted on 04/05/2022 8:17:54 AM PDT by Signalman
Touted as an overdue (if duplicative) law that no one could disagree with, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act signed by President Biden last week includes a subtle provision that could boost the Biden administration’s war on wrongthink.
The bill sailed through the U.S. Senate and the House with ease. The tactful naming made the bill radioactive to oppose, which is why 422 congressmen voted in favor while only three opposed.
Rep. Thomas Massie, one of the three who voted against the bill, expressed a handful of concerns, including that there are a limited number of constitutionally specified federal crimes, that lynching is already criminalized, and that “Adding enhanced penalties for ‘hate’ [on top of existing criminal punishments] tends to endanger other liberties such as freedom of speech.”
He also highlighted another potential pitfall of the legislation: “The bill creates another federal crime of ‘conspiracy,’ which I’m concerned could be enforced overbroadly on people who are not perpetrators of a crime.” Here’s the section Massie is referring to:
Whoever conspires to commit any offense under paragraph (1), (2), or (3) shall, if death or serious bodily injury (as defined in section 2246 of this title) results from the offense, or if the offense includes kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, be imprisoned for not more than 30 years, fined in accordance with this title, or both.
The bill amends the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, passed in 2009, which defines and criminalizes hate crimes. The minimum qualification is an attempt “to cause bodily injury” due to the victim’s race, sexual orientation, nationality, gender, religion, or disability.
Bodily injury can be defined as “physical pain” or “any other injury to the body, no matter how temporary.” Sensibly, the 2009 law requires an attempt at violence to be made, which is a crime itself regardless of prejudiced motives. The new “antilynching” law takes this a step further by criminalizing “conspiracy” to commit certain hate crimes.
I’m sure someone will retort: conspiracy to commit a federal crime is already a federal crime. This is not a universally accepted interpretation of conspiracy law, nor does the law’s language or historical precedent justify such a broad interpretation — hence the ostensible necessity for the new antilynching law. Criminalized conspiracies are those plotting “against the United States” – like the Volkswagen executives who attempted to defraud the Environmental Protection Agency by faking emission results and, more recently, the leader of the Oath Keepers who plead guilty to seditious conspiracy for his part in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot.
So as of last Tuesday, it is illegal to simply “agree” to participate in an act if it falls under the categories highlighted above. One can imagine dark political humor venturing into these categories (a comment such as “I hate so-and-so so much I could kill him,” for example) being interpreted as “conspiring to lynch.”
The key issue here is that intent should not be the sole subject of a court case. The purpose of courts is for a neutral arbiter to determine whether someone’s rights were violated during an encounter between two parties. Conspiracy, if no action is taken in pursuit of it, involves only one party: the conspirators. Therefore, it alone constitutes no crime as it couldn’t have possibly violated someone else’s rights.
With this new law, the U.S. government has further expanded into the realm of policing thought crimes. Ominously, this law comes on the heels of the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to broaden the “domestic terrorism” category and expand methods for identifying “threats.”
For those unaware, killings attributed to domestic extremists in 2020 and 2021 were each far lower than in the previous five years. Overall there were only 29 such killings in 2021. Despite this, we continue to hear fearmongering from those in power.
FBI Director Christopher Wray went before Congress last year to declare “The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a number of years.” Attorney General Merrick Garland adopted a similar tone, warning “Domestic violent extremists pose an elevated threat in 2021, and in the FBI’s view, the top domestic violent extremist threat we face comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.”
“Domestic violent extremism poses the most lethal and persistent terrorism-related threat to our country today,” claimed Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last spring. A White House press release added: “The two most lethal elements of today’s domestic terrorism threat are (1) racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race and (2) anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists, such as militia violent extremists.”
It’s a mountain-out-of-a-molehill on par with the “Don’t Say Gay” hysteria. But this one may have far greater consequences down the road as texts, emails, social media posts, and everyday speech are monitored and analyzed by various three-letter agencies to establish the intent of our discourse. The Emmett Till Act may become a key piece in the arsenal for U.S. intelligence agencies’ war on free speech.
Their holy grail is the ability to imprison anyone they don’t like for anything or nothing at all. They’re almost there.
Nacht und Nebel
You know that old saying “first they came for the ....”
Well, here we are.
First they came for the terrorists, then they came for Trump, then they came for the Jan6 protestors, and now they cam come for anyone for really any reason.
If you want “Minority Report” this is how you get “Minority Report”.
when does the intent of a law conflict with a constitutional right?
just saying i hate you, does not make it a hate crime.
So how many Republicans voted for it?
Dr. Floyd Ferris, Atlas Shrugged
And everybody who disagrees with them is a Nazi and that should be made illegal too.
They would love to send you to jail just for disagreeing with them.
There hasn't been a lynching (old definition) for a long while, but there will be a wave of "lynching" in time for the next election.
“...Hate Crimes Prevention Act, passed in 2009, which defines and criminalizes hate crimes.”
Does that law specifically define a “hate crime” designation as only to be used against white people, but not against any minority that attacks white people?
Lynching won’t be considered a crime if the victim is a white, heterosexual male.
If the fed fascists enter the states with intent to arrest people for freedom of speech, the states can activate their anti-klan laws to designate and arrest the federal fascists as terrorists.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but I don’t see an issue as described.
All laws against thought crime are bad. Intent is not discernible absent pronouncement.
But conspiracy to commit a thought crime, absent a crime being committed, is not enforceable.
Is hurt feelings considered bodily injury and therefor be grounds for a hate crime?
Emmett Till was killed by 2 men. In the old days lynching meant a mob, then it was redefined to mean a group of three or more, but Till’s death doesn’t even meet that standard.
Will Smith can't be arrested anyway, so what's the point?
“But conspiracy to commit a thought crime, absent a crime being committed, is not enforceable.”
Yet.
“specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race” - That comment right there is damning evidence that the law will be enforced unconstitutionally and was intended to be enforced unconstitutionally and will violate the 14th Amendment - the law will almost certainly be in violation of equal protection as applied.
Problem is, it will have to be applied before it can be constitutionally nuked
They can define ‘hate thought’ but not what a woman is.
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