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The Misguided Attacks on ACLU
- mtanski 9y agoI understand the mission of the ACLU, including their representation of people I agree with / don't agree with. But, I'm not quite sure why they are representing Milo... mostly because he can afford and their resources are better spent on cases where people can't. If they just filled a Amicus brief in his defense, i'd be perfectly fine.
- chc 9y agoBased on this article, it sounds like they're taking every opportunity they can get to fight this law (I'm assuming to establish the case law they want) rather than specifically choosing Milo.
- the8472 9y agoThey are not specifically representing milo. > The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are ideologically diverse: the ACLU itself, an abortion provider, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and alt-right-Internet-troll-to-the-point-Twitter-actually-banned-him Milo Yiannopoulos. It's a parade showing that the whole spectrum objects to this policy. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/dcs-transit-agency-rejected-ads-touting-the-first-amendment-really/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/dcs-transit-agen...
- norea-armozel 9y agoHe's like the worse kind of person to stick on your campaign. The fact he's fleeced his followers on the Privilege Grant shows the kind of person he is (as in he's a con artist). The other people in the case are better picks for your "controversial but right" poster child whereas Milo is the "I'm a jerk that wants attention, money, and cocaine so I'm going to defraud you to get it" poster child.
- scarmig 9y agoI had almost entirely forgotten about shanley, who's been on a one-sided jihad against HN since time immemorial. But apparently she chimed in with the thoughtful tweet: >FUCK THE ACLU >ACLU CELEBRATES CAUSING DEATH TO ANTI-FASCISTS AT THE HANDS OF NAZI AND KKK >"FREE SPEECH" IS FASCISM
- microcolonel 9y ago> >"FREE SPEECH" IS FASCISM War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength The thing about this assembly is that if Antifa hadn't shown up, and it was just the southern nationalists, National Socialists, white ethnonationalists, Alt-Righters, Proud Boys, and Oathkeepers[0] who planned the assembly, and the members of the peaceful counter-assembly, no fights would have broken out, and some people would walk away just looking very misguided. Instead somebody, unclear who (Edit: now clear who, see replies), rammed a car into a woman who is now dead; and there was enough ruckus to activate the National Guard. The clear problem here is precisely that speech is being equated to violence, and folks take that to imply that unsavoury speech warrants a violent response. [0]: https://twitter.com/UR_Ninja/status/896146435850108928 https://twitter.com/UR_Ninja/status/896146435850108928
- willstrafach 9y ago> Instead somebody, unclear who, rammed a car into a woman who is now dead "A man accused of plowing a car into a crowd of activists here — killing one person and injuring 19 — long sympathized with Nazi views and had stood with a group of white supremacists hours before Saturday’s bloody crash." (Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/one-dead-as-car-strikes-crowds-amid-protests-of-white-nationalist-gathering-in-charlottesville-two-police-die-in-helicopter-crash/2017/08/13/3590b3ce-8021-11e7-902a-2a9f2d808496_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/one-dead-as-car-strikes...)
- microcolonel 9y agoNew information to me, thanks for adding instead of insinuating.
- geofft 9y agoThis is a bad article. A general principle in debate is to attack the strongest arguments from the opposing side, not the weakest ones. Yes, dragging Shanley for her low-context low-nuance tweets is easy. (I suspect she enjoys seeing people fall into that trap.) The article completely dismisses a well-reasoned critique of the ACLU by a former-as-of-yesterday ACLU of Virginia board member who was directly involved in the Charlottesville legal proceedings until the ACLU showed up to oppose him: https://twitter.com/waldojaquith/status/896512190563454977 https://twitter.com/waldojaquith/status/896512190563454977 (thread) https://twitter.com/waldojaquith/status/896566113974317058 https://twitter.com/waldojaquith/status/896566113974317058 (thread) All they say about this is "One board member of the ACLU of Virginia, Waldo Jaquith, waited until the violence erupted to announce on Twitter that he was resigning in protest of the ACLU’s representation of the protesters – as though he was unaware when he joined the Board that the ACLU has been representing the free speech rights of neo-Nazis and other white supremacist groups (along with Communists, Muslims, war protesters and the full spectrum of marginalized minorities and leftists) for many decades." Of course he knows that and knew that. Greenwald would do well to debate his actual points. In particular, the ACLU was not defending the right of the neo-Nazis to assemble, but the right of the neo-Nazis to assemble in a crowded park that was too small for effective logistics. (Greenwald half-mentions this in a parenthetical, without context.) Jason Kessler and Emily Gorcenski agree on approximately nothing, but they both have criticized the inability of the city to keep order during yesterday's events, which appears to be the direct cause of the life lost yesterday: the road that James Alan Fields drove his car down was not a protest location but was between two of the parks, and the counter-protesters believed that it was supposed to be closed to vehicular traffic. The city was not trying to prevent the neo-Nazis from speaking. They were merely trying to move them to a larger, easier-to-secure area to prevent exactly the thing that happened yesterday. The ACLU defended the right of the neo-Nazis to protest in the smaller park simply because they claimed it was their free speech right to assemble next to the statue of Robert E. Lee, instead of somewhere that the city could ensure a safe event. It also gives no serious response to this critique of the ACLU by a current ACLU lawyer: https://twitter.com/chasestrangio/status/895351745693585419 https://twitter.com/chasestrangio/status/895351745693585419 and completely ignores this information, which utterly wipes out Greenwald's non-serious response to Strangio, from an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus: https://twitter.com/anoop_alc/status/896468870764011522 https://twitter.com/anoop_alc/status/896468870764011522 "I asked the ACLU for help defending a Muslim immigrant being deported for protected speech. They declined. They CHOOSE to protect the KKK."
- kartD 9y agoIt might be just me, but after a point it looks like most movements become a mirror image of what they oppose, so anything in the middle ground like the ACLU gets flak from both sides...
- taneq 9y agoHe who fights monsters, etc.
- krisdol 9y agoWho is attacking the ACLU?
- wheaties 9y agoThere is a segment of America that wants to prohibit speech that is "bad." In this case, the rhetoric of the alt-right and other racist fear mongers. This is speech that incites riots. I'm glad the ACLU is there fighting this fight. Lest we forget that at one time unpopular speech was women's rights.
- Navarr 9y agoShould there perhaps be some limits, though? For some reason, I can't imagine that advocating genocide should ever be considered legitimate free speech. I can understand political ideologies, even authoritarianism being protected - but advocation of genocide? Why do we refuse to draw lines?
- pjscott 9y agoForgive me if I'm being dense here, but how is genocide a form of speech? Genocide is a form of killing.
- scarmig 9y agoIn Rwanda, there was a radio station literally advocating genocide and organizing slaughters. It played a major role in inflaming tensions that were already really high. You can reasonably see it as an exercise in free speech, but it was also very much an active participant of the genocide. Needless to say, the USA is not 90's Rwanda.
- Navarr 9y agoAdvocation thereof
- jayd16 9y agoThere are limits. You can't incite violence or shout fire in a crowded theater or plenty of other reasons.
- moxious 9y agoThe ACLU always gets attacked when they defend reprehensible free speech. The trouble with free speech of course is that it doesn't need defending when it's popular and accepted. So naturally they're going to take some heat for this. Charlottesville was a bloody mess and mix-up of different factors though. Some were nut jobs who were exercising their right to free speech. Some were violent and inciting riots. The exact same applies to the counter-protestors. Groups of people in public are always messy amalgams that usually don't have one clear goal and message, so you'll always be able to paint the best of them with the actions of the worst of them. It works that way on both sides.
- Navarr 9y agoI would be careful of assigning false equivalency considering a domestic terrorist act occurred against the counter-protesters.
- briandear 9y agoWas Reginald Denny’s attack during the LA riots considered a terrorist act? How about the Baltimore riots? We are really quick to label “domestic terror” when it suits our politics but rarely is it used to describe events such as the Baltimore riots or the Michael Brown riots. There is a double standard and I think that double standard is why we get a president like Trump. People are sick of being labeled racists, bigots or “extremists” because they don’t agree with left wing politics. No excuse for white supremists of course, but there ought not be an excuse for anti-white rhetoric either. The very term “White privilege” is racist to the core. Ideas like “black lives matter” or “La Raza” are racist by definition.
- hprotagonist 9y agoWhen Greenwald is right, he's dead-on. The ACLU is one of things about my country that I'm very proud of, and happy to support.
- shalmanese 9y agoIs anyone prominent attacking the ACLU on this? All the article cites is a bunch of twitter users. I tried to Google and I couldn't find anything except neutral reporting and this article, no major left wing sources who are arguing that what the ACLU is doing is wrong.