by Baron Bodissey
Nowadays, within the European Union, it’s no stretch to criminalize free speech. Under the draconian new legal http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l33178.htm, virtually any Counterjihad writings can be cast as “inciting religious hatred” or “promoting racism”, or some other Orwellian classification. Speech is cast in these terms to render it doubleplus ungood, and therefore unutterable.
In contrast, laws in the United States must be bent into a pretzel to criminalize speech. However, CAIR and the Left have been busy in recent years teaching themselves how to bake pretzels.
It has long been the habit of the Left to elevate ordinary disagreement to the status of “slander”, “libel”, “harassment”, “hate speech”, and the like. Honest mistakes or misstatements are called “lies”. Following someone else’s writings closely and criticizing them is dubbed “stalking”.Islamist groups have observed these techniques, picked them up, and adapted them for their own purposes.
This strategy — the gross escalation of language into absurd hyperbole — can be used to designate unwanted speech as a criminal act. Stalking, libel, slander, and harassment all have criminal legal implications in most countries. Authors are then intimidated not just by the threat of a lawsuit, but by the possibility of jail time and a criminal record.
The Left and the Islamists aren’t the only ones employing these tactics. The same methods have been used during intramural squabbles on the Right. As Dymphna noted in her post last night, the announced intention to post a transcript of a publicly available audio was called “blackmail” by the person who made the audio public in the first place.
Christine of http://www.vigilantfreedom.org/910blog/.
From her introduction:
We’re now familiar with the pattern of attacks against free speech in online journalism and talk radio. This Autumn we have seen an escalation, sometimes from unexpected sources. The political goal, at least for the left and the Islamists, is to criminalize speech by equating any criticism of Islam with “hate speech,” and this so-called “hate speech” as unprotected incitement speech causing “hate crimes.”
Islamists and leftists routinely attack fact-based online journalism and analysis, as well as talk radio, as “incitement,” “hate speech,” “stalking,” “harassment,” “blackmail,” “threats” — labels associated with actual crimes. This highly loaded language — whether it comes from CAIR or from fellow bloggers — lowers the quality of public debate and creates a chilling effect on any online investigative journalism or analysis.
Recent attempts to silence Michael Savage, Joe Kaufman, students at the Universities of Wisconsin and Florida, the Gates of Vienna blog, the Stop The Madrassa Coalition in Brooklyn and others are all examples of labeling protected free speech as a crime or an incitement to violence. The Silencers may claim they are using the criminal labels metaphorically; but the potential chill factor on all journalists and activists is very real.
Her first example concerns “Stop the Madrassa”, an organization that is dedicated to opposing a state-funded Islamic public school in Brooklyn. STM is bucking the entire NYC establishment combined with CAIR on this issue:
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2007/12/criminalizing-free-speech.html#readfurther