ADL Hate Laws Hate Freedom of Speech
Dugg Duty | 24.06.2009 20:22 | Free Spaces | Palestine
By Dugg Duty
The Anti-Defamation League (as its contrarian euphemism for an organization that does little, if anything, to fight defamation against Arabs and Muslims by rabid Islamo-phobes in the U.S. like Jewish-American Michael Savage) is “again” proposing another anti-free-speech bill disguised as the “Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act” HR 1966, which makes it a thought crime to “intimidate” and “harass” anyone over the Internet or on the airwaves.
Who is “responsible,” as response for one’s subjective feelings and imaginations of “feeling” intimidated? Does ‘intimidation’ mean to become ‘timid,’ and if so whose fault is it that a person becomes timid (easily frightened, shy, or unable to argue against sound logic)? Are we to suppose that political correctness should be “dictated” by the dictators of laws—because this is really what this law amounts to—the allocation to some of the special the right to dictate what is politically correct to discuss and argue?
And why is it that right-wing Zionists are not timid about continually trying to turn this country into a legalistic regime in which more and more freedom of speech is repressed. Educated Jews know that the antidote to lies and propaganda is “more” un-intimidated free speech to counter those lies and propaganda. Rather it is when a freedom of speech and the right to speak one’s truth threatens various kinds of dictatorship and tyranny that some right wing, fear-mongers choose to “censor” the most important elements of out-spoken-ness by saying they are only suppressing the truly hateful (an abstract concept if ever there was one).
Call 1-877-851-6437 or 1-202-225-3121 to oppose this bill—this is very dangerous legislation. Seeww.truthtellers.org/actionplan to contact people on House Judiciary Committee that is meeting Thursday June 25, 2009 about this bill.
This kind of law is pandering to the worst kind of victimization by stating “… whoever transmits … any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined …”
So who then are the Gods-as-people who shall decide the motives of intentions of others’ speech? Who are the psychiatrists and political psychologists who will arbitrate exactly when speech causes emotional distress to a person—as if it were an “illegitimate” purpose if others happen to feel distress—when distress is internal and subjective?
Well we might then not argue at all since arguing, which sometimes gets heated, can evoke emotional distress in others—irrespective of the topic? For that matter we might stop all prosecution since writing a legal argument and entering it into a computer or recording it is a form of electronic transmission? Perhaps if one were to argue that the Israelis are stomping on Palestinians and torturing them in their prisons—it might cause emotional distress to some who would not rather become “aware” of such worldly realities? Maybe the physical distress of torture and brutality is to be allowed since some Jewish Americans just might feel intimidated and distressed by such an accusation?
Or maybe we are not suppose to discuss the fact that some of the right-wing Israeli and Jewish-American bent played a significant part in propagating the lies that brought us into war with Iraq—a war that would be considered illegal by the Nuremberg trials? Perhaps the mere suspicion that Israeli spies have stolen America’s national security secrets and handed them to others would be too distressing for mere minds of mortals to contemplate—better such facts remain buried and not prosecuted by the chickens of U.S. Congress and the submissive Obama White House? And would most likely be a crime to question any person’s loyalty to another country over loyalty to their own home of domicile? So apparently any pungent accusation or suspicion could be deduced, with a modicum of verbal craft, by the self-appointedly, politically correct, as intimidating and distressing?
So where are the Jerry Spensors of the world, author of how to win an argument every time, when you really need them? Spensor, as a famous lawyer, wrote a great argument of a book on why it is important to have argumentation—unless you want more forms of tyranny and dictatorship—which don’t require any input from anyone—irrespective of their needs or perspectives.
Yet was not it another famous lawyer—Alan Dershowitz, self-appointed lawyer for right-wing Israel, who attempted to suppress the publication of a book criticizing his book—trying one way or another to “Finkelstein” his left-wing Jewish enemy? Yet Dershowitz advises his students to have a good “enemy list” in another of his books—and that would likely include people critical of Israel—but then it is not likely that his writings and behavior is the target of this new anti-free-speech bill had in mind about those who intimidate?
Or was it not right-wing American-Jews like Daniel Pipes’ “Campus Watch” and Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation;s “David Project” and David Horowitz’s “Islamo-fascism Awareness Week, etc., that advocated for suppression of free speech on American campuses if critics of Israel were involved? (see “The New McCarthyism” The Nation November 12, 2007.)
More recently another left-wing American Jewish professor, William Robinson, has criticized Israel’s treatment of Palestinains in Gaza as similar a Warsaw concentration camp, and he is being “labeled” anti-Semitic by right-wing Jews and blackballed to get him ousted from his job. Left to their devised any questions about interpretations of “any” aspect of the Holocaust will also be off limits—especially since it is used to psychologically coerce Americans into accepting Israeli Middle East politics—like another war in the Iran, etc.
And that is exactly the problem—right-wing advocates for Zionism constantly attempts to say that it is extremely wrong and inappropriate to compare any other human experience to what Jews suffered in World War II—that it is hateful to compare the trials and tribulations of sufferings Jews by the Nazis as in any way similar to what other people have suffered—that the persecution of Jews have been victimized so far beyond the pale that whatever is done in the name of Zionism today is “beyond” criticism—even if the critics are Jews themselves.
Granted the evils perpetrated against Jews historically are ghastly but two wrongs don’t make one right—nor do three or four wrongs make one right! So get over it right-wingers if you think you can blackmail and blackball every critic to your form of censorial despotism.
We in the United States of America can “never” succumb to this emotional and political blackmail that is so much of the Zionist strategy to psychologically hamstring our right to free speech. For far too long religions have been used to suppress and repress freedoms. They have been used to persecute, prosecute, kill, imprison, and make war—going back at least as far as the Assyrian’s habit of using religious language to disguise criminal acts of war.
The biggest problem that immigrating Caucasians from Europe brought to America were the many European delusions of Christianity—handed over to pagans by warring Romans, which is based ultimately on psychological terrorism—the brainwashing of people to think that a right-wing God would crucify his own son or would put souls into eternal torture. We have had enough of the “European disease” that was so paranoid of religious persecution that they fought all manner of the establishment of national religion—but still allowed the delusions of religious freedom to foment.
We have had enough of the psychiatric dysfunctional realities of Abrahamic religions and there authoritarian psychology! We will not succumb to the religious terrorism and intimidation of both New and Old Testaments of the Bible. It is time to put a stop to this madness—and if that sounds distressing to some than too bad—because what religion has “intended” historically has been far worse. And should the authors of the Bible be prosecuted for intimidation and distress—maybe that would be the way to go—since they are long gone but we could get quite a lesson of psychology out of it?
It was Thomas Jefferson who wrote:
“The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt about what parts of them are genuine.”
Worst still, as one only need read Jonathan Kirsch’s “Moses: A Life” to realize that the whole story of Moses is a fraud—an more importantly that the delusion of that God of Moses was a tyrant and a dictator who gave “his” Hebrew people (if you can believe that) the supposed right to kill off the many other peoples who then inhabited Canaan eons ago. There was no “real” God behind the Deuteronomy commands to kill the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Pirizzites, Hivites an Jebusites, etc, (see Deut. 7:1-2). This was pure right-wing propaganda—and the God of the Bible should be “judged” by human rights groups like any other human rights violator.
Granted they did not have human rights groups back then but we ARE NOT going to advocate for a Zionism TODAY based on past historical delusions. Israel is going to be judged by “human” standards today—period. Some have readily acknowledged that the Bible is not historically accurate but still feel that Jews “deserve” to have a Torah State! Well then no doubt the same psychology of Moses, as purported speaker for his God, who say that God says they need to kill off the Palestinians and throw them into the sea? But do two wrongs do not make one right. Does any amount of unfairness justify another proposition for unfairness—in human terms?
There are those that now claim that to criticize the Zionist project is beyond the pale—that it is politically incorrect to question Jews right to have a religious homeland. Wrong—nothing is beyond freedom of speech—that is what it “means” to have freedom of speech—when “no” presumed authority is too high to be questioned and doubted by the soul of man.
The United States and Israel are on collision course of values—we advocate political freedom for “all” citizens—whereas is Israel you need to be Jewish to be considered a real citizen. But it is time to tell Israelis that they need to separate Church and State if they want our American support. President Obama ought behind his rhetoric of Audacity of Hope and put some teeth into his cheerleader suavity—or he’lll end up another looser like Bush towing the Israeli Lobby’s line. It was bad enough he was stupid enough to think there was still a chance at securing an independent state for the Palestinians when Israel has so badly mangled any reasonable re-accommodation of territory—while giving weasel words play thinking the Americans eternal suckers for empty speech. There is a sane and just path and that is to tell Israelis that a Jewish State is not supportable by American values—and if they want to fight it out with others let them do it on their own.
Israelis are no better than the Muslim countries they constantly criticize. Their religion is no more or less humane than other people’s religions—but it has always been a problem that Abrahamic religious fanatics appropriate exceptional loyalty to their deities—even the Romans asked the Christians during the time of their persecution to simply respect the Roman deities—but their maniacal monotheistic religion would have none of it.
Stop religious repression—how many decades and centuries is this war of ideology going to continue when the world needs to address other serious matters? Eric Alterman was right in his The Defamation League when he said the ADL as a “league” does not exist except in the name of Abe Foxman.
This bill is intimidating and distressful. Americans have the right and the Duty to shout their views vehemently and boldly from the rooftops and the mountaintops—as strenuously and vociferously as they can—and too bad if people are timid by it!
P.S. If you feel this “argument” is important feel free to email it to your friends and family while you still have such freedom.
Dugg Duty
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