As we reported yesterday, conservative activists are livid about a new bill to update a 1993 National Telecommunications and Information Administration report “on the current prevalence of hate crimes and hate speech in telecommunications,” which anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller said “is Sharia.”
While speaking to Janet Mefferd yesterday, Geller alleged that the bill will “silence” any “criticism of the left and of the Islamic machine,” while Mefferd called the legislation “creeping Sharia like crazy.”
The 1993 report [PDF] unmistakably denounced the very hate speech measures that Geller suggests are included in the bill: “NTIA endorses the belief, expressed by virtually every commenter, that the best remedy to hate speech is not government restrictions, but more speech, to disseminate views that challenge notions of hate and bigotry.”
Geller then cited the disputed claim that Matthew Shepard’s murder was not motivated by anti-gay animus to argue that the bill is like a “steaming pile of dung [packaged] in a Tiffany box with a little white ribbon.”
Mefferd: Boy, you know, this just is creeping Sharia like crazy. What is going on with this legislation? I understand the House version was actually filed back in December but now Senator Markey is on board with it.
Geller: We saw this coming, Janet, and you’ve been on top of it, really on the tip of the spear so I thank you for that, most press folks are ignoring it because it may very well be something that they would support because it would silence, as if we weren’t silenced enough, any criticism of the left and of the Islamic machine.
…
Geller: This is completely and utterly unacceptable because at the end of the day, this is the Sharia, that’s exactly what this is. Believe me, they’ll package it the way they packaged hate crimes. If you recall they used Matthew Shepard as a vicious gay killing when we then found out that it was really a drug deal gone bad with a previous lover, it doesn’t matter, this is the steaming pile of dung they package in a Tiffany box with a little white ribbon.
