Forbes - Major tech firms have agreed to do more to fight hate speech, signing a code of conduct that's been integrated into the EU's Digital Services Act.

Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, X Snapchat and YouTube have all agreed to abide by the code of conduct's terms, along with LinkedIn, Microsoft hosted consumer services, Rakuten Viber, Dailymotion and Jeuxvideo.com.

The aim is to strengthen the way online platforms deal with content that EU and national laws define as illegal hate speech.

"Hatred and polarization are threats to EU values and fundamental rights and undermine the stability of our democracies. The internet is amplifying the negative effects of hate speech," said Michael McGrath, commissioner for democracy, justice, the rule of law and consumer protection.

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Published from Seton Hall University

(Excerpt from Seton Hall Law Review)

INTRODUCTION

An increasing number of legal scholars and political scientists
acknowledge that, in most cases, Supreme Court decision-making is
based on neither pure law nor pure politics. 1 Rather, the Justices’ votes

and the Court’s decisions arise from an uncertain amalgam of law and
politics—a law-politics dynamic, we might say. 2 Politics, though, is not
static. 3 The conservative politics of 1990 is not the same as the
conservative politics of 2021, including in relation to judicial decision-
making. Hence, while a conservative majority has controlled the Court
since 1991, when Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall,4 the
ramifications of political conservatism for the Court’s decision-making
have significantly transformed over the years.
This Article traces the evolution of conservatism during the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and explores the implications
of that history for the Court’s recent religious freedom cases, with a
focus on Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. 5 To be sure, changes in the
Court’s personnel affect the politics of the Court’s decisions. Moving
from a liberal icon, like Marshall, to an ultra-conservative, like Thomas,
will inevitably change the politics of Supreme Court adjudication. 6
The same can be said about the more recent transition from Ruth
Bader Ginsburg to Amy Coney Barrett. Yet, one should not overlook

the importance of less extreme transitions, such as the replacement of
the moderately conservative Sandra Day O’Connor with the arch-
conservative Samuel Alito. Regardless, given that a conservative bloc
has controlled the Court for thirty years, this Article is less concerned
with the politics of individual Justices and more concerned with
broader trends in conservative politics.7
For instance, before 1991, conservatives often advocated for
judicial restraint: the Justices, according to this viewpoint, should have
been deferring to the democratic process.8 If the Court was reviewing

the constitutionality of a congressional action, to take one example,
the Justices should refrain from substituting their own values for those
of Congress. After 1991 and the establishment of conservative control
of the Court, conservatives quickly lost interest in judicial restraint and
instead began advocating for “judicial engagement.” 9 Conservatives,
in other words, encouraged the Court to articulate and implement
conservative values rather than deferring to the democratic process. 10
Still, though, what values were the Justices to articulate and
implement? In short, what did (and does) conservatism mean for the
Court?

To read full review

New York Magazine - An ideology is on the march. Traces of it are detectable in a racist massacre in Buffalo; in Tucker Carlson’s monologues; in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s public comments. Find it again in the right’s anti-abortion rhetoric, which poorly disguises demographic anxiety, or in the right’s response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which shows it embracing God and guns with ever greater conviction. This ideology has a name, argue sociologists Samuel L. Perry of the University of Oklahoma and Philip S. Gorski of Yale University. Perry and Gorski call it white Christian nationalism, and in their view, it represents a pressing threat to democracy.

In The Flag and the Cross, their new book from Oxford University Press, white Christian nationalists undergo careful scrutiny. Combining research with data analysis, Gorski and Perry argue that white Christian nationalists share a set of common anti-democratic beliefs and principles. “These are beliefs that, we argue, reflect a desire to restore and privilege the myths, values, identity, and authority of a particular ethnocultural tribe,” they write. “These beliefs add up to a political vision that privileges the tribe. And they seek to put other tribes in their proper place.”

I recently spoke with Gorski and Perry about their findings and the threat white Christian nationalism poses to democracy.

Why do you think the term “white Christian nationalism” is so important to use?

Gorski: I think because it identifies one of the deepest and most powerful currents in American political culture, one that has been invisible to most folks outside of that culture and even, in a way, to a lot of people inside of that culture because it’s the water they swim in and the air they breathe. And of course it’s also important because it is right now evolving into a deeply anti-democratic ideology, one that really is driving some of the most radical fringe groups in the United States today, including many mainstream political candidates in the Republican Party.

Perry: I would say that one element we see, just from an empirical standpoint, is that quantitative indicators of Christian-nationalist ideology seem to operate differently for white Americans than for, say, African Americans. When white Americans take our surveys and answer questions about whether the United States is a Christian nation or we don’t need a separation of church and state or we should advocate Christian values in the government, for them, it is powerfully associated with things like nostalgia and authoritarianism and a certain vision of America’s history as this kind of mythic story: that we have a special relationship with God and that there is this kind of place that we are going — this deep story.

And the vision we talk about in the book for, say, African Americans who take the same survey and answer the same questions, those questions mean something different. Clearly, for African Americans to affirm those kinds of statements about Christian nation, Christian values, Christian heritage, they don’t think nostalgically for a better time. They think aspirationally. It seems, from the way they respond to other questions, that they respond to a lot of what Phil has talked about in a previous book on civil religion — that there is this aspirational component of American civil religion that holds to a creedal understanding of what America is supposed to be about, our constitutional principles. And so you can see what would seem like Christian nationalism in the mouth of Martin Luther King Jr. or Frederick Douglass properly understood as calls to live up to the values we claim to adhere to.

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NBC News - The association, founded in 1876, condemned legislation that would threaten librarians and other educators with criminal prosecution for possessing “obscene” material

Less than two months into 2024, lawmakers in at least 13 states have introduced legislation that could disrupt libraries’ services and censor their materials. The new wave of bills follows a historic year of book challenges, mainly affecting titles centered on the topics of race, gender identity or sexual orientation.

“The American Library Association condemns in the strongest terms possible legislation in more than a dozen states that would threaten librarians and other educators with criminal prosecution for doing their jobs,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, in a statement. “This is not a culture war; it’s a threat to our democracy.”

Caldwell-Stone added, “Nowhere have we witnessed attacks on education like those currently proposed in Wisconsin.” 

The Wisconsin Legislature is considering a bill to take away protections from library employees being prosecuted on charges of possessing “obscene” materials by removing public, private and tribal schools from the list of institutions exempt from prosecution for obscene materials violations.

“Those who would prosecute librarians and teachers would divert precious education resources to defending frivolous lawsuits and policing our nation’s most trusted institutions and community anchors: libraries and schools,” Caldwell-Stone said.

In Idaho, a bill proposes to prohibit librarians from making materials that include sexual conduct available to minors. Homosexuality is included in that category alongside sexual intercourse and masturbation. 

Caldwell-Stone said the American Library Association is familiar with “attempts to rewrite obscenity statutes” to encompass specific books and topics, and she said she considers it a form of discrimination.

Obscenity laws in the majority of the states provide exemptions and are designed to prevent legal action against school, museum and library employees, who typically provide access to a breadth of materials.

Revoking those exemptions would mean schools and libraries would have to spend more time and resources on defense against scrutiny, Caldwell-Stone said.

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AXIOS - Antisemitic incidents in the U.S. have more than tripled in the three months following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel, according to new Anti-Defamation League (ADL) preliminary data.

Driving the news: Antisemitic cases involving incidents like physical assault, harassment and vandalism, were higher than the total number of antisemitic episodes tracked in almost every year since ADL started monitoring this data in the late 1970s, the group said Wednesday.

By the numbers: The ADL documented 3,283 antisemitic incidents between Oct. 7, 2023, and Jan. 7, the group's report said. That's a 360% jump from the same period a year earlier.

• At least 628 incidents were reported against Jewish institutions such as synagogues and community centers.
• The report said 505 incidents occurred on college campuses, and another 246 were reported in K-12 schools.
• About two-thirds of the reported incidents could be directly related to the Israel-Hamas war, the ADL report said.

Zoom out: Since Oct. 7, there was an average of nearly 34 antisemitic incidents per day, putting 2023 on track to be the highest year for antisemitic acts against Jews, according to ADL records.

• The preliminary three-month tally is higher than the total number of antisemitic incidents tracked in any year in the last decade, except for 2022, when the number of such incidents reached a historic high of 3,697.

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KWBU - 

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST: Attorneys general in Massachusetts and New Hampshire are filing lawsuits to curtail the increasingly public activities of a neo-Nazi group called NSC-131. NPR's domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef joins us now. All right. NSC-131 - who are they, and what are they doing, Odette?

ODETTE YOUSEF, BYLINE: Well, A, NSC-131 stands for Nationalist Social Club Anti-Communist Action. It was started in 2019 by a Massachusetts man named Christopher Hood and now has an estimated 20 to 30 active members. They are explicitly neo-Nazi, pursuing a white nationalist agenda. And these suits relate to activities that the group undertook mostly in 2022, 2023, when it was deliberately trying to increase its public profile throughout New England. Its members disrupted several drag queen story hours at libraries and other establishments. They patrolled neighborhoods, and they visited several hotels that were putting up asylum-seekers, targeting and harassing migrants and other patrons. In several instances, A, the group has been involved in physical violence. But actually, these are not criminal charges. These are civil lawsuits.

MARTÍNEZ: Why not? I mean, they sound like crimes, especially violence. So why is this being pursued in civil court?

YOUSEF: Yeah. I put that question to Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell, and here's what she said.

ANDREA CAMPBELL: We think we have a strong case here to hold them accountable, frankly, not focusing on individual acts, but the pattern and the persistent harassing and threatening behavior we're seeing that is targeting and terrorizing people all across the Commonwealth.

YOUSEF: So the strategy in Massachusetts, A, is to string together several incidents to argue that this organization is engaging in illegal activity to violate residents' civil rights. Now, in New Hampshire, the state's - that state's taking a different approach. That case is focusing on just one incident where the group disrupted a drag queen story hour at a restaurant in Concord. And the state's claiming that this amounted to trying to terrorize an establishment into violating the state's law against discrimination.

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ADL - In the month following Hamas’s terror attack on Israel, antisemitic incidents in the U.S. increased by 316 percent compared to the same time period last year, according to preliminary data released today by ADL (the Anti-Defamation League). At the same time, Americans are growing increasingly concerned about antisemitism, with more than 70 percent agreeing in a new survey that Jew-hatred is a serious problem.

In the one-month period between Oct. 7 and Nov. 7, 2023, the ADL Center on Extremism documented 832 antisemitic incidents of assault, vandalism and harassment across the U.S., an average of nearly 28 incidents a day. This represents a 316 percent increase from the 200 incidents reported during the same period in 2022.

An interactive map plotting where incidents occurred since Oct. 7 can be found here.

Of the 832 incidents, ADL recorded 632 acts of harassment, 170 instances of vandalism, and 30 assaults.

ADL’s data shows that at least 200 of the 653 anti-Israel rallies held across the U.S. since Oct. 7 featured explicit or strong implicit support for Hamas and/or violence against Jews in Israel. These rallies are included in ADL’s tally of antisemitic incidents under the harassment category.

124 of the incidents took place on college campuses since Oct. 7, compared to only 12 incidents over the same time period last year.

“As we have seen repeatedly, when conflict arises in the Middle East, particularly when Israel exercises its right to self-defense, antisemitic incidents increase here in the U.S. and around the world,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “These include violent assaults on pro-Israeli students on college campuses, anti-Israel protests openly expressing support for terrorist organizations, as well as white supremacists distributing antisemitic fliers and banners blaming Jews for the war.”

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Vox - Deadly violence in the Middle East is spurring attacks and heightening fear in Muslim, Jewish, and Arab (especially Palestinian) communities across the United States.

In Illinois, about a week after Hamas militants attacked Israel, a landlord stabbed his tenants, 6-year-old Wadea al-Fayoume and his mother Hanaan Shahin, more than two dozen times for being Muslim, according to the police. Only the mother survived and told a relative that the landlord yelled “you Muslims must die!” as he choked her.

Police opened a hate crime investigation this week after a man in Los Angeles was yelling “free Palestine,” “kill Jews,” “brown people matter,” and “Israel kill people,” and kicked in the back door of a Jewish family’s home and entered.

Israel’s airstrikes in the past three weeks have killed more than 8,000 Palestinians, most of them women and minors, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Hamas’s attack killed more than 1,400 Israelis, and the group is still holding about 200 people hostage, according to the Israeli government. As the war continues, law enforcement officials expect hate crimes reports to only increase: The FBI warned last week that “the volume and frequency of threats to Americans, especially those in the Jewish, Arab American, and Muslim communities in the United States, have increased, raising our concern that violent extremists and lone offenders motivated by or reacting to ongoing events could target these communities.”

At the Pennsylvania state Capitol, a man pulled up to a pro-Palestine protest, yelled out anti-Muslim and racist slurs, and pointed a gun at rallygoers from his car. In California, synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses have been vandalized since the start of the war. Flyers with anti-Jewish rhetoric — including “Jews wage war on American freedoms!” — were placed on vehicles across Orange County.

A man in Illinois was charged with a hate crime after threatening to shoot two Muslim men and yelling slurs at them. A Muslim all-girls school was on “soft-lockdown” after receiving a “threatening hate letter” that applauded the killing of al-Fayoume and included “racist, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Muslim language, and discussed killing Muslims and Palestinians.”

Owners at a New York City Palestinian restaurant, who publicly called for an end to what they deemed Israel’s “apartheid,” disconnected the restaurant’s phone over threatening voicemails. The restaurant has received nonstop one-star reviews since the start of the conflict; a man entered the dining room in the past week, shouting “terrorist” at the workers. College campuses have become breeding grounds for a host of antisemitic and anti-Muslim acts, leaving students fearful that they are unprotected from intimidation and possible violence.

The FBI’s national hate crimes data is reported on a yearly basis, and the agency has not released specific numbers about the increases they’ve seen in threats and hate crimes against Palestinians, Jews, or Muslims have risen in the past few weeks. Even so, the FBI’s latest hate crimes report, released on October 16, showed that hate crimes were already on the rise in the past year.

Hate crimes increased by 7 percent in 2022 compared to 2021. Anti-Jewish attacks, the second highest hate crimes category after anti-Black, rose to 1,124 incidents. There were 158 reported anti-Muslim incidents and 92 reported anti-Arab incidents.

The numbers are an undercount. Many police departments opt out of submitting hate crime data to the FBI, and it remains difficult for officers to prove that a reported crime was motivated by bias. Fear and distrust of law enforcement among victims of certain populations, such as Muslim communities, leads to underreporting. Nevertheless, the number of incidents represents the highest number recorded since the FBI began collecting this information in 1991.

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USAToday - Allison Josephs got a bone-chilling threat in 2012 from someone who identified herself as Becky. “Hitler should have finished his good work,” the message read. The writer said she had her Louisville Slugger ready for the “next chance we get.”

The frequency of hate-filled social media posts targeting Jews has only increased since then, said Josephs, a mother of four who runs the nonprofit Jew in the City. 

So she said she was not surprised by the wave of online hate immediately following the deadly attacks in Israel as people celebrated Hamas’ acts of terror, striking fear of more violence to come.

“From a social media perspective, it’s already been so bad, it’s kind of hard for it to get worse,” Josephs said.

But it is getting worse. Groups who study online hate speech say it has spiked in recent days – not just for Jewish communities but also for Palestinians, who have faced increasing online hatred. And representatives of both communities agree on one thing: U.S.-based social media companies are still not doing anywhere near enough to rid their platforms of hate against targeted groups.

The escalation in harsh rhetoric comes at a time when online hate speech was already increasing, experts said. In the weeks before the conflict, the ADL was locked in a bitter dispute with X, formerly Twitter, over Elon Musk’s alleged promotion of extremists and hands-off approach to content moderation. Meanwhile, 7amleh, an Arab civil rights organization has been meeting with X for months, trying to persuade the company to quell hate speech against Palestinians.

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