Hate Crimes

Today's News about Hate Crimes

U.S. designation of Muslim Brotherhood as terror organization is a crucial milestone for StopAntisemitism.org watchdog
Source: StopAntisemitism.org
May 1, 2019
Yesterday's landmark announcement that the Trump administration is pursuing a foreign terrorist organization designation for the Muslim Brotherhood exemplifies the broad success of StopAntisemitism.org, the watchdog group announced today

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Rep. Peters Statement on Chabad of Poway Synagogue Shooting
Source: Scott Peters (D-CA, 52nd)
April 29, 2019
“Today also marks six months to the day of the tragedy at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Enough. Enough hate. Enough gun violence. I stand with all Jewish Americans today, especially those in Poway and San Diego.”

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Neal Statement Following Poway Synagogue Shooting
Source: Richard E. Neal (D-MA, 1st)
April 27, 2019
"I am deeply disturbed by the shooting that took place in a CA synagogue yesterday on the last day of Passover where innocent people were killed and injured. We must continue to speak out against anti-semitism in all of its forms."

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REP. JOHN LEWIS DECRIES RAMPANT VIOLENCE IN PLACES OF WORSHIP
Source: John Lewis (D-GA, 5th)
April 27, 2019
“It has come to a point where the people of this nation, and citizens of the world, cannot attend church or safely worship at synagogues or mosques. Violence is so pervasive in our society and in the world community that it has broken through the consecration of the sanctuary and violated our most sacred spaces. How many more lives do we need to lose before we decide to do all we can to bring an end to wanton gun violence in this country?

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Sasse: Pro-Life Speech Is Not Hate Speech

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by: Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE)

Washington, D.C. - April 17, 2019 - (The Ponder News) -- Last week, at the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, U.S. Senator Ben Sasse pressed social media companies on the definition of hate speech and how pro-life advocacy is not violence.

Senator Sasse’s full exchange can be found here and a partial transcript is found below:

Senator Sasse: Can you define hate speech?

Mr. Neil Potts (Facebook): Senator, thank you, I'll take a stab at it. Both giving you the definition from a Facebook position, but I - we’re also recognizing there's not a universal definition of hate speech across the globe. So, to Facebook the way we define hate speech is an attack against a person or a group of people based on their protected characteristic like race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, as well as serious disability. We define attack to mean, something like, using words that are dehumanizing, cause for violence, contempt or disgust, exclusion or segregation. But I think your point is...is the accurate one, is to how do you draw those lines to allow a free flow of ideas, to allow debate, but also for us to keep the community safe. So, we on my team, and the teams that we work with, we really fight through that, that struggle abounds in voice vs. safety. So, we want to give voice to more people. We err on the side of giving voice. There is a lot of content that I find, perhaps, offensive - and maybe some of you all would find offensive as well - that we allow on the platform because it doesn't violate our policies. But, when we draw the line, and we say that that this type of speech is going to lead to violence, it is dehumanizing, we do remove it under our policies. And...

Sen. Sasse: I don't mean to be rude. I don't want to interrupt you, if we had a lot more time here. But I just want to ask a precise point here because I'm well over time right now. A lot of the context of this debate is around the pro-life movement and when you bring up violence, I mean, there's violence in abortion. It's in the abortion. Can you explain to me how the pro-life position is in any way violent, and how any community standards could ever say a pro-life person's speech should be shut down because somehow…

I don't follow from this...I could understand how you could say that a whole bunch of positions advocating the most extreme abortion laws that exist on earth: the U.S., China, North Korea, and Vietnam are the only nations that allow abortion until moments before delivery. Out of 200 countries there are four on Earth that do that. We're one of those four. There's clearly violence associated with that conversation. It's on the abortion advocates' side of the debate. How is the pro-life side ever guilty of something that equates to violence? Like, how could a pro-life position ever be shut down because of safety?

Mr. Potts: That's a great question Senator. And, to be clear, a lot of this depends on intent...and in the context of statements or images or video as are shared so it's hard to do the hypothetical. But a general pro-life position would not be violating our community standards for hate speech.

Letter to the Editor: Charlottesville and Toxic Rhetoric

by Tom MacArthur (R-NJ, 3rd)

As an entrepreneur and business owner, I was proud to build a multinational company with thousands of employees representing every gender, ethnicity, color and creed. Our diversity helped the company to grow, helped families to build better lives, and opened doors of opportunity for some people that may not have been open for their parents and grandparents.

I tell that story because in my life, whether it was in business or now in public service, or through the work of our family charitable foundation across the globe, or at our church, and especially when my wife and I adopted two beautiful children from Korea – the color of one's skin or their ethnicity was never the measure of a person for me. What is far more important, as Dr. King reminded us, is the content of one’s character.

The Courier-Post recently published a letter to the editor that stated: "Now people are dead in Charlottesville. Tom MacArthur's hands are still not clean." So, upon entering politics, while I expected to be called many things, an unrepentant racist who was complicit in the murder of innocent people hundreds of miles away wasn't one of them.

But, unfortunately, that's the state of public discourse in America right now. It is toxic and hate-filled. People across the partisan spectrum are increasingly using inflammatory rhetoric to make their point, or attract attention to their agenda or themselves.

We need to be better than this. President Donald Trump must be better; members of Congress and politicians in both parties must be better; the media, which is too often biased and even dishonest, must be better; and Americans on the fringe of the political left and political right must be better. Each has played a role in getting us to this point, and each has an obligation to move us past it.

What happened in Charlottesville was despicable and tragic. Decent people must utterly reject white supremacists, the KKK, and their hateful and perverse ideology. Many of our parents or grandparents fought in World War II to rid the world of Nazism across Europe; allowing it to rise again on our shores is unacceptable. People of good moral conscience must stand against it.

We must call out prejudice, intolerance and violence wherever it exists, whoever perpetrates it, and whatever part of the political spectrum with which they identify.

We, as a nation, should have an open and honest dialogue about all that is dividing us, but let's recognize that this can't happen if we're screaming at and vilifying each other.

Each of us must look in the mirror and honestly consider whether we are helping to heal our nation or widening the divide. May God help us to be healers. I'm asking all of you reading this to help lower the volume. Only then will we be able to hear one another speak.

U.S. Rep. Tom MacArthur

R-3rd Congressional District

This Letter to the Editor first appeared in the Courier-Post here