The Dictatorship
Australia’s hate speech crackdown is a threat to legitimate dissent
The Bondi Beach massacre of Dec. 14, in which 15 people were murdered during a Hanukkah celebration, has become a grim symbol of rising antisemitic violence across Western democracies. In Sydney, as well as in places like Paris, London, Berlin and Copenhagen, Jews have been living in fear of threats, intimidation and terrorist violence.
Governments have rushed to act. Too often, however, their response has been to expand laws criminalizing speech — an approach that offers the appearance of resolve while doing little to address the sources of violence and much to erode fundamental freedoms. Australia offers a telling example.
Following outbreaks of antisemitism after Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Australian hate speech laws were expanded both at the federal level and in New South Waleswhere Bondi Beach is located. As became all too clear on Dec. 14, these laws did nothing to prevent the attack.
What began as a moment of national mourning has rapidly turned into one of the most sweeping expansions of hate speech laws and protest restriction powers in the country’s modern history.
Yet, the immediate response of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been to promise yet more speech-restrictive legislation. What began as a moment of national mourning has rapidly turned into one of the most sweeping expansions of hate speech laws and protest restriction powers in the country’s modern history. Intended as an urgent response to antisemitism, new federal and state measures threaten to reach far beyond violence or direct incitement — reshaping how speech, protest and political dissent are regulated in the wake of terrorism.
The Bondi Beach attack has also had ramifications for free speech outside Australia. British police arrested two people after announcing their intentions to crack down on the pro-Palestinian slogans “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea.” This policy has already been introduced in Germany, with ramifications for protest and online dissent.
There’s no doubt these slogans are deeply offensive to many Jews, who reasonably hear them as legitimizing violence. But when the government criminalizes speech that is merely offensive and ambiguous, rather than incitement to imminent violence, there are serious second-order consequences. The freedom to dissent and protest is the most fundamental difference between democracies and authoritarian states. The vagueness of hate speech laws risks blurring that bright line. Moreover, the very minorities that hate speech laws are supposed to protect can easily become their targets.
In Germany, the Israeli-Jewish left-wing activist Iris Hefets has been detained by police on several occasions for solo protests carrying a placard with the words “As a Jew and Israeli, stop the genocide in Gaza.” One does not have to agree with Hefets’ views on the Gaza conflict to see that arresting her for using politically charged language constitutes a threat to peaceful political protest. In fact, to suppress illegal chants, slogans and symbols, police in Berlin went so far as to ban all protests in languages other than German or Englishunless a “police-approved” interpreter was present.
Predictably, the policy backfired spectacularly. In July 2024, police intervened during a pro-Ukrainian demonstration outside the Russian Embassy in Berlin, where Ukrainian speakers protested a Russian airstrike on a children’s hospital in Kyiv.
Hate speech laws can also end up protecting those in power against criticism. In 2024, Marieha Hussain, a British teacher of South Asian heritage, attended a pro-Palestinian demonstration in London and carried a placard caricaturing then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman as “coconuts.” Hussain was charged with a racially aggravated public order offense. After losing her job, being doxed and standing trial while nine months pregnant, Hussain was acquittedbut only because the judge found that the context placed the placard within political satire rather than criminal abuse.
This instinct to suppress speech in the name of protection is not new, but it sharply diverges from the way earlier generations of civil rights leaders confronted bigotry and helped shape the tradition of free speech exceptionalism, especially in America.
Historically, American Jewish organizations opposed hate speech laws. In the 1930s, as states and municipalities sought to criminalize the rhetoric of American Nazi groups, the American Jewish Committee formally rejected such measures, arguing that they would hurt minorities. Vague laws criminalizing the expression of racial or religious “hatred” or “offense” could be turned against minority groups, who could be accused of “hatred” when speaking out against discrimination.
Black civil rights organizations came to the same realization. Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP opposed a Florida hate speech bill, observing that “there is grave danger that these bills when enacted will serve to throttle … any [speaker] which seeks to champion the cause of minority groups,” since “laws imposing penalties on expression of opinion usually defeat their own purpose.”
Hate speech laws can also end up protecting those in power against criticism.
In the wake of a series of temple bombings in the South in the 1950s, when segregationists targeted synagogues that promoted racial integration, several Jewish organizations insisted that counter-speech and education were more effective remedies for antisemitism than hate speech regulation.
Laws prohibiting hate speech would “at best control the symptoms but would not reach the disease,” observed the American Jewish Congress in a policy statement from 1958 titled “Bombings and Hate Sheets.” The American Jewish Congress’ support of the NAACP, which was being persecuted in the South for its civil rights organizing, made the organization acutely aware of the importance of freedom of speech to the pursuit of civil rights. In the 1960s, the NAACP went as far as to defend the free speech of white supremacists, knowing that the survival of the civil rights movement depended on a broad reading of freedom of speech.
Eighty years after the Holocaust, increasing antisemitism is a moral failure of Western democracies. But Jewish and Black civil rights leaders have understood that when fear drives democracies to suppress speech, the very freedoms that have allowed minorities to organize and demand equality are undermined.
Laws that promise safety by policing words may satisfy a public appetite for action, but they do not stop violence. What they do is corrode democratic culture and hand extremists the grievance they crave.
If liberal societies are serious about preventing hate crimes, they should resist the temptation to criminalize speech and instead recommit to the harder work of defending free expression, confronting violence directly and fighting hate crimes through law enforcement, education and solidarity — not censorship.
Jacob Mchangama
Jacob Mchangama is the executive director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of “Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media.”
Professor of law at the University of Iowa College of Law
Dr. Molly O’Shea has noticed growing skepticism about vaccines at both of her Michigan pediatric offices and says this week’s unprecedented and confusing changes to federal vaccine guidance will only make things worse.
One of her offices is in a Democratic area, where more of the parents she sees are opting for alternative schedules that spread out shots. The other is in a Republican area, where some parents have stopped immunizing their children altogether.
She and other doctors fear the new recommendations and the terminology around them will stoke vaccine hesitancy even more, pose challenges for pediatricians and parents that make it harder for kids to get shots, and ultimately lead to more illness and death.
The biggest change was to stop blanket recommendations for protection against six diseases and recommend those vaccines only for at-risk children or through something called “shared clinical decision-making” with a health care provider.
The phrase, experts say, is confusing and dangerous: “It sends a message to a parent that actually there’s only a rarefied group of people who really need the vaccine,” O’Shea said. “It’s creating an environment that puts a sense of uncertainty about the value and necessity or importance of the vaccines in that category.”
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.who helped lead the anti-vaccine movement for years, said in announcing the changes that they better align the U.S. with peer nations “while strengthening transparency and informed consent.”
But doctors say they are sowing doubt — the vaccines have been extensively studied and proven to be safe and effective at shielding kids from nasty diseases — at a time when childhood vaccination rates are already falling and some of those infectious diseases are spreading.
On Friday, the American Academy of Pediatrics and more than 200 medical, public health and patient advocacy groups sent a letter to Congress about the new childhood immunization schedule.
“We urge you to investigate why the schedule was changed, why credible scientific evidence was ignored, and why the committee charged with advising the HHS Secretary on immunizations did not discuss the schedule changes as a part of their public meeting process,” they wrote.
Many don’t know what ’shared decision-making’ means
O’Shea said she and other pediatricians discuss vaccines with parents at every visit where they are given. But that’s not necessarily “shared clinical decision-making,” which has a particular definition.
On its website, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices says: “Unlike routine, catch-up, and risk-based recommendations, shared clinical decision-making vaccinations are not recommended for everyone in a particular age group or everyone in an identifiable risk group. Rather, shared clinical decision-making recommendations are individually based and informed by a decision process between the health care provider and the patient or parent/guardian.”
In this context, health care providers include primary care physicians, specialists, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, registered nurses and pharmacists.
A pair of surveys conducted last year by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania suggested that many people don’t fully understand the concept, which came up last year when the federal government changed recommendations around COVID-19 vaccinations.
Only about 2 in 10 U.S. adults knew that one meaning behind shared decision-making is that “taking the vaccine may not be a good idea for everyone but would benefit some.” And only about one-third realized pharmacists count as health care providers to talk with during the process, even though they frequently administer vaccines.
As of this week, vaccines that protect against hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, RSV, flu and meningococcal disease are no longer universally recommended for kids. RSV, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and meningococcal vaccines are recommended for certain high-risk populations; flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and meningococcal vaccines are recommended through shared decision-making — as is the COVID-19 vaccine, although that change was made last year.
Shortly after the federal announcement Monday, Dr. Steven Abelowitz heard from half a dozen parents. “It’s causing concern for us, but more importantly, concern for parents with kids, especially young kids, and confusion,” said Abelowitz, founder of Ocean Pediatrics in Orange County, California.
Though federal recommendations are not mandates — states have the authority to require vaccinations for schoolchildren — they can affect how easy it is for kids to get shots if doctors choose to follow them.
Under the new guidelines, O’Shea said, parents seeking shots in the shared decision-making category might no longer bring their kids in for a quick, vaccine-only appointment with staff. They’d sit down with a health care provider and discuss the vaccine. And it could be tougher to have a flu clinic, where parents drive up and kids get shots without seeing a doctor.
Staying the course as challenges mount
Still, doctors say they won’t let the changes stop them from helping children get the vaccines they need. Leading medical groups are sticking with prior vaccine recommendations. Many parents are, too.
Megan Landry, whose 4-year-old son Zackary is one of O’Shea’s patients, is among them.
“It’s my responsibility as a parent to protect my child’s health and well-being,” she said. “Vaccines are a really effective and well-studied way to do that.”
She plans to keep having the same conversations she’s always had with O’Shea before getting vaccines for Zackary.
“Relying on evidence and trusted medical guidance really helps me to make those decisions,” she said. “And for me, it’s not just a personal choice for my own son but a way to contribute to the health of everybody.”
But for other families, confidence about vaccines is waning as trust in science erodes. O’Shea lamented that parents are getting the message that they can’t trust medical experts.
“If I take my car to the mechanic, I don’t go do my own research ahead of time,” she said. “I go to a person I trust and I trust them to tell me what’s going on.”
Abelowitz, the California doctor, likened the latest federal move to pouring gasoline on a fire of mistrust that was already burning.
“We’re worried the fire’s out of control,” he said. “Already we’ve seen that with measles and pertussis, there are increased hospitalizations and even increasing deaths. So the way that I look at it — and my colleagues look at it — we’re basically regressing decades.”
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
The U.S. has carried out “large-scale strikes” against multiple Islamic State targets in Syria along with partner forces, U.S. Central Command said on Saturday.
The attack is a part of an operation launched on Dec. 19, when U.S. forces struck “more than 70 targets” in central Syria as retaliation for the killing of three Americans by an ISIS gunman in early December.
“The strikes today targeted ISIS throughout Syria as part of our ongoing commitment to root out Islamic terrorism against our warfighters, prevent future attacks, and protect American and partner forces in the region,” CENTCOM said in a statement.
Tom Barrack, the Trump administration’s special envoy for Syria, announced on Saturday that he met with Syria’s new leadership in Damascus “to discuss recent developments in Aleppo and the broader path forward for Syria’s historic transition.”
The deadly attack in December marked the first fatalities of U.S. troops in the country since former President Bashar al-Assad was ousted last year. Three other U.S. service members were injured in the attack in December, and a state-run news agency reported that two members of the Syrian security forces were also wounded.
President Donald Trump said at the time that the attack by ISIS took place “in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them.” He also said Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, whom he had met in November at the White House, was “extremely angry and disturbed by this attack.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last month that the operation was “a declaration of vengeance” over the deaths of the American service members.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
In the wake of Renee Nicole Good’s death, Americans are asking, with heightened urgency, what authority ICE and CBP agents have when they engage with U.S. citizens. And as with many areas of the law, the answer is largely, “It depends.”
Can ICE use deadly force on U.S. citizens – or ever?
When it comes to the use of force, and specifically, the use of firearms, ICE has its own specific policy that was last updated in 2023. That policy was filed in the Chicago-area litigation over ICE and CBP’s treatment of protesters, clergy, and journalists. (Interestingly, on ICE’s website, that same policy is almost entirely redacted.) This policy does not vary depending on the subject’s immigration or citizenship status. Here’s what it says:
First, the policy authorizes the use of force “only when no reasonably effective, safe, and feasible alternative appears to exist and may use only the level of force that is objectively reasonable in light of the totality of facts and circumstances confronting the officer at the time force is applied.” But the policy is equally clear that an officer does not have to meet force with equal or lesser force, does not have to wait for an attack before using force, and does not have any duty to retreat to avoid the reasonable use of force.
Second, where feasible and without creating any greater threat to his own safety or that of others, an ICE officer must attempt to “de-escalate by the use of communication or other techniques during an encounter to stabilize, slow, or reduce the intensity of a potentially violent situation without using physical force, or with a reduction in force.”
Third, ICE policy is also clear that officers have a “duty to intervene to prevent or stop a perceived use of excessive force” so long as it is safe to do so. It further states that a failure to intervene and/or report such incidents is itself misconduct — and potential grounds for discipline.
What’s the guidance if U.S. citizens are given orders by ICE?
Short of using force or deadly force, however, can ICE give orders to U.S. citizens? For example, it appears that ICE agents directed Renee Nicole Good to get out of her car shortly before she was killed.
ICE can give orders to U.S. citizens, but again, only in limited circumstances that are directly tied to the ICE agent’s immigration-related authority. For example, ICE can give orders to U.S. citizens — or even detain them temporarily — if they are obstructing or interfering with immigration enforcement activity.
These situations are often very subjective. U.S. citizens do have significantly more freedom in their interactions with ICE than non-citizens. For example, according to guidance issued by the ACLU and the City of New Yorkamong others, if ordered or detained by ICE, a U.S. citizen can ask, “Am I free to leave?” and they should then be allowed to leave on their own free will.
Can ICE agents search a car without a warrant?
ICE agents also have the authority to search a car without a warrant in limited scenarios. The Fourth Amendment includes the automobile exceptionwhich allows federal agents to search a vehicle without a warrant if there’s probable cause to believe there’s evidence to a crime or contraband. Because a car can be driven away quickly, it may not be practical to secure a warrant beforehand without jeopardizing the investigation.
But federal agents must have specific probable cause to search a car without a warrant. A hunch or a feeling that the car conceals evidence of illegal activity is not enough for a federal agent to search a car without a warrant. ICE does have broader authority to search vehicles within 100 miles of the U.S. border, but even so, these searches typically require probable cause. Notably, ICE cannot search a car without a warrant simply because they suspect someone may be an undocumented immigrant.
However, car searches are the only major exception. ICE officers require search warrants for all other searches. Without a warrant, both U.S. citizens and non-citizens can say, “I do not consent to a search,” according to guidance issued by immigration rights organizations.
What’s the guidance on U.S. citizens recording or taking photos of ICE during enforcement activities?
Civil liberties groups generally advise that under the First Amendment, U.S. citizens can record or take photos of ICE performing law enforcement activities in public places so long as the recording does not interfere with ICE activity, like an arrest. Bystanders are allowed by law to collect important information, including names and badge numbers of the ICE agent executing the immigration activity.
Some states, including Florida, Tennessee, and Louisiana, have enacted their own laws requiring observers — or anyone else — to move back 25 feet or more from law enforcement or other first responders upon their request. While other, similar laws passed by Arizona and Indiana have been struck down, the constitutionality of these states’ laws has not been determined.
Finally, citizens and non-citizens alike share one fundamental right when it comes to encounters with ICE, or any other law enforcement agency, for that matter: the right to remain silent.
Lisa Rubin is MS NOW’s senior legal reporter and a former litigator.
Fallon Gallagher is a legal affairs reporter for MS NOW.
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