Stasi in the West
The East Germany Ministry of State Security, commonly known as the Stasi, is considered to have been one of the most “effective” surveillance operations ever. As Amnesty International notes, part of what made it so oppressive was its massive network of informants:
The Stasi’s surveillance network spiralled out into every aspect of daily life. Among an estimated 274,000 employees were at least 174,000 informants, which would have been about 2.5% of the working population.
Informants snooped in every office, cultural and sporting society, and apartment building. They recorded people in their own homes and in the homes of their friends.
The governments across the West are increasingly turning to Stasi-like systems in efforts to silence criticism of the ruling class policies – from unpopular wars and climate change inaction to plunder and eugenic public health policies.
Much of this is being done under the guise of combating “hate.”
Below is a list of all the efforts to turn citizens in the US and Europe into informers in the burgeoning Stasi system that collects information on individuals accused of bias or hate or enact censorship in other ways.
A few quick notes before the rundown of the new laws and reporting systems. A neat trick by making it appear as if these laws are anti-hate is that opposition to them can be dismissed as pro-hate. In reality, the issue really has nothing to do with hate, but is more a question of free speech. In the US, for example, there are already hate crime laws on the books.
So why is the government trying to hoover up data on alleged hate “incidents” – which are protected rights even if you disagree with them. How could this information be abused by the state?
The problem is that the definition of bias or hate is incredibly slippery and is often just any speech that the powers that be don’t want to hear. It can range from an “offensive” joke to criticism of Israeli policy. We now have concrete examples of exactly how it could be abused as Canada works to enact a precrime law that would punish individuals accused of hate incidents before they (in theory) commit a hate crime.
It looks like this is either some sort of coordinated (by who?) effort or it caught on like a fashion trend among governments in the West. Maybe this is just more of the liberal effort to build some sort of unifying “woke” ideology in the place of nationalism or religion. Even if that’s the charitable view, the fact remains that once these powers are in place, they will be very difficult to get rid of, and in times of crisis they will be wielded widely against anyone who challenges power structures.
One could argue (convincingly in my humble opinion) that we are already in times of crisis and that this is the true intention of these laws. Roll them out under the guise of protecting minorities, but their true use will be to silence anyone who challenges power, primarily directed at the following:
Labor organizers and antiwar activists: We have seen governments in Canadaand Germany crack down on truckers and farmers, respectively, labeling them as hate-filled bigots in order to dismiss their economic concerns or vaccine mandate concerns. Allegations of hate are again coming from high places with regards to the current encampments on university campuses:
Many of the following laws listed here equate any criticism of Israel with antisemitism and have also been used to silence criticism of the war against Russia. They will also no doubt be used to help crush labor action much along the lines of past laws like the California Criminal Syndicalism Act of 1919 which prohibited speech that suggested the use of violence for political aims. It came at a time when workers were winning important battles in the class war raging across the state. California started locking up Wobblies en masse and within a few years the state organization was jailed into submission.
Alternative news. Naked Capitalism readers don’t have to look far for errors (or intentional targeting) in this system as Google’s AI targeted this site for “hateful content” among other alleged sins.
With that being said, it’s probably a good time to assemble all these efforts in one place. Readers, if I’m missing any, please add in comments.
The US
Washington
Let’s start in the Pacific Northwest. As far as I can tell, Washington’s bill was unique because it not only asked citizens to report on one another, it also planned to offer payments of up to $2,000 to those on the receiving end of bias incidents. While the payouts were removed from the bill before it became law, the fact such a scheme was considered at all raises the alarm level even higher.
How many fabricated reports would be attempts to simply collect some money? Maybe I’m not jaded enough yet, but it’s shocking that with so many needs (e.g., Washington has the sixth-highest homelessness rate in the country), this is an item lawmakers thought would be a good use of funds. That’s telling of the direction we’re headed.
Oregon
Oregon now has its Bias Response Hotline to track “bias incidents.”
New York
In December of 2022, New York launched its Hate and Bias Prevention Unit. A new telephone hotline and online portal came online in October of last year.
Maryland
Maryland, too, has its system – its hate incidents examples include “offensive jokes” and “malicious complaints of smell or noise.” Maryland also has its Emmett Till Alert System that sends out three levels of alerts for specific acts of hate. For now, they only go to black lawmakers, civil rights activists, the media and other approved outlets, but expansion to the general populace is under consideration.
California
California has a multilingual statewide hotline and website that encourages people to report all acts of “hate” with the definition for hate at least partially provided by rightwing Zionist Anti-Defamation League(ADL). The aforementioned law in Washington was also pushed by the ADL.
The CA vs Hate hotline was part of a broader $166.5 million investment in state anti-hate initiatives that was passed in 2021. Since then, California has been sending a large chunk of that funding to nonprofits across the state “to provide support to victims and survivors of hate incidents.”
European and Canadian readers will have to chime in on the difference in countries there, but in the US, hate speech or a hate incident is very different from a hate crime:
In the United States, hate speech is protected by the First Amendment. Courts extend this protection on the grounds that the First Amendment requires the government to strictly protect robust debate on matters of public concern even when such debate devolves into distasteful, offensive, or hateful speech that causes others to feel grief, anger, or fear.
…the FBI has defined a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity,” including skin color and national origin.
In effect, these programs are asking citizens to report one another for First Amendment-protected speech. And who knows what happens to the information collected on alleged perps. I was directed to the California Civil Rights Division for an answer to that question and reached out on March 20 of this year; I have yet to receive a response.
These programs have been helped by federal funding but have argely been left to the states thus far. The efforts were also pioneered on college campuses. From the New York Post back in August of 2022:
Bias hotlines have been popping up at universities across the US in recent years — but experts fear such initiatives are becoming “more pervasive and more repressive” than ever. New York University is among the handful of colleges that publicly advertise a specific “hotline” — including on the back of student ID cards — as a way for them to anonymously file complaints about discrimination, harassment and a string of other issues.
Other universities across the country appear to only have online portals, or other methods, in place for lodging complaints under their own bias response systems. Critics, however, claim that the hotlines — and broader bias response systems in place at hundreds of other universities — are often used to just report faculty or students for expressing controversial opinions.
“Most purport to curb discrimination and harassment, but define those terms well beyond their legal definitions, suggesting that ‘offensive,’ ‘unwanted,’ or ‘upsetting’ words, alone, are unlawful. That’s almost never true,” Alex Morey, an attorney for the free speech rights advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and _expression_ (FIRE), told The Post on Tuesday.
“But the result is students think they ought to be reporting fellow students or faculty to administrators simply for expressing a controversial opinion, or something they subjectively find offensive.”
And many US school districts are preparing kids to report at even younger ages. Parents Defending Education tracks bias response systems in high schools across the US. As of September 2023, here’s where we are:
Number of states that have them: 22 plus District of Columbia
Number of total school districts: 115
Number of total schools: 4,565
Number of total students: 2,492,241
Canada
The country to the US’ north provides an excellent case study as to where all this focus on “hate” and development of a Stasi citizenry could be headed.
Ottawa’s online harms bill includes a provision to impose house arrest on someone who is feared to commit a hate crime in the future. From The Globe and Mail:
The person could be made to wear an electronic tag, if the attorney-general requests it, or ordered by a judge to remain at home, the bill says. Mr. Virani, who is Attorney-General as well as Justice Minister, said it is important that any peace bond be “calibrated carefully,” saying it would have to meet a high threshold to apply.
But he said the new power, which would require the attorney-general’s approval as well as a judge’s, could prove “very, very important” to restrain the behaviour of someone with a track record of hateful behaviour who may be targeting certain people or groups…
People found guilty of posting hate speech could have to pay victims up to $20,000 in compensation. But experts including internet law professor Michael Geist have said even a threat of a civil complaint – with a lower burden of proof than a court of law – and a fine could have a chilling effect on freedom of _expression_.
The Canadian bill would also allow “people to file complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission over what they perceive as hate speech online – including, for example, off-colour jokes by comedians.”
Scotland
Its new hate law came into effect on April 1. Craig Murray provides the details and repercussions:
This vastly increases the amount of speech subject to criminal prosecution. It introduces new categories of protected characteristics, and gives Ministers powers to add new ones without going back to parliament. There is a specific power in the Bill for ministers to add “sex” as a protected characteristic, for example. Crucially it removes the need to prove intent embodied in current law. If you call someone an “old fool”, you will be committing a criminal offence even if you meant nothing by it and were just using a common phrase, age being a protected characteristic. Calling someone a “stupid boy” will similarly become illegal. To possess “inflammatory” material will specifically be a crime even if you had no intention to communicate it to others.
Richard III would very definitely be illegal under this legislation for anti-disabled prejudice. The Merchant of Venice would be illegal for anti-semitism. Once “sex” is added by Ministers, The Taming of the Shrew would be illegal for misogyny. I was glancing through The 39 Steps yesterday and was struck by a very anti-semitic passage I had forgotten was there. Is possessing John Buchan to be illegal? I can see nothing in the bill which would protect you from prosecution for possessing Buchan, if the Crown Office decided to go for you over it.
The Bill specifically includes performance. Politically incorrect jokes will become an actual criminal offence. Really. Pretty well every Carry On film ever made would now be illegal and subject its producers, writers and performers to possible imprisonment if made now. I quite accept that the mores of society change, and there is much in Carry On films society would find unacceptable now, but criminal? The Act moves matters of taste and disapproval firmly into the field of the police and the courts. It is a grossly authoritarian piece of legislation.
Once you have statutes in place that make telling a sexist joke a crime, you are dependent on the police and on prosecutors to apply the law in a sensible and liberal manner. But what the case of both Mark Hirst and myself makes plain – as indeed does the Alex Salmond case itself – is that Scotland does not have that at all. Scotland has politically controlled, vindictive and corrupt police and prosecutors who will, as the Mark Hirst case could not demonstrate more plainly, twist any law to the maximum to contrive a prosecution against those labeled as political enemies.
France
Gilbert Doctorow recently pointed out a proposed law in France that will make certain comments made in private conversations a crime:
Insults, defamatory remarks or remarks provoking discrimination against people on the grounds of their ethnic or religious affiliation, gender identity, etc., when these are not public, become offences, punishable by a fine of €3,750.
The new law makes criminally punishable defamation and discrimination in conversations between, shall we say ‘consenting adults,’ in private quarters.
One wonders how remarks made behind closed doors are brought to the attention of the authorities if not by libelous anonymous protectors of public morality worthy of Venice in its worst days.
There’s also the possibility that French authorities could use their new powers that allow police to remotely take over a suspect’s devices, with access to cameras, microphones and GPS data. These are powers that are used by many governments even if they’re not officially sanctioned.
UK
London is expanding its definition of extremism so that it now includes “the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance” that aims to “negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others; or undermine, overturn or replace the U.K.’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights,” or intentionally create a “permissive environment” for others to do so. Ironically, the law does exactly what it claims to want to prevent.
Even the leaders from the Church of England weighed in against the law:
The archbishop of Canterbury — Justin Welby, who is the head of the church and a peer in the House of Lords — and the archbishop of York said in a statement on Tuesday that the new definition “not only inadvertently threatens freedom of speech, but also the right to worship and peaceful protest, things that have been hard won and form the fabric of a civilized society.”
The EU
Nick Corbishley has written frequently here at Naked Capitalism about the EU Digital Services Act and the dangers it poses to freedom of speech. See here, here and here. How does European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plan on using these laws?
These laws are already having chilling effects online and in the real world as countries like Italy and Germany ban events where opinions could be aired that are at odds with the ruling class’ official narrative.
It’s strange. The governments in the West have spent decades warning about the authoritarian boogeymen in Russia, China, and elsewhere around the world. Now, in more ways than one they have become that boogeyman:
What to make of all this?
One possibility is that Western governments are aware that the moment of their relative decline is here, and they plan to revert to more overt forms of colonialism wherever possible around the world. At the same time, the Western ruling class plans to double down on its plunder at home. In both cases, more authoritarian measures will be necessary to silence critics.