State Rep. Frankel builds support for hate speech bill in wake of Capitol riots

When an angry mob of anti-government extremists carrying symbols of hate stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, it may have been a wake-up call for some — but not for state Rep. Dan Frankel, a Democrat from Squirrel Hill.

Frankel is Jewish and represents a district that includes the Tree of Life synagogue, where 11 people were shot to death on Oct. 27, 2018. Even before that happened, Frankel was well aware of the damage hate speech can cause.

The shootings, however, were Frankel’s call to action.

In 2019, he was one of the sponsors of a hate crimes bill designed to extinguish the kind of hate speech that set a fire in the mind of Robert Bowers, charged as the Tree of Life shooter. Bowers’ participation in hate groups has been well documented. The bill had the support of former state House Speaker Mike Turzai but ended up going nowhere.

But in the new legislative session that began this month, Frankel has reintroduced legislation to address the kind of hate speech that spurred the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

“For myself and for so many other people, particularly in my community, they were taken aback by the images that they saw, the images of symbols of hate and bigotry that were prominently being paraded around the Capitol, whether it was the Confederate flag or sweatshirts with things like ‘Camp Auschwitz’ on them,” Frankel said.

The Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz accounted for 1 million of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust.

“Those sorts of images were completely reprehensible and shocking to anybody who is a decent human being,” said Frankel, who sees a link between the Tree of Life shooting and the storming of the Capitol.

“Many of us believe the acts of that anti-Semitic terrorist were basically sanctioned by a new environment that tolerates the type of speech that motivated these people and motivated the guy that murdered 11 of our neighbors,” Frankel said.

“We know this racism and anti-Semitism has always been there. But now, given four years of an administration that not only winks and nods but sometimes even participates in hate speech, the lid of the Pandora’s box that kind of suppressed all this behavior and speech has been lifted off and basically given a sense of legitimacy to those who follow those tenets.”

As part of an effort to address the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, the PA House Democratic Policy Committee held a three-hour hearing last week that included Frankel, two members of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation and Lauren Bairnsfather, executive director of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh.

In her testimony, Bairnsfather said her field has changed in recent years. It has gone from emphasizing the Jewish experience to trying to use the example of the Nazis and their bystanders to understand what she referred to as “perpetrator behavior.”

“What accounts for man’s inhumanity toward man? How do we understand a call to violence like what we saw on Jan. 6 at our nation’s Capitol? How do we understand the power of propaganda, denial and complicity? The power of ‘Camp Auschwitz,’ ” Bairnsfather said. “We can know with 100% certainty that anyone wearing a ‘Camp Auschwitz’ shirt on Jan. 6 was broadcasting a specific worldview, where Jews are less than human and are marked for elimination.”

The way forward in dealing with the issue of hate speech and hate crimes does not necessarily follow an easy path. However, Bairnsfather said society should be encouraged by a Pennsylvania survey indicating 67% of respondents agreed that Holocaust education should be compulsory in schools.

The 2014 state legislation Act 70 strongly recommended that the Holocaust, genocide, and human rights be taught in public schools. “This indicates that the implementation of PA Act 70 worked to establish the importance of Holocaust education in the commonwealth,” she said.

In order to combat hate in 2021, Bairnsfather emphasized that social media platforms must recognize references to the Holocaust and how they threaten individual lives.

“Anti-Semitism is the core of white nationalism. With rare exceptions, groups that espouse anti-Semitic beliefs also stand for racism, xenophobia, and other categories of hate and bigotry,” Bairnsfather said. “The Confederate flag, so flagrantly on display at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in August 2017, and again on Jan. 6 at the Capitol, sounds the clarion call to white supremacy and racist hatred.”

Frankel said it’s significant that the package of legislation he’s drafted has support from an array of groups including the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, the Pennsylvania Council of Churches, the NAACP, the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus and prominent members of the Muslim community. They include Wasi Mohamed, the former head of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh who is now a senior policy officer for The Pittsburgh Foundation.

One of the bills deals with training law enforcement to recognize hate crimes which are underreported for reasons that include law enforcement lacking an understanding of what a hate crime is and being able to identify it.

There is a proposal increasing penalties for hate crimes as well as legislation that targets some of what happens on college campuses.

“College campuses have young people coming in at 18, 19 years old, being away from home for the first time and they are very vulnerable to being either victims of hate crimes and hate groups or being recruited by hate groups,” Frankel said. There is also legislation that provides for the rehabilitation of those who are convicted of hate crimes.

All of the bills, said Frankel, incorporate protections for the LGBTQ community and the disabled, groups which Frankel said have been excluded in the past.

“I’m hoping we have a great opportunity to get it passed,” Frankel said. “Events like Jan. 6 should remind my colleagues that this is something important to address.”