The Emmett Till Antilynching Act may become a key piece in the arsenal for U.S. intelligence agencies’ war on free speech. //

Touted as an overdue (if duplicative) law that no one could disagree with, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act signed by President Biden last week includes a subtle provision that could boost the Biden administration’s war on wrongthink.

The bill sailed through the U.S. Senate and the House with ease. The tactful naming made the bill radioactive to oppose, which is why 422 congressmen voted in favor while only three opposed.

Rep. Thomas Massie, one of the three who voted against the bill, expressed a handful of concerns, including that there are a limited number of constitutionally specified federal crimes, that lynching is already criminalized, and that “Adding enhanced penalties for ‘hate’ [on top of existing criminal punishments] tends to endanger other liberties such as freedom of speech.”

He also highlighted another potential pitfall of the legislation: “The bill creates another federal crime of ‘conspiracy,’ which I’m concerned could be enforced overbroadly on people who are not perpetrators of a crime.” //

The bill amends the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, passed in 2009, which defines and criminalizes hate crimes. The minimum qualification is an attempt “to cause bodily injury” due to the victim’s race, sexual orientation, nationality, gender, religion, or disability.

Bodily injury can be defined as “physical pain” or “any other injury to the body, no matter how temporary.” Sensibly, the 2009 law requires an attempt at violence to be made, which is a crime itself regardless of prejudiced motives. The new “antilynching” law takes this a step further by criminalizing “conspiracy” to commit certain hate crimes. //

So as of last Tuesday, it is illegal to simply “agree” to participate in an act if it falls under the categories highlighted above. One can imagine dark political humor venturing into these categories (a comment such as “I hate so-and-so so much I could kill him,” for example) being interpreted as “conspiring to lynch.”

The key issue here is that intent should not be the sole subject of a court case. The purpose of courts is for a neutral arbiter to determine whether someone’s rights were violated during an encounter between two parties. Conspiracy, if no action is taken in pursuit of it, involves only one party: the conspirators. Therefore, it alone constitutes no crime as it couldn’t have possibly violated someone else’s rights.

With this new law, the U.S. government has further expanded into the realm of policing thought crimes.