by Rev. Ted Pike

For decades the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center have eagerly anticipated a “perfect shooter” from the political and Christian right. A massacre, preferably of Jews at a synagogue, would give ADL/SPLC pretext to call for unprecedented legislation banning “hate speech,” especially on the internet.

Was Frazier Glenn Cross, recent alleged murderer of three in a Kansas City Jewish center and retirement home, such a person? ADL/SPLC’s ideal would have been a homicidal fanatic with connections to the alternative anti-Zionist and Christian/conservative right. Except for contact with the non-anti-Semitic American Free Press, Cross lived and hated within a bitter, narrow world on the very far white supremacist right.

Yet, even as an “imperfect shooter,” the former KKK leader is the best twisted (and elderly) poster boy of hate these Jewish groups have encountered since James W. von Brunn, who fatally shot a guard at the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. in 2009.

I suspect they have decided, after a considerable dry spell of opportunity to legitimately accuse the right of violent hate, that it’s time to proceed vigorously to the next stage: federal legislation that will help ban internet “hate speech” that they claim played a significant role in inciting Cross to pull the trigger. Thus the Hate Crime Reporting Act of 2014, S. 2219 and H.R. 3878, were submitted to Congress by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-NY. This bill calls for update of the National Telecommunications Information Administration’s 1993 report “The Role of Telecommunications in Hate Crimes.” That original report, mandated by ADL’s Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1990, actually found very little evidence that hate speech on the internet at the time had contributed to violent hate crimes. Clearly, the new report is intended to do much better, hoping to testify to Congress that the internet is now saturated with hate speech full of potential for stimulating violence such as erupted in Kansas City.

As things now stand, there is also little evidence that internet hate speech stimulated Frazier Glenn Cross to anti-Jewish violence. The chief value of this bill to groups such as ADL/SPLC is that it may now provide them a pulpit on which to pontificate and make twisted definitions and recommendations in favor of practical censorship of the right in America. It is thus no accident that this bill is surfing a wave of anti-right wing sentiment whipped up by the Jewish-dominated media and Jewish attack groups.

As the world moves toward hate crimes persecution, hate law enforcers usually select victims with extremist views. They know society will not help these people but will probably rejoice at their conviction! But the free speech rights of every person are diminished by the legal precedents meted against extremists.

Persecution of Biblically based “hate” (i.e., Christianity) is the ultimate goal of B’nai B’rith Canada and the Canadian Jewish Congress, creators of Canada’s federal hate crime law in 1971. In Canada, these extensions of ADL possess a powerful tool: federal law banning internet criticism of Jews and homosexuals. Section 13.1 outlaws communications “likely” to incite hatred or contempt of members of a federally protected group. ADL possesses similar statutory tools banning “cyberhate” in most European countries.

But in the U.S., ADL faces stiff First Amendment opposition to censorship. Here they try other strategies to end free speech in America:

1) ADL puts pressure on search engines like Google to filter out websites which criticize Zionism or homosexuality. So far, it has not entirely succeeded. In 2007, Google’s Israeli representative, Meir Brand, flatly repulsed ADL requests to ban internet criticism of Zionism. ADL has been similarly rebuffed in the United States. This means scores of videos critical of Zionism and homosexuality, including my four, still bring light via the internet into encroaching darkness. 2) Many teens using the internet are victims of online bullies. ADL wants to create a false mental link between “cyber-bullying” and hate speech. Through its programs against online bullying, ADL feigns compassion for these young people. What ADL really wants is to link cyber-bullying with cyberhate and gain power to advise government on “protecting” vulnerable teens from criticism of Israel, Jewish control of media or the accuracy of the six-million figure of Holocaust dead. 3) Through privatizing the internet, cable and phone companies sympathetic to ADL, ADL may be able to discriminate against, and ultimately help eliminate, “hate sites.” These companies could provide a form of censorship without legislation. 4) ADL wants to re-define internet free speech as “homegrown terrorism.” An effort to do this was H.R.1955, designed to set up a federal commission to “eradicate” the “cyber-terrorism” which this bill alleges “streams” from the internet. This primarily alludes to anti-Zionist alternative internet talk radio. The federal commission it mandates, if approved by Congress and the President, will construe politically incorrect speech on the internet as words that hurt, i.e., “verbal violence.” H.R. 1955 says this speech incites extremists to “radicalization,” i.e., acts of violence. Ultimately, as in Canada, such expression, in order to be prosecuted, need only be thought “likely” to cause intimidation of members of federally protected groups. 5) ADL also considers massive propaganda against critics of Israel or homosexuality as a weapon against “cyberhate.” Some ADL cyber-experts, such as Christopher Wolf, head of INACH believe education against homophobia and anti-Semitism is the best solution. We should remember that, as we are seeing in Canada, it is not skinheads and Nazis whom the ADL really deplores; it is evangelical Christians. ADL has already smeared Traditional Values Coalition as hateful and implies that other new right websites, such as Focus on the Family and Family Research Council, which “portray gays and lesbians as subhuman in the guise of promoting so-called ‘family values’ …” should be removed from the internet.

By far, ADL’s greatest hope for ending free speech on the Internet is the federal hate crimes law, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act, signed into law by Pres. Obama in 2009.

Considering ADL’s long and well-documented history as the primary strategist against right-wing internet “hate,” why does Christian/conservative media, in reporting this latest anti-free speech bill, continue to vilify the Southern Poverty Law Center but ignore ADL as if it never existed? They are terrified of ADL’s power to defame and ruin them if they shine any light upon the real mastermind behind hate crimes laws. WorldNetDaily owner, Joseph Farah, is a prime example of such manipulative half truth-telling. In past years Farah has publicly revealed his fear that ADL will label him a hateful anti-Semite. As a result, rather than take on ADL, as he does the much less powerful and influential SPLC, he attempts to conciliate ADL by demonstrating that he will never threaten them with exposure. Especially with mounting alarm at the rising tide of criticism of Israel among some evangelical leaders, Farah repeatedly features ADL as a preeminent and trustworthy authority on anti-Semitism and how Christians can fight it.

In a recent article by WND staff writer Bob Unruh entitled “Hitler’s Hate Flourishing in America,” WND could not more perfectly deliver to the religious right what ADL and Jewish supremacism want them to imbibe. Unruh presents ADL as an authority to be believed concerning the danger and extent of rising anti-Semitic violence. He says: “Anti-Semitism can be found all over.” He says it is anti-Semitic to accuse Jews “of controlling the media, banks,” etc. He portrays as anti-Semitic concern over “the dangerous Zionist agenda.” Perhaps most disturbing is his agreement with ADL that it is anti-Semitic to espouse the New Testament teaching that Christ-rejecting Jews “were responsible for the death of Christ.” He also concurs with Israel Today’s assertion that “anti-Semitism is most often masked as hostility toward the state of Israel.” He concludes, citing testimony from pro-abortion*, Jewish, anti-Islamic propagandist and WND columnist Pamela Geller, that transit posters with an anti-Israel message are “vicious” and anti-Semitic.

Years ago Canadian free speech activist Paul Fromm told me that in Canada some pro-Zionist Christians are so opposed to Christian critics of Israel that they eagerly report them to the hate crimes police. (In Canada it is a hate crime to publicly criticize or “hold up to hatred or contempt” members of federally protected groups such as Jews.)

It is thus highly significant that WorldNetDaily is increasingly quick to accept ADL’s definitions of anti-Semitism and trumpet such lies to its millions of evangelical readers. Clearly, rather than criticize ADL and bear the brunt of possible ADL vilification, WND is willing to try to appease Christianity’s and civilization’s worst enemy by taking its side and allowing it to educate its constituents.

Such growing affinity between pro-Zionist evangelicals and Jewish supremacists is also revealed by the fact that Dr. John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel has, as co-director, non-Christian Jewish David Brog. Brog was chief of staff for arch liberal U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, next to Sen. Edward Kennedy chief hate law advocate in the Senate. For years, Brog, with Specter, labored tirelessly toward hate bill passage. Yet Hagee and millions of pro-Israel evangelicals are delighted that this charismatic former betrayer of free speech and promoter of Christian-persecuting hate laws lead them in support of the Jewish state, showing them how to most effectively battle rising Christian anti-Zionism.

Considering the continuing cowardice of evangelical leadership to either acknowledge or criticize ADL, it is understandable why there has also been barely a whimper of protest from Christian conservatives when 15 misguided, imperfect Amish Christians were sentenced to up to 15 years in prison for the “hate crime” of forcibly cutting the hair of a handful of Amish theological rivals. It is also understandable why there has been so little support for repeal of the unconstitutional and discriminatory federal hate crimes law.

Why is the formerly vigorous religious right in malaise, unable to correct America’s course toward disaster? It is because the pro-Zionist Christian right increasingly tries to serve two masters: Biblical values of God and freedom but also values of those who want to destroy Christianity and rule the world (Zionist pressure groups such as ADL). Jesus said such dual loyalty is impossible. The apostle James agreed a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

We may be starting to see a trend toward collaboration of Christian Zionism with Jewish supremacism. Zionist evangelicals are increasingly frightened by defection of evangelical leaders and youth toward criticism of Israel. Intellectually outclassed by anti-Zionist academics and researchers, they are tempted to just let veteran Jewish anti-right-wing ADL take over supply of argumentation against emerging Christian anti-Zionism. Evangelical Zionists have long accepted unquestionably the Zionist narrative delivered from Israel. But before the threat of Christian anti-Zionism, will such evangelicals bond as firmly to ADL’s guidance in how to fight “anti-Semitism?” Will they actually adopt ADL’s smear tactics of innuendo and defamation (which have been devastatingly effective for Jewish attack groups) rather than discussion? ADL, ever alert to an opportunity to both subvert and weaken the right, is clearly now giving WND immunity from attack in exchange for the privilege of educating their readers.

Joseph Farah performed a great service beginning in about 2005 by alerting a clueless American church to the dangers posed by hate crimes laws. He helped educate Christians everywhere concerning how Canada had lost its freedom through hate laws. Tragically, he now does Christianity just as great a disservice by protecting and recommending dictates against “anti-Semitism” from the very Jewish attack group that created these Christian-persecuting laws in the first place.

Rev. Ted Pike is director of the National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative watchdog organization.