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Our most powerful weapon against the ongoing Marxist infiltration of our institutions and destruction of conservative values is our right to speak out in order to guide our government. Paradoxically, our officials are tasked with the sworn duty to preserve that right. But it looks like our “conservative supermajority” legislature is preparing to infringe on our speech under the false promises contained in a “hate crimes” law. The South Carolina Senate is reviewing last year’s Clementa C. Pinckney Hate Crimes Act H.3014 that made it through the House and is now in its final stages toward approval. Despite repeatedly pointing out the potential harm to our First Amendment rights, the GOP is ready to gift another critical victory to the Democratic Party’s long game. As a second-year bill, it will continue where it left off last session and now be whisked to the finish line before the public even notices. Unless you speak up today.
There is no valid legal reason to pass this law. Its proponents are on the record, admitting that it will never prevent future tragedies that stem from hate. They falsely claim that it’s to protect “vulnerable groups,” despite that Columbia’s foray into a local hate crimes statute proved that minorities and the mentally ill are most often negatively impacted. Even political progressives involved nationally in defending human rights for the marginalized vehemently oppose hate crime laws as an attack on civil rights. Proponents try to convince us that it will not impact free speech rights, but that is an outright lie, since it links words to our criminal code. It allows the government to define “hate speech” which should give us pause, considering that the federal government listed mis- dis- and mal-information among “terrorism threats,” which will only serve to censor and silence political dissidents.
Does our South Carolina GOP embrace the goals of radical political groups?
Passing this bill aligns conservative GOP lawmakers with the aims of the radical political groups behind it. Previously, a two-part Palmetto State Watch (PSW) article exposed the involvement of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as the source of text for hate crimes bills in three South Carolina cities: Columbia, Charleston, and Greenville. The ADL is an extremist organization deeply involved in shaping American civil rights for its own ends and does so, partly, by inflating “hate crimes” data. A progressive activist concluded in a damning exposé that the ADL’s campaign against “hate” is designed to “consolidate its power.” Almost everything remotely on the right is considered hateful among the ADLs fast-growing database of “symbols, memes, and slogans” including the innocent “OK” hand sign, the well-known prank phrase “It’s OK to be white,” and memes and cartoon characters like Pepe the Frog. The ADL is in sync with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an extremist political organization accused of Islamic terrorism funding, that also continues to pressure our conservative lawmakers for passage of H3014.
What is this really about?
The South Carolina Chamber of Commerce (SC Chamber), no ally of taxpayers but best friend to foreign big business is the real driver behind passing the bill. The Chamber holds enormous sway over our elected officials and has for years been extremely invested in passing this law. In its zeal for creating jobs, it is reshaping the conservative South Carolina environment so that our values bend to those of European progressives beholden to the United Nation’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) requirements. It’s also about virtue-signaling, even at the expense of speech. According to the SC Chamber, the bill “signals that South Carolina is an open, welcoming state for all individuals.”
Many people may be unaware of the “global citizen” agenda working its way through K-12 curriculums bearing a host of progressive social attitudes that it programs into children. These same values are being forced onto businesses and worked into our laws as part of a global social and economic transformation. Our legislators are not immune to the national-level pressure to embrace it and are anxious to be seen as “doing something.”
The global citizen is part of the UN 2030 Agenda with its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) centered on a “new social contract” based in so-called social justice, anti-bias, redressing historical grievances, decolonization, culturally humility, stopping climate change, embrace of transgenderism, redefining citizens’ relationships with their government, etc. Above all, it aims to shape behaviors to fit the new attitudes that are necessary to support centralized global governance. In order to develop a one-world community with open borders, all forms of bigotry must be stamped out. The UN Agenda is built into the business models of European corporations and South Carolina does its best to accommodate those attitudes in order to lure them here.
And that’s where free speech rights get in the way and citizen behavior needs to be brought under control. Hate laws don’t stop hate, but because they target “words,” the bill could be useful in tamping down the voices of Americans who hold views contrary to the globalist and progressive leftist identity. Among these are “traditional values” regarding family, sex, immigration, gun ownership, religion, national pride, support for capitalism, and rejection of socialism. If you object to something, it’s bigotry and that means it’s “hate speech.”
Looking ahead: how do we know this is only the first step in a larger agenda for behavior modification through speech laws?
This bill is only the first step toward word-policing, as proven by our neighbor Georgia which introduced a state hate crime bill in 2020 and can’t seem to stop adding to it. The very next year, Georgia vocabulary police were seeking to expand the state hate crimes law as part of “more action to stop anti-Asian violence.” This is while simultaneously admitting that “[h]ate crimes laws are not preventative. …[a] hate crimes law does not prevent hate killings.” What was really needed now, according to then-state Representative Bee Nguyen was to call out “xenophobic language.” And this year Georgia is reviving a proposed 2023 bill to define antisemitism in state law in order to “help prosecutors and other officials identify hate crimes and illegal discrimination targeting Jewish people.”
But the greatest warning of all comes from Europe and Canada, demonstrating precisely what western governments unfettered by the likes of a U.S. Constitution are capable of in the quest to regulate speech. Some of the most chilling cases, like Scotland and Norway also started out talking about protecting the marginalized, but slowly built their “anti-hate” laws to criminalize private conversations inside homes. Finland is, once again, prosecuting a twice-acquitted politician accused of quoting Bible verses in Tweets and media going back 20 years but only now being described as “homophobic” and “hate crimes.” When Canada passed a 2015 a bill with the words “gender identity or expression,” it attached it to an already-robust hate crimes criminal code, making consistent refusal to use someone’s “preferred pronouns” a potentially chargeable offense. Right now, Ireland is crafting a law criminalizing speech in homes using a definition of “hatred” that is “so broad in its scope and casts a prosecutorial net so wide that upon its passing no citizen will ever be entirely sure what they are free to say.” As written, mere possession of memes, cartoons or any content that could be deemed “hateful” could lead to arrest. How will police know you whispered your government-restricted opinion to a friend or loved one? Someone close to you, perhaps your child, will likely be programmed or incentivized to report you to authorities. But this could never happen in the United States, right?
What can you do?
This can only pass if conservative citizens don’t bother calling their legislators. Radical progressives do make the time to call and are currently working the phones to get this bill passed. As a result, our conservative representatives never hear opposition and no longer see harm in trading away our constitutional rights for whatever they’re gaining during their House bargaining sessions.
Call your Senate representative and encourage others to do so. People inside the legislature confirm that phone calls are extremely effective at influencing votes. Find your House/Senate representatives here and also see how they vote. Follow up with an e-mail although, while an e-mail is not as likely to get read, there’s always a chance.
This is an election year, so be sure to examine the list of the 84 GOP House officials who gave away your speech rights last year and track the current bill status and links to every step of its passage.