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Some here may know of Keith Woods, who is a well-known figure on the Dissident Right. He had his Twitter account unbanned a month ago. Keith is Irish, and he made a tweet about an upcoming hate speech law being considered in Ireland:
Keith was retweeted by Elon Musk who replied "This is a massive attack against freedom of speech". He was subsequently retweeted by Trump Jr. and retweeted by Jordan Peterson.
So overall Keith's brief analysis of the hate speech law reached 11 million people, and sparked debate among opposition politicians and gave the law more public visilbity than it had before.
There's a very slim chance that any of those three know who Keith is or his politics. But it's still a good demonstration of why Twitter is important, and being banned from the public square really does shift the discourse. Of course that is the entire point.
New Florida hate speech law coming out of Jerusalem
After Trump Jr. retweeted Keith, Keith made a reply that was quite strategically intended to goad Trump Jr. into attacking Ron DeSantis for his recent trip to Israel:
You see, Ron DeSantis made a secret trip to Jerusalem (!) last week where he signed a new Florida hate-speech law which "aims to crack down on antisemitic and other heritage based threats." The press release, Governor Ron DeSantis Signs Legislation in Israel Further Combatting Antisemitism provides a summary, and one of the more significant parts of the legislation is:
In tandem with Florida, a couple of weeks ago it was reported that several people from the 2017 torch-light march in Charlottesville on the UVA campus are being charged with felonies on the basis of burning an object with an intent to intimidate. So there seems to be a broader strategy of expanding the definition of "intimidation" to mean "politically incorrect protest" and ban those displays from public universities.
Another significant fact of this Florida Law which was signed in Jerusalem is that it mandates that all manner of offenses, including minor litter (i.e. flyering) are to all be reclassified as hate crimes for statistical reporting. The ADL and various Jewish organizations were recently up in arms that hate crime data did not show enough of a rise an antisemitism, so there's a significant effort to expand the reporting of "hate crime" to include all manner of things.
I am unfortunately not surprised by this affair- an American hate speech law being signed in Jersualem. It goes to show that just because a conservative plays tough on some culture war issues does not at all mean they are an ally. The conservative establishment is not an ally, it's entirely compromised. Supporting conservatism is not an option for people who oppose this sort of influence. I would support Biden over Ron DeSantis at this point- I would be genuinely afraid of what Ron would do at the behest of Israel.
Judging by the context, I’m guessing he hates Jews? Spends all his time looking out for secret field trips? Somehow, I doubt that he’s trying to “goad” Trump Jr. into more socially acceptable forms of political speech.
The full text of the bill can be found here. Your summary is not correct.
Littering is classified as a hate crime if and only if it falls under the new section, “intentionally dumping litter onto private property for the purpose of intimidating or threatening the owner…” Sounds fair to me. Dropping a cup on the sidewalk will not pad any hate crime stats.
Edit: Definitely not. In addition to the above criteria, for it to count, the crime must have been motivated by "race, color, ancestry, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, homeless status, or advanced age."
In fact, these offenses are generally reasonable corollaries to existing Florida law. Anyone who “Does not have legitimate business on the campus,” is already committing a second-degree misdemeanor; first-degree if they refuse to leave. This act merely breaks out the “intent to threaten.” I much prefer specific, explicit laws to the generalist approach used by Virginia.
Maliciously disturbing a funeral? Added to an existing offense for disrupting schools and assemblies for worshipping God. Projecting images onto buildings? That one…I feel like there must be a headline behind that. But you know, if someone projects “I am going to kill netstack” on a building, I don’t mind making that a third-degree felony.
Just because Israel endorses something doesn’t make it a bad idea.
The difference between "political flyer" and "dumping litter for the purpose of intimidation" is up to court interpretation, with Virginia stretching the definition of "intimidation" to include participation in a political protest.
Likewise the "intimidation" language for removing or arresting people at state universities, the line between a politically incorrect protest and "intimidation" is not as secure as you are implying.
This is new, if it wasn't new then there would be no point in the legislation.
Sure, it’s new. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. I’d much rather have hate speech and intimidation codified in law rather than trying to stretch a cross-burning statute to cover tiki torches.
The line for intimidation is secure enough for me. I don’t mind holding to the O’Brien test.
The O'Brien test is irrelevant; that's about laws passed for purposes other than regulating expression being used to prevent expression (and thus, destroying your draft card was able to be constitutionally prohibited). This is more like Texas v. Johnson, where Texas had banned flag-burning.
That’s a good point. Texas v. Johnson demanded exacting scrutiny because it was obviously speech. It did not meet that scrutiny, either by breach of the peace, fighting words, or threatening to ruin the flag in general. I’m not sure which cases drew the throughline from this scrutiny to “intent to intimidate” as in these laws.
For the record, I don’t expect the Charlottesville tiki-torchers to be convicted. Maybe if they’re on camera naming specific people, or if I’m otherwise missing information. I don’t think they’d fall afoul of these Florida statutes either.
That language is trying to get through the loophole created by Virginia v. Black
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