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‘Unmasking Antifa Act' includes 15-year prison term proposal

Do you support the legislation?

  • I support it

    Votes: 35 66.0%
  • I do not support it

    Votes: 17 32.1%
  • No comment

    Votes: 1 1.9%

  • Total voters
    53

cryptoadam

Banned
I would have to disagree.



Sounds okay to me, just like in America it's illegal to verbally instigate a riot or threaten to kill someone. Very objective, on/off, yes/no binary topics.



And this is where we've entered subjective town. What is considered inciting hatred? Do people actually have to use the word hatred, or can hatred be inferred? What if an aspect of a group is criticized or generalized?

What if an indefinite modifier is used with a still harmful and false generalization and where would the line be? For an anti-Semitic example "a small amount of Jews are greedy" vs "some Jews are greedy" vs "a lot of Jews are greedy" vs "most Jews are greedy" vs "nearly all Jews are greedy" vs "all Jews are Greedy." At what point did that statement become a hate crime? And who even decides what even is a false generalization? I would say the example I just used is definitely a false generalization, but even with that acknowledgement, I couldn't possibly say where it goes from offensive to shouldn't be permitted by law. No one can objectively decide these things. I'm sorry, but you've given far too much power to your government.

I leave it up to the courts to decide, but I think in Canada our courts aren't as politicized as they are for you guys in the states. I still think that something like inciting hatred, which leads to violence should be tackled. I could give examples of gloryfying deaths or outright calls of violence as inciting hatred. So if you put out a poster of a concentration camp and the words this is how you deal with Jews I think that is inciting hatred. Printing out a poster saying punch someone wearing a kippa, thats inciting hatred.

There's nuances but thats why you have a democratic process and a court system. The question is do you have faith in both those elements to make the proper decisions. I think right now in the USA maybe the faith isn't there ?
 

MamaRice

Banned
"Lets throw tons of black people in jail for petty drug offences, maintaining the new jim crow and profitized modern slavery with our for profit prisons"

"Oh also I hate gay people, AIDS doesn't exist."

- Ronald Reagan.
 
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krazen

Member
I love how people can be 'OMG, they burned a car!' as if that doesn't happen with pretty much every sporting championship. Its fascinating how certain criminal acts are treated as dealbreakers...but a few good old boys setting fire to federal land and threatening to kill the Feds gets a presidential pardon. Which is probably one of the biggest issues in America; it's law and order system is pretty much just a tool of whoever has their hand on the wheel at any given time, and as a result why should we respect any of it, or its enforcers
 

Texas Pride

Banned
I love how people can be 'OMG, they burned a car!' as if that doesn't happen with pretty much every sporting championship. Its fascinating how certain criminal acts are treated as dealbreakers...but a few good old boys setting fire to federal land and threatening to kill the Feds gets a presidential pardon. Which is probably one of the biggest issues in America; it's law and order system is pretty much just a tool of whoever has their hand on the wheel at any given time, and as a result why should we respect any of it, or its enforcers


You seem confused. Lamenting some crime while excusing others. Break the law go to jail. Pretty simple.
 

MamaRice

Banned
You seem confused. Lamenting some crime while excusing others. Break the law go to jail. Pretty simple.
Well when people keep breaking the law and not going to jail, people start to naturally have less respect for the rule of law. Makes sense to me.

Treat all crimes, by all people, equally, or treat none at all.
 
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TrainedRage

Banned
"Lets throw tons of black people in jail for petty drug offences, maintaining the new jim crow and profitized modern slavery with our for profit prisons"

"Oh also I hate gay people, AIDS doesn't exist."

- Ronald Reagan.
I thought Reagan was one of the first major politicians to come out for gay rights? Not supporting Prop 6 in California and such. And he went from spending $6 million on anti-AIDS research to $2.3 billion in 7 years. Maybe he was just the easy target at the time due to the rapid influx of AIDS during his presidency.
 

Texas Pride

Banned
Well when people keep breaking the law and not going to jail, people start to naturally have less respect for the rule of law. Makes sense to me.

Treat all crimes, by all people, equally, or treat none at all.


That's nice in a fairy tale world. Not in the real world. All crimes aren't the same and so expecting the punishment to be the same is simply not going to happen. There's also variables such as criminal history and intent. If you don't respect the law then don't. But don't be mad when the law comes down on you harder for it.
 

MamaRice

Banned
I thought Reagan was one of the first major politicians to come out for gay rights? Not supporting Prop 6 in California and such. And he went from spending $6 million on anti-AIDS research to $2.3 billion in 7 years. Maybe he was just the easy target at the time due to the rapid influx of AIDS during his presidency.
Here's his adminstrations response, after over 1000 people in America had already died from it.

Lester Kinsolving: Does the president have any reaction to the announcement by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta that AIDS is now an epidemic in over 600 cases?​
Larry Speakes: AIDS? I haven't got anything on it.​
Lester Kinsolving: Over a third of them have died. It's known as "gay plague." [Press pool laughter.] No, it is. It's a pretty serious thing. One in every three people that get this have died. And I wonder if the president was aware of this.​
Larry Speakes: I don't have it. [Press pool laughter.] Do you?​
Lester Kinsolving: You don't have it? Well, I'm relieved to hear that, Larry! [Press pool laughter.]​
Larry Speakes: Do you?​
Lester Kinsolving: No, I don't.​
Larry Speakes: You didn't answer my question. How do you know? [Press pool laughter.]​
Lester Kinsolving: Does the president — in other words, the White House — look on this as a great joke?​
Larry Speakes: No, I don't know anything about it, Lester.​

ANd here's 2 years later, after over 4000 had died.

Larry Speakes: Lester is beginning to circle now. He's moving up front. Go ahead.​
Lester Kinsolving: Since the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta report is going to… [Press pool laughter.]​
Larry Speakes: This is going to be an AIDS question.​
Lester Kinsolving: …that an estimated…​
Larry Speakes: You were close.​
Lester Kinsolving: Can I ask the question, Larry? That an estimated 300,000 people have been exposed to AIDS, which can be transmitted through saliva. [This is false; HIV can only be transmitted through blood, semen, pre-cum, rectal fluids, vaginal fluids, and breast milk.] Will the president, as commander in chief, take steps to protect armed forces, food, and medical services from AIDS patients or those who run the risk of spreading AIDS in the same manner that they bed typhoid fever people from being involved in the health or food services? [Through this question, laughter can be heard coming from the press pool.]​
Larry Speakes: I don't know.​
Lester Kinsolving: Is the president concerned about this subject, Larry?​
Larry Speakes: I haven't heard him express concern.​
Lester Kinsolving: That seems to have evoked such jocular reaction here. [Press pool laughter.]​
Unidentified person: It isn't only the jocks, Lester.​
Unidentified person: Has he sworn off water faucets now?​
Lester Kinsolving: No, but I mean, is he going to do anything, Larry?​
Larry Speakes: Lester, I have not heard him express anything. Sorry.​
Lester Kinsolving: You mean he has expressed no opinion about this epidemic?​
Larry Speakes: No, but I must confess I haven't asked him about it.​
Lester Kinsolving: Will you ask him, Larry?​
Larry Speakes: Have you been checked? [Press pool laughter.]​
Unidentified person: Is the president going to ban mouth-to-mouth kissing?​
Lester Kinsolving: What? Pardon? I didn't hear your answer.​
Larry Speakes: [Laughs.] Ah, it's hard work. I don't get paid enough. Um. Is there anything else we need to do here?​

ALso:

Around 1987, Conant wrote to the president. By that time, about 21,000 people had died of the epidemic in the United States alone.

This is more or less how Conant remembers his letter: “Dear President Reagan, I have all these patients and they are dying and no one’s doing anything. It is incumbent on your administration to direct the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health to begin efforts to find the cause and treatment for this disease.”

Reagan wrote a letter back, Conant recounted: “It said, quote, ‘Nancy and I thank you for your support’.”

Nancy Raegan also famously ignored her and her husband's famous friend Rock Hudson when he went to another country for AIDS treatment, and they wouldn't give it to him, and he called them to ask them to tell the doctors to please help him. They said no.

With AIDS finally out of the closet, activists such as Paul Boneberg, who in 1984 started Mobilization Against AIDS in San Francisco, begged President Reagan to say something now that he, like thousands of Americans, knew a person with AIDS. Writing in the Washington Post in late 1985, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, stated: "It is surprising that the president could remain silent as 6,000 Americans died, that he could fail to acknowledge the epidemic's existence. Perhaps his staff felt he had to, since many of his New Right supporters have raised money by campaigning against homosexuals."

Reagan would ultimately address the issue of AIDS while president. His remarks came May 31, 1987 (near the end of his second term), at the Third International Conference on AIDS in Washington. When he spoke, 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed with AIDS and 20,849 had died. The disease had spread to 113 countries, with more than 50,000 cases.

Dr. C. Everett Koop, Reagan's surgeon general, has said that because of "intradepartmental politics" he was cut out of all AIDS discussions for the first five years of the Reagan administration. The reason, he explained, was "because transmission of AIDS was understood to be primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs." The president's advisers, Koop said, "took the stand, 'They are only getting what they justly deserve.' "

He is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of people in the 80s due to AIDs, many but not all of them, gay.
 
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MamaRice

Banned
That's nice in a fairy tale world. Not in the real world. All crimes aren't the same and so expecting the punishment to be the same is simply not going to happen. There's also variables such as criminal history and intent. If you don't respect the law then don't. But don't be mad when the law comes down on you harder for it.
No, I'm talking about people who break the law, and get away with it. There are a lot of them.
 
I leave it up to the courts to decide, but I think in Canada our courts aren't as politicized as they are for you guys in the states. I still think that something like inciting hatred, which leads to violence should be tackled. I could give examples of gloryfying deaths or outright calls of violence as inciting hatred. So if you put out a poster of a concentration camp and the words this is how you deal with Jews I think that is inciting hatred. Printing out a poster saying punch someone wearing a kippa, thats inciting hatred.

There's nuances but thats why you have a democratic process and a court system. The question is do you have faith in both those elements to make the proper decisions. I think right now in the USA maybe the faith isn't there ?

I think in the US, the faith of a government to be able to fairly and objectively decide on that nuance was never there. Probably not from the beginning, and definitely not from the moment we added the first amendment to the constitution.

But if you do feel that you can objectively define hate speech, I'd invite you to respond to the two underlined questions I asked in this thread: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/antifa-members-get-ass-handed-to-them.1463448/page-4#post-253321420
 

MamaRice

Banned
I agree there is alot. On both sides. Money & influence gets you out of trouble. Poor folk's get screwed. Same shit different day.
Right so. I'm just saying. If this continues, eventually people are gonna get mad and stop caring about the rule of law, and they will have a good argument.
 

bucyou

Member
"Lets throw tons of black people in jail for petty drug offences, maintaining the new jim crow and profitized modern slavery with our for profit prisons"

"Oh also I hate gay people, AIDS doesn't exist."

- Ronald Reagan.


Continued by Clinton and his infamous 94 crime bill targeting minorities. I also believe it was the 2016 failed democratic nominee who referred to black youth as "super predators".
 

Texas Pride

Banned
Right so. I'm just saying. If this continues, eventually people are gonna get mad and stop caring about the rule of law, and they will have a good argument.


As the gulf between the rich & the poor gets wider the rule of law will mean less and less anyway. Eventually the shit is going to give way.
 

MamaRice

Banned
Continued by Clinton and his infamous 94 crime bill targeting minorities. I also believe it was the 2016 failed democratic nominee who referred to black youth as "super predators".
And the award for "Most Blatantly Pointless Hilary deflection of 2018 goes to...."

-opens envelop-
 
This is a bill designed to make it harder/illegal for anyone to protest against the far right, namely our republican party.

It is vaguely worded so our police and judicial system can limit protesting.

We already have laws in place for violent acts. So ask yourself, why do we need this? Why would the Republican party need this? Who gains the most protection from protestors with this law?

Is a mask the same as a hood?
 
And the award for "Most Blatantly Pointless Hilary deflection of 2018 goes to...."

-opens envelop-

Except you and Gander Gander are the one that asked for it by calling out a single president when we have a history of presidents that uphold a standard that the poor ( not just black people ) cannot live up to and get caught in the crossfire as well as foreign policies that get us plenty of blow back.

Y'all went there first. That makes the quote above have a healthy dose of Irony don't you think?

As for the OP... I agree with the other folks asking to just let the cops do their jobs as it is before we start making new laws.
 
It's a bullshit three paragraph bill meant to be used for rallying idiots who believe that antifa is just as dangerous as the white supremacists groups they are part of.
 

oagboghi2

Member
At the end of the day all these conversations are just going to be people repeating over and over again that Antifa and Nazis are just as bad, yet the current administration continuously refuses to address and quell the rising threat of only ONE of them. And it’s not Antifa.

A lot of people are going to come in and say “ yes I support anyone in Antifa getting punished” great. When can we do something about Nazis and white supremacists?
When they become an actual problem, and not a boogeyman in leftists head.
 

KINGMOKU

Member
Doesn't matter.

If it gets passed by Congress (unlikly), the first guy charged with it will appeal and it'll hit the Supreme Court and be struck down.

Classic case of some politician overreacting to a hot meme so he can pretend that he's doing something to stop terrorism. Par for the course these days.
As much as I hate cowards hiding behind masks who want to destroy our way of life, I'll have to agree. There are already laws on the books, no need to keep creating redundancies.
 

Helios

Member
This is a bill designed to make it harder/illegal for anyone to protest against the far right, namely our republican party.
Than protest peacefully for fuck's sake. How hard is it to go and protest without inciting violence and smashing people's heads in?
 

DiscoJer

Member
There's actually laws on the book sin some states that date back to the Klan era, prohibited adults from wearing masks or hoods
 

Mahadev

Member
Haha, is it actually called Unmasking Antifa Act? They can't be that stupid, I mean if it was a law convicting individuals for committing unlawful act while they're masked I'd kind of understand it but why target specifically one ideological group? This is dumb.
 

Alfadawg

Banned
It's very telling that there aren't, isn't it?

It is...Antifa (Anti Facists, lets not forget, they're the good guys) have been around a few years and we're already seeing laws to counter them.

Yet Nazi's can run around spreading hate and murdering and you get laws to protect their rights. LMAO.

Keep winning America!
 
It's very telling that there aren't, isn't it?

Yes. It's very telling that Americans are all afforded the freedom to wear any mask they choose.

It is...Antifa (Anti Facists, lets not forget, they're the good guys) have been around a few years and we're already seeing laws to counter them.

Yet Nazi's can run around spreading hate and murdering and you get laws to protect their rights. LMAO.

Keep winning America!

Nobody is telling Antifa or anyone else that they aren't allowed to wear masks. They are telling Antifa (and everyone else) that they will face harsher penalties if committing crimes while doing so.

The name of the bill is dumb. Fifteen years is dumb.
 
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Alfadawg

Banned
I''m guessing the 15yrs will be reduced once they figure out it's not just targetting antifa but also the Nazis.

Why name it after Antifa and not the Nazis?

It's all very telling, sorry you can't see it.
 
I''m guessing the 15yrs will be reduced once they figure out it's not just targetting antifa but also the Nazis.

Why name it after Antifa and not the Nazis?

It's all very telling, sorry you can't see it.

Hmm. Let me see if I can help you out here.

The name of the bill is dumb.

I don't know what to tell you. "Politicians Politicize Thing. Details at 11."

I doubt they even care if this passes. I imagine they want a bunch of Dems to vote no so that they can point to this proposal whenever Antifa pulls whatever stunt down the road.
 
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