Bills being proposed in the Wisconsin State Legislature would have far-reaching impact on the right to free speech in the state.
The Recombobulation Area is a 19-time Milwaukee Press Club award-winning opinion column and online publication founded by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. The Recombobulation Area is now part of Civic Media.
It’s a foundation of our country and what the United States is supposed to stand for on the global stage: freedom of speech, to express our opinions without fear of persecution by the government.
Yet in Wisconsin, legislators are attempting to pass a raft of bills that would directly undermine that foundational right. While it’s likely Gov. Evers will veto them should they come across his desk while still in office, the threat posed by the bills is very real. Depending on who’s elected to replace Evers this fall, it’s entirely likely the legislation will come back around. And in this case, it’s not a guarantee that simply electing any Democrat will ensure they’re vetoed again.
The bills in question are AB 446/SB 445 and AB 672/SB 650. They’re all part of the recent push to stifle and even outright punish speech and activism aimed at opposing the genocide in Gaza. However, their impact would be much further reaching than even that.
Let’s start with AB 446/SB 445, which aim to adopt a definition of antisemitism, to be applied to Wisconsin law and policy, as offered by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). I’ll let the ACLU of Wisconsin explain why this is a bad idea:
“Antisemitic discrimination is abhorrent; it’s destructive to both individuals and communities. The IHRA definition and its non-exhaustive list of examples, however, are overbroad by equating protected speech with unprotected discrimination. Criticism of the Israeli government and its policies is political speech, squarely protected by the First Amendment.”
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Kenneth Stern, one of the original authors of the IHRA’s working definition and a self-proclaimed Zionist, has since come out strongly against its use as the basis of any laws or policies. As he noted in an opinion piece from 2019 when Trump issued an executive order to rely on the definition related to free speech on college campuses, such use amounts to a “weaponization” in service of “suppressing political speech.”
Even still, Republicans and some Democrats in Wisconsin have seen fit to push its adoption here. Now, couple that with the introduction of AB 672/SB 650. That bill purports to create a “penalty enhancer for crimes committed by a person acting as an agent of a foreign government or terrorist organization with the intent to silence or punish persons for their political view, criminalizing the enforcement of foreign laws without federal or state approval.”
Sounds reasonable enough on its face, right? Look more closely, however, and it quickly becomes clear that this bill, if passed into law, would open a Pandora’s box of persecution against anyone deemed politically undesirable by the people currently in power.
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Wisconsin Jewish Voices for Peace warned the legislation would “dangerously curtail freedom of speech and increase options for government surveillance of individuals in Wisconsin,” especially since the language of the bill is extremely broad and terms like “terrorist organization” are not precisely defined. Given that we’ve already seen government officials slapping the “terrorist” label on everyone from peaceful legal observers to student protesters to anyone who calls themself “antifa” (i.e., simply antifascist), the move to adopt an official law to further expand that power should chill us to the bone.
Both sets of bills have already passed out of their respective committees and are listed as “available for scheduling,” meaning they could come up before the Assembly and Senate at any time. It’s crucial that more people speak out against their passage and tell lawmakers, including candidates from both parties currently vying for office, why they’re so dangerous. Especially in this era of accelerating attacks on privacy, speech, and association, we all need to be educated and loud in our opposition to any proposed laws that are so scorchingly antithetical to the rights and freedoms we hold dear.
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