New hate crime law is a cover for suppressing Palestine protests

 

The proposed ‘Combatting Hate Act’ is built on the idea that protests inspire hateful violence, and gives police the tools to crack down on expression

The federal Liberals have been promising new laws on what they call hate crimes, acts of violence that are motivated by prejudice and bias. 

But the acts most often cited by the government—assaults of minority groups, vandalism of places of worship, and violent threats—are already illegal in Canada.

So Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is instead targeting words, slogans, and symbols as the presumed sources of violent behaviour. 

Introduced two years into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the proposed “Combatting Hate Act”  is a bait-and-switch, a cynical attempt to blame public demonstrations and expressions, especially those in solidarity with Palestine, for wholly unrelated acts of violence.

The proposed law treats people who are expressing themselves in public as criminals-in-waiting, and gives police more discretion to read their minds, interpret their motives, and arrest them.

The government is essentially conceding that while new laws can’t stop violence, they can shift responsibility for it to groups the mainstream Canadian public already fears.

Up until 2018 it was illegal in Canada to scare the British monarch, and the crime of “alarming the Queen” could result in a prison sentence of 14 years. 

In the same way, this proposed law normalizes the anxieties of the privileged classes, and seeks to silence people whose presence and resistance makes power uncomfortable.  (more...)

New hate crime law is a cover for suppressing Palestine protests