The Civil Liberties Union yesterday swung into action against Senator Lazarus Joseph’s two anti-Nazi propaganda bills which were passed the day before by the New York Sate Senate without discussion.
Opening gun in its campaign to kill the measures was a telegram to members of the Rules Committee of the Assembly urging that the bills either be not reported or referred for public hearing. The message characterized the bills as so “general and vague they would penalize all propaganda.” It was signed by Roger N. Baldwin, director; Harry F. Ward, chairman, and Arthur Garfield Hays and Morris L. Ernst, counsel.
In a statement to the press Baldwin pointed out that the Joseph measures were so sweeping that they “could be used to attack the Jews themselves.”
“It is plain,” he said, “from the language of these bills that they strike not only at Nazi propaganda, but at any propaganda which stirs up prejudice. Almost all propaganda does that. These bills could be used to attack the Jews themselves. Any radical or political group striking back at its opponents could be prosecuted. No greater weapon of tyranny could be put into the hands of prosecutors than such a law. Its vague language makes it unconstitutional on its face. However, the State of New York should not be disgraced by putting legislative sanction on a law so clearly opposed to every tradition of liberty. The action of the Senate in passing such bills without either reference to committee or debate is to be condemned as unthinking submission to a philosophy akin to Hitlerism.”
THE PROHIBITIONS
One of the two bills attacked by the Union would penalize “any person or association of persons who shall write or publish any statements tending to subject any group to prejudice, shame, hatred, ridicule, disgrace or contempt by reason of race, color or religion, creed or manner of worship. The other makes it a misdemeanor to wear the uniforms or emblems of any propagandist political party, orgaization or society which is “calculated or likely to incite to riot, revolution or racial intolerance, hatred or prejudice.”
The Joseph measures are similar in purpose to the Rafferty Bill passed last week by the New Jersey Assembly but held up in the Senate as the result of a statewide storm of protest. The American Civil Liberties Union is opposing the Rafferty Bill and has demanded a public hearing.
According to the Bulletin’s Albany correspondent observers there believe that the fight on the measures in the lower house will be made on the ground that they nullify the Walker anti-Ku Klux Klan law which Joseph Pulitzer and the old New York World helped to enact years ago.
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