13 ms·

The ACLU Asks in 1934: Shall We Defend Free Speech for Nazis in America?

114 points by mbgaxyz 9y ago

b6 9y ago
It's great to read such eloquent defense of such an important idea. I would ask that anybody with terrible ideas be allowed to speak at length and convince all the peaceful tolerant listeners of the terribleness of the ideas. Sadly, the importance of freedom of expression seems dead in the minds of many Americans.
- s0l1dsnak3123 9y ago
  The situation is an order of magnitude worse in the UK.
  - simonh 9y ago
    Perhaps, but then we have effective safeguards over here that the US doesn't have. Particularly, we have a truly independent and non-politicised judiciary. That's a big deal. We don't have the absolute and uncompromisingly worded constitutional rights of the US, but we're also far less likely to suffer erosion or elimination of those rights in practice that we see in the US. E.g. If the UK government wanted to have National Security Letters they'd just pass a law allowing them to do so. But there's no way the judiciary would allow them to create and apply such letters otherwise, the way it happened in the US. So yes the security state here does go too far IMHO but it's much more explicit and open to public debate and challenge.
    - jopsen 9y ago
      Indeed, also EU member nations are subject to European Court of Human Rights. Even if the UK leaves the EU, it's not unlikely you'll maintain a relationship to some of that. Depending on how hard/soft brexit turns out to be.
      - beojan 9y ago
        > Indeed, also EU member nations are subject to European Court of Human Rights. Council of Europe members. Russia is a Council of Europe member, so the UK isn't leaving that. On the other hand, it also isn't as effective as you might think.
  - alacombe 9y ago
    or in Europe in general.
- adventured 9y ago
  In the near-term (10-15 years), fortunately, the Supreme Court is very likely to shield freedom of speech from this latest cultural assault. The primary question is what direction the authoritarian types will attack it from legally / politically. The main vehicle has to be the intentionally vague hate speech approach, which they've been readying and building up for decades. To regulate it into action, they'll have to argue the Internet (the primary medium that matters now) is under FCC broadcast control just as with traditional radio and broadcast TV. Then they'll task any Internet content publishing platforms with obeying and enforcing the new hate speech limitations. Those new rules will vary with the political winds and be aggressively abused by each administration and major political shift in DC. It'll become a form of shifting thought terror brought down upon the American people (what can/can't I express changing every 4 to 8 years); by the time the public realizes what has happened, it'll be far too late, their speech - their last line of defense - will be gone.
  - rthwoywaa 9y ago
    The approach they are using right now, and very successfully, is to force the large companies to censor for them. Internally to the company they will say "this and this and this should be deleted". They accuse anyone that disagrees of creating a hostile work environment (illegal per anti-discrimination laws). Without anyone left to disagree, they can get basically all they ask for. They then disingeniously say "this is the decision of a private company, free speech only applies to the government" even though they were the ones that forced the company's hand. Complete censorship is not possible with this strategy, because there will always be other ways to get the speech out, but it may well be censored from as large a percentage of people as in a dictatorship.
    - simonh 9y ago
      How is the government forcing large companies to censor? I've not come across any instances of this. Pressure maybe, but there's a world of difference between pressure and force. See Apple's refusal to assist in decrypting the contents of their phones. Personally I agree with the ACLU position on this, but also believe that privately owned publishing platforms should be free to establish their own policies on what they will or will not carry. That's their right as private entities. Excepting explicit regulation such as common carrier. I don't think anyone is saying it would be OK for the phone companies to cut off KKK members phone service.
- PeanutCurry 9y ago
  I realize I'm risking downvotes with this one, but I think it's worth acknowledging. While Charlottesville was a tragedy, and the time is not right imo to discuss it with the public at large precisely because it was a tragedy and people are still mourning, the event was overall as peaceful as any severely political protest ever is. The deaths and injuries that occurred should not be simply discounted as if the people are simply disposable, but the majority of activists on both sides did not cause those deaths and injuries. Unless there is a major point of information that I am ignorant of, the driver who has catapulted the event into the national spotlight acted essentially in isolation even if his ideology was not held in isolation at the event. He acted heinously, and now is not the time for taking easy solace, but I think there's some merit in the reality that by and large people on both sides were able to demonstrate with the -relative- peacefulness of a generic controversial American protest with orbital counter protests.
  - ygaf 9y ago
    This is why I couldn't believe that terrorism was invoked. (for a second, before accepting the unscrupulous cleverness of it) Terrorism is when a message is sent to the people at large, not what happens between warring protestors. Terrorism is what Theresa May wants to tap internet communications for.
    - Shivetya 9y ago
      to me the key difference is terrorism is premeditated. this violence was the act of one individual and is blown out of proportion. what was not communicated is that only these "alt-right" groups had permission to march and demonstrate and the police were told to not intervene when counter groups who assembled in similar manner without permission were allowed free reign to incite the issue. I am all for letting these "alt-right/left" groups march to their hearts content provided their faces are visible. it gives them an outlet and lets the rest of us know who they are. so while their message may be repugnant they have the right to march. the ACLU recent preening/posturing/etc is shameful compared to their past actions. far too many groups are piling on declaring how they are against violence which is non declaration. Of course violence cannot be supported. the real danger is if we force these groups underground that some of their members may act out with much more terrible violence.
- jopsen 9y ago
  the boundaries for freedom of speech will always be tested, and as the document reveals this the first time freedom of speech is debated.. and won't be the last either. But I for one don't believe there is any serious efforts to limit freedom of speech in America, we're still far from that point :)
  - LeifCarrotson 9y ago
    Major typo: > as the document reveals this [IS NOT] the first time freedom of speech is debated.. and won't be the last either. I presume that's what you intended to write?
- nimish 9y ago
  You and the ACLU have been tripped up by the paradox of tolerance: there is a time and place to analyze ideas destructive to open society, but that is not the same as what happened in Charlottesville or Germany in the '30s
  - KekDemaga 9y ago
    The paradox of tolerance is that in order to be extremely tolerant to some you must become intolerant of others, it has nothing to do with violence.
  - lagadu 9y ago
    > there is a time and place to analyze ideas destructive to open society I hope you realize this is the type of speech we should expect from a totalitarian regime. Who determines whether something is destructive to society? Always and everywhere should be the time and place to analyse any ideas regardless of whether anyone thinks they're destructive or not.
    - syshum 9y ago
      >>Who determines whether something is destructive to society? This is a key question people want to avoid Every group has their own idea as to what is destructive to society, Ask Anti-fa they will tell it is the White Supremacists, Ask the White Supremacists and they will tell you it is Anti-fa Ask me and I will tell you it is both... Ask Christians and they will give you a whole list of speech that is destructive, Ask Atheists and they will give you a whole list of speech that is destructive, Ask <insert group>, and they will give you a whole list of speech that is destructive, So who is right? None of them.... not even me. What is actually destructive to society is Censorship... Both by government and by society at large
  - DarkKomunalec 9y ago
    > there is a time and place to analyze ideas destructive to open society Just like there's a time and place to question the war effort, right? Besides, some people want closed borders, not an open society - why should only ideas that favour openness be allowed?
- tcbawo 9y ago
  It is a noble sentiment that bears remembering. Although, we should ruminate on what it means in a world of attention span saturation, where competing ideas are essentially DDoSed. If you look in depth at cult deprogramming techniques, there is a danger to isolation and concentration of ideas.
mido22 9y ago
I am kinda confused, facebook was criticized for not weeding out "fake news" (same for twitter/ Instagram not controlling trolling/hate speech), and Cloudflare is criticized for not being content neutral... damned if you do, damned if you don't
- convery 9y ago
  Pretty sure it's different groups complaining.
- leereeves 9y ago
  The ACLU gets plenty of criticism too. Some people don't support the rights the ACLU defends.
- ForHackernews 9y ago
  I think there's a meaningful difference between a media company (Facebook/Twitter/etc.) and an infrastructure provider. I expect the electric company to provide electricity to everyone on a non-discriminatory basis. I don't expect publishers to print everything that gets submitted to them.
  - PeanutCurry 9y ago
    Could you expand on this a little? I'm confused because the ACLU is not a government organization, they're not part of the infrastructure.
    - pls2halp 9y ago
      His parent was referring to Cloudflare suspending their services for the Daily Stormer, which was presumably the impetuous for this whole post.
  - the8472 9y ago
    Facebook claims to provide service to 25% of the world population. I think it's worth considering whether they are communication carriers at this point. Real-world concepts of common carriers are centered around the concept of natural monopolies arising from local effects. That does not take networking effects into account which can work non-locally.
nl 9y ago
Note that the ACLU has (just today) announced a slight modification to this policy. They will continue to defend Fascist groups right to hold marches, but not if they plan to carry guns. The American Civil Liberties Union will no longer defend hate groups seeking to march with firearms, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, a policy change that comes on the heels of protests by white nationalists and counter-protesters at the weekend in Virginia. Edit: I don't usually complain about this, but it's weird to see the voting on this. It's pretty clear some people don't like it, and decided to shoot the messenger I guess. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-virginia-protests-aclu-idUSKCN1AY06L https://www.reuters.com/article/us-virginia-protests-aclu-id...
- officemonkey 9y ago
  I'm thinking this is an example of the original statement in the pamphlet that says "overt acts of interference of others' rights" will not be supported. Open carry of firearms during protests is _intended_ to intimidate others' free speech rights. It's an overt act of interference of others' rights.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    With the possible exception of people protesting for their right to openly carry firearms. Showing up armed to a protest not about bearing arms is just asking for things to go south fast.
- akavel 9y ago
  Hm; to me this sounds rather in line with the following quote from page 4 of the OP document: "Against drilling with arms, as testified to before a Congressional committee, the Union will also fight—even for the enactment of laws, if necessary, to prohibit arms in the hands of political organizations." Is there some subtle (?) difference I didn't notice between this sentence and the reported change in policy?
  - nl 9y ago
    Quote: An ACLU spokeswoman confirmed the policy shift and said the concern over weapons was not something the group has had to contend with in the past. So I'm assuming the ACLU knows what their policy was, and this was a change. I guess sometime between the 1934 document posted and yesterday the ACLU's policy changed to defend protests where guns were carried, and now they are looking at that again. Notably they went to court to defend the Charlotteville protest, and they knew open-carry milita were planning to come.
nocoder 9y ago
This - "Further, we point out the inevitable effect of making martyrs by persecution. Persecute the Nazis, drive them underground, imitate their methods in Germany - and attract to them hundreds of sympathizers with the persecuted who would otherwise be indifferent." Most of the people & corporations screaming for suppression on all kinds of speeches across spectrum of opinions do not get this. The best way increase toxicity of any discourse is to try and suppress it, this is is evident from recent examples of Google, Cloudfare, FB, Charlotesville, University of Berkeley and many more. While I have no hopes from corporations, I hope that people realize that dialogue & free speech are perhaps the most non-violent & non-toxic ways of resolving any issues. Suppressing opinions be of any side just widens the chasm between groups and benefits narrow political agendas.
- golemotron 9y ago
  It's tragic that, apparently, this observation of history is not taught in schools anymore.
- matt4077 9y ago
  This mechanism of any form of blowback against extremists only making them stronger keeps being repeated, but there is absolutely no data supporting it. There is, however, plenty of data supporting the opposite: almost all other democracies have strikter limits on hate speech, and none of them have devolved into dictatorships. Indeed, one could argue that the US ran a pretty successful campaign to suppress Nazi hate speech almost immediately after it was invented.
  - nocoder 9y ago
    >There is, however, plenty of data supporting the opposite: almost all other democracies have strikter limits on hate speech, and none of them have devolved into dictatorships. does that mean all "hate speech" is eliminated? Please share the data. The other problem is who decides which free speech to suppress? Who has that moral right?
    - matt4077 9y ago
waynenilsen 9y ago
> Is it not clear that free speech as a practical tactic, not only as an abstract principle, demands defense of the rights of all who are attacked in order to obtain the rights of any?
censoredhn 9y ago
This latest leftist push (or putsch) against freedom of speech is telling. If they really were confident that they could prevail in open debate against their opponents on the relevant issues--such as whether diversity really is a strength, the existence of race, the existence of differences in intelligence, temperament, and other traits between races and their appropriate degree of attribution to underlying genetic differences, and race and crime (and interracial crime in particular)--would they be this desperate to silence the opposition? And do they seriously expect to be given carte-blanche power to silence anyone they brand a Nazi? Especially when they construe that term so broadly as to include any racially-conscious white person, including those who just want whites to have the right to form their own racially homogeneous communities without being sued or having the federal government air-dropping Somali refugees into it, communities free from those precious people of color whites are said to be horribly oppressing, but who for some reason still insist on living amongst us in our neighborhoods anyway... The left is overplaying its hand, and if they persist in this effort to censor white speech advocating for white interests, I expect a nasty backlash.
- DarkKomunalec 9y ago
  > the existence of differences in intelligence, temperament, and other traits between races Isn't that irrelevant? Would you allow immigrants to displace you from your homeland, as long as they were smarter and calmer?
  - censoredhn 9y ago
    > Isn't that irrelevant? It attests to the reality of race, something leftist free speech haters deny.
    - DarkKomunalec 9y ago
      Race is shared ancestry, just like family, but broader. It's as real as family, and just as fuzzy at the edges. It needs no tricky-to-measure differences in intelligence, or claims of superiority, to attest to its existence.
spodek 9y ago
There's a big difference between Nazis in 1934 and now. How comparable are they? How many in 1934 have foreseen what was to come?
- Raz2 9y ago
  It is said that it was a common feeling that war is imminent.
ryanbrunner 9y ago
I think it's always useful to define exactly what sort of speech you want to suppress when you discuss additional restrictions on free speech. I think the idea of free speech as an absolute right is already a pleasant fiction - there's many exceptions, and adding additional ones doesn't seem like a huge problem. But I get the impression that people mean "the initial rally in Charlottesville shouldn't be allowed" when they're discussing this, and that doesn't seem realistic with any sort of free speech restrictions. I'm sorry to parrot a Donald Trump argument, but not everyone in that crowd was waving a Nazi flag, and very few were directly calling for violence (I won't go as far as to say they're good people or historical statue enthusiasts). Do you outright ban any sort of racist sentiment? That seems overly broad and potentially capable of being used negatively against minorities. I think there's two free speech restrictions that I could get behind: 1. Widening the definition of "incitement" to relax the imminent and direct requirements. I don't see why "kill all blacks" should be protected while "kill this black with this gun" shouldn't be. 2. Banning specific iconography that has a long history of being used for hate (the swastika, white hoods, etc.) 2 may have had some marginal utility in Charlottesville (you'd have no Nazi flags, but still plenty of Nazis). I don't think 1 would have made a lot of difference. As far as I know (I'm happy to be corrected on this), most or all of the crowd was not calling for violence, direct or indirect. How do you restrict the speech of people calling for border walls, muslim bans, restrictions on legal and illegal immigration, and other racist but non-violent positions?
- nocoder 9y ago
  Small nitpick on 2 - If you visited India you will find "Swastikas" on the doors of many of the Hindu & Jain households. It is a symbol of auspiciousness and good luck, the association with hatred is very recent and perhaps limited to western world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika
  - matt4077 9y ago
    It's this sort of completely irrelevant, shallow, bad-faith argument that makes me afraid of what the future holds. Within the context of this debate, the Swastika is a symbol of genocide, and fascism, and nothing else. To suggest that you can't tell, and that these people chanting "Jews will not replace us" may have just been buddhists is ridiculous, and sad.
Raz2 9y ago
So, a lot of Americans think that if they ban incitement to hatred based on sex, race, and religion than they have to ban communists, republicans, and democrats in a few years. I really don't get how is it related. Especially if it didn't happen in other countries.
nkzednan 9y ago
There's a good episode of Opening Arguments (podcast) that talks about the ACLU/Charlottesville/etc. http://openargs.com/oa96-understanding-charlottesville/ http://openargs.com/oa96-understanding-charlottesville/
palad1n 9y ago
It's an interesting position: the paper says they defend the right of their assembly, but even then, at the end says if they cross the line, they should be held legally accountable. What's interesting is that their stated goals are in fact against the law. The paper sort of does a dance about this issue. You're allowed to hate. You're not allowed to act upon that hate. Where does that leave us? In my thinking, they're the ones who have to change. How to bring that about? We watch the watchmen. By "we", I mean the world. It's not the same situation we are in now as back when this paper was written. Should we now then, knowing what are the fruits of their assembly when they did so before, tolerate even the scheming of their purposes? I like one thing that happened this last time: the pictures of them all over the social networks asking if their employers would tolerate them. I say, let them assemble. Take note of them, now that they are emboldened to show their faces. And if they take one step to fulfill their agenda, then unleash hell on them.

114 points by mbgaxyz 9y ago

b6 9y ago

It's great to read such eloquent defense of such an important idea. I would ask that anybody with terrible ideas be allowed to speak at length and convince all the peaceful tolerant listeners of the terribleness of the ideas. Sadly, the importance of freedom of expression seems dead in the minds of many Americans.

s0l1dsnak3123 9y ago
The situation is an order of magnitude worse in the UK.
- simonh 9y ago
  Perhaps, but then we have effective safeguards over here that the US doesn't have. Particularly, we have a truly independent and non-politicised judiciary. That's a big deal. We don't have the absolute and uncompromisingly worded constitutional rights of the US, but we're also far less likely to suffer erosion or elimination of those rights in practice that we see in the US. E.g. If the UK government wanted to have National Security Letters they'd just pass a law allowing them to do so. But there's no way the judiciary would allow them to create and apply such letters otherwise, the way it happened in the US. So yes the security state here does go too far IMHO but it's much more explicit and open to public debate and challenge.
  - jopsen 9y ago
    Indeed, also EU member nations are subject to European Court of Human Rights. Even if the UK leaves the EU, it's not unlikely you'll maintain a relationship to some of that. Depending on how hard/soft brexit turns out to be.
    - beojan 9y ago
      > Indeed, also EU member nations are subject to European Court of Human Rights. Council of Europe members. Russia is a Council of Europe member, so the UK isn't leaving that. On the other hand, it also isn't as effective as you might think.
- alacombe 9y ago
  or in Europe in general.
adventured 9y ago
In the near-term (10-15 years), fortunately, the Supreme Court is very likely to shield freedom of speech from this latest cultural assault. The primary question is what direction the authoritarian types will attack it from legally / politically. The main vehicle has to be the intentionally vague hate speech approach, which they've been readying and building up for decades. To regulate it into action, they'll have to argue the Internet (the primary medium that matters now) is under FCC broadcast control just as with traditional radio and broadcast TV. Then they'll task any Internet content publishing platforms with obeying and enforcing the new hate speech limitations. Those new rules will vary with the political winds and be aggressively abused by each administration and major political shift in DC. It'll become a form of shifting thought terror brought down upon the American people (what can/can't I express changing every 4 to 8 years); by the time the public realizes what has happened, it'll be far too late, their speech - their last line of defense - will be gone.
- rthwoywaa 9y ago
  The approach they are using right now, and very successfully, is to force the large companies to censor for them. Internally to the company they will say "this and this and this should be deleted". They accuse anyone that disagrees of creating a hostile work environment (illegal per anti-discrimination laws). Without anyone left to disagree, they can get basically all they ask for. They then disingeniously say "this is the decision of a private company, free speech only applies to the government" even though they were the ones that forced the company's hand. Complete censorship is not possible with this strategy, because there will always be other ways to get the speech out, but it may well be censored from as large a percentage of people as in a dictatorship.
  - simonh 9y ago
    How is the government forcing large companies to censor? I've not come across any instances of this. Pressure maybe, but there's a world of difference between pressure and force. See Apple's refusal to assist in decrypting the contents of their phones. Personally I agree with the ACLU position on this, but also believe that privately owned publishing platforms should be free to establish their own policies on what they will or will not carry. That's their right as private entities. Excepting explicit regulation such as common carrier. I don't think anyone is saying it would be OK for the phone companies to cut off KKK members phone service.
PeanutCurry 9y ago
I realize I'm risking downvotes with this one, but I think it's worth acknowledging. While Charlottesville was a tragedy, and the time is not right imo to discuss it with the public at large precisely because it was a tragedy and people are still mourning, the event was overall as peaceful as any severely political protest ever is. The deaths and injuries that occurred should not be simply discounted as if the people are simply disposable, but the majority of activists on both sides did not cause those deaths and injuries. Unless there is a major point of information that I am ignorant of, the driver who has catapulted the event into the national spotlight acted essentially in isolation even if his ideology was not held in isolation at the event. He acted heinously, and now is not the time for taking easy solace, but I think there's some merit in the reality that by and large people on both sides were able to demonstrate with the -relative- peacefulness of a generic controversial American protest with orbital counter protests.
- ygaf 9y ago
  This is why I couldn't believe that terrorism was invoked. (for a second, before accepting the unscrupulous cleverness of it) Terrorism is when a message is sent to the people at large, not what happens between warring protestors. Terrorism is what Theresa May wants to tap internet communications for.
  - Shivetya 9y ago
    to me the key difference is terrorism is premeditated. this violence was the act of one individual and is blown out of proportion. what was not communicated is that only these "alt-right" groups had permission to march and demonstrate and the police were told to not intervene when counter groups who assembled in similar manner without permission were allowed free reign to incite the issue. I am all for letting these "alt-right/left" groups march to their hearts content provided their faces are visible. it gives them an outlet and lets the rest of us know who they are. so while their message may be repugnant they have the right to march. the ACLU recent preening/posturing/etc is shameful compared to their past actions. far too many groups are piling on declaring how they are against violence which is non declaration. Of course violence cannot be supported. the real danger is if we force these groups underground that some of their members may act out with much more terrible violence.
jopsen 9y ago
the boundaries for freedom of speech will always be tested, and as the document reveals this the first time freedom of speech is debated.. and won't be the last either. But I for one don't believe there is any serious efforts to limit freedom of speech in America, we're still far from that point :)
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  Major typo: > as the document reveals this [IS NOT] the first time freedom of speech is debated.. and won't be the last either. I presume that's what you intended to write?
nimish 9y ago
You and the ACLU have been tripped up by the paradox of tolerance: there is a time and place to analyze ideas destructive to open society, but that is not the same as what happened in Charlottesville or Germany in the '30s
- KekDemaga 9y ago
  The paradox of tolerance is that in order to be extremely tolerant to some you must become intolerant of others, it has nothing to do with violence.
- lagadu 9y ago
  > there is a time and place to analyze ideas destructive to open society I hope you realize this is the type of speech we should expect from a totalitarian regime. Who determines whether something is destructive to society? Always and everywhere should be the time and place to analyse any ideas regardless of whether anyone thinks they're destructive or not.
  - syshum 9y ago
    >>Who determines whether something is destructive to society? This is a key question people want to avoid Every group has their own idea as to what is destructive to society, Ask Anti-fa they will tell it is the White Supremacists, Ask the White Supremacists and they will tell you it is Anti-fa Ask me and I will tell you it is both... Ask Christians and they will give you a whole list of speech that is destructive, Ask Atheists and they will give you a whole list of speech that is destructive, Ask <insert group>, and they will give you a whole list of speech that is destructive, So who is right? None of them.... not even me. What is actually destructive to society is Censorship... Both by government and by society at large
- DarkKomunalec 9y ago
  > there is a time and place to analyze ideas destructive to open society Just like there's a time and place to question the war effort, right? Besides, some people want closed borders, not an open society - why should only ideas that favour openness be allowed?
tcbawo 9y ago
It is a noble sentiment that bears remembering. Although, we should ruminate on what it means in a world of attention span saturation, where competing ideas are essentially DDoSed. If you look in depth at cult deprogramming techniques, there is a danger to isolation and concentration of ideas.

mido22 9y ago

I am kinda confused, facebook was criticized for not weeding out "fake news" (same for twitter/ Instagram not controlling trolling/hate speech), and Cloudflare is criticized for not being content neutral... damned if you do, damned if you don't

convery 9y ago
Pretty sure it's different groups complaining.
leereeves 9y ago
The ACLU gets plenty of criticism too. Some people don't support the rights the ACLU defends.
ForHackernews 9y ago
I think there's a meaningful difference between a media company (Facebook/Twitter/etc.) and an infrastructure provider. I expect the electric company to provide electricity to everyone on a non-discriminatory basis. I don't expect publishers to print everything that gets submitted to them.
- PeanutCurry 9y ago
  Could you expand on this a little? I'm confused because the ACLU is not a government organization, they're not part of the infrastructure.
  - pls2halp 9y ago
    His parent was referring to Cloudflare suspending their services for the Daily Stormer, which was presumably the impetuous for this whole post.
- the8472 9y ago
  Facebook claims to provide service to 25% of the world population. I think it's worth considering whether they are communication carriers at this point. Real-world concepts of common carriers are centered around the concept of natural monopolies arising from local effects. That does not take networking effects into account which can work non-locally.

nl 9y ago

Note that the ACLU has (just today) announced a slight modification to this policy. They will continue to defend Fascist groups right to hold marches, but not if they plan to carry guns. The American Civil Liberties Union will no longer defend hate groups seeking to march with firearms, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, a policy change that comes on the heels of protests by white nationalists and counter-protesters at the weekend in Virginia. Edit: I don't usually complain about this, but it's weird to see the voting on this. It's pretty clear some people don't like it, and decided to shoot the messenger I guess. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-virginia-protests-aclu-idUSKCN1AY06L https://www.reuters.com/article/us-virginia-protests-aclu-id...

officemonkey 9y ago
I'm thinking this is an example of the original statement in the pamphlet that says "overt acts of interference of others' rights" will not be supported. Open carry of firearms during protests is _intended_ to intimidate others' free speech rights. It's an overt act of interference of others' rights.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  With the possible exception of people protesting for their right to openly carry firearms. Showing up armed to a protest not about bearing arms is just asking for things to go south fast.
akavel 9y ago
Hm; to me this sounds rather in line with the following quote from page 4 of the OP document: "Against drilling with arms, as testified to before a Congressional committee, the Union will also fight—even for the enactment of laws, if necessary, to prohibit arms in the hands of political organizations." Is there some subtle (?) difference I didn't notice between this sentence and the reported change in policy?
- nl 9y ago
  Quote: An ACLU spokeswoman confirmed the policy shift and said the concern over weapons was not something the group has had to contend with in the past. So I'm assuming the ACLU knows what their policy was, and this was a change. I guess sometime between the 1934 document posted and yesterday the ACLU's policy changed to defend protests where guns were carried, and now they are looking at that again. Notably they went to court to defend the Charlotteville protest, and they knew open-carry milita were planning to come.

nocoder 9y ago

This - "Further, we point out the inevitable effect of making martyrs by persecution. Persecute the Nazis, drive them underground, imitate their methods in Germany - and attract to them hundreds of sympathizers with the persecuted who would otherwise be indifferent." Most of the people & corporations screaming for suppression on all kinds of speeches across spectrum of opinions do not get this. The best way increase toxicity of any discourse is to try and suppress it, this is is evident from recent examples of Google, Cloudfare, FB, Charlotesville, University of Berkeley and many more. While I have no hopes from corporations, I hope that people realize that dialogue & free speech are perhaps the most non-violent & non-toxic ways of resolving any issues. Suppressing opinions be of any side just widens the chasm between groups and benefits narrow political agendas.

golemotron 9y ago
It's tragic that, apparently, this observation of history is not taught in schools anymore.
matt4077 9y ago
This mechanism of any form of blowback against extremists only making them stronger keeps being repeated, but there is absolutely no data supporting it. There is, however, plenty of data supporting the opposite: almost all other democracies have strikter limits on hate speech, and none of them have devolved into dictatorships. Indeed, one could argue that the US ran a pretty successful campaign to suppress Nazi hate speech almost immediately after it was invented.
- nocoder 9y ago
  >There is, however, plenty of data supporting the opposite: almost all other democracies have strikter limits on hate speech, and none of them have devolved into dictatorships. does that mean all "hate speech" is eliminated? Please share the data. The other problem is who decides which free speech to suppress? Who has that moral right?
  - matt4077 9y ago

waynenilsen 9y ago

> Is it not clear that free speech as a practical tactic, not only as an abstract principle, demands defense of the rights of all who are attacked in order to obtain the rights of any?

censoredhn 9y ago

This latest leftist push (or putsch) against freedom of speech is telling. If they really were confident that they could prevail in open debate against their opponents on the relevant issues--such as whether diversity really is a strength, the existence of race, the existence of differences in intelligence, temperament, and other traits between races and their appropriate degree of attribution to underlying genetic differences, and race and crime (and interracial crime in particular)--would they be this desperate to silence the opposition? And do they seriously expect to be given carte-blanche power to silence anyone they brand a Nazi? Especially when they construe that term so broadly as to include any racially-conscious white person, including those who just want whites to have the right to form their own racially homogeneous communities without being sued or having the federal government air-dropping Somali refugees into it, communities free from those precious people of color whites are said to be horribly oppressing, but who for some reason still insist on living amongst us in our neighborhoods anyway... The left is overplaying its hand, and if they persist in this effort to censor white speech advocating for white interests, I expect a nasty backlash.

DarkKomunalec 9y ago
> the existence of differences in intelligence, temperament, and other traits between races Isn't that irrelevant? Would you allow immigrants to displace you from your homeland, as long as they were smarter and calmer?
- censoredhn 9y ago
  > Isn't that irrelevant? It attests to the reality of race, something leftist free speech haters deny.
  - DarkKomunalec 9y ago
    Race is shared ancestry, just like family, but broader. It's as real as family, and just as fuzzy at the edges. It needs no tricky-to-measure differences in intelligence, or claims of superiority, to attest to its existence.

spodek 9y ago

There's a big difference between Nazis in 1934 and now. How comparable are they? How many in 1934 have foreseen what was to come?

Raz2 9y ago
It is said that it was a common feeling that war is imminent.

ryanbrunner 9y ago

I think it's always useful to define exactly what sort of speech you want to suppress when you discuss additional restrictions on free speech. I think the idea of free speech as an absolute right is already a pleasant fiction - there's many exceptions, and adding additional ones doesn't seem like a huge problem. But I get the impression that people mean "the initial rally in Charlottesville shouldn't be allowed" when they're discussing this, and that doesn't seem realistic with any sort of free speech restrictions. I'm sorry to parrot a Donald Trump argument, but not everyone in that crowd was waving a Nazi flag, and very few were directly calling for violence (I won't go as far as to say they're good people or historical statue enthusiasts). Do you outright ban any sort of racist sentiment? That seems overly broad and potentially capable of being used negatively against minorities. I think there's two free speech restrictions that I could get behind: 1. Widening the definition of "incitement" to relax the imminent and direct requirements. I don't see why "kill all blacks" should be protected while "kill this black with this gun" shouldn't be. 2. Banning specific iconography that has a long history of being used for hate (the swastika, white hoods, etc.) 2 may have had some marginal utility in Charlottesville (you'd have no Nazi flags, but still plenty of Nazis). I don't think 1 would have made a lot of difference. As far as I know (I'm happy to be corrected on this), most or all of the crowd was not calling for violence, direct or indirect. How do you restrict the speech of people calling for border walls, muslim bans, restrictions on legal and illegal immigration, and other racist but non-violent positions?

nocoder 9y ago
Small nitpick on 2 - If you visited India you will find "Swastikas" on the doors of many of the Hindu & Jain households. It is a symbol of auspiciousness and good luck, the association with hatred is very recent and perhaps limited to western world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika
- matt4077 9y ago
  It's this sort of completely irrelevant, shallow, bad-faith argument that makes me afraid of what the future holds. Within the context of this debate, the Swastika is a symbol of genocide, and fascism, and nothing else. To suggest that you can't tell, and that these people chanting "Jews will not replace us" may have just been buddhists is ridiculous, and sad.

Raz2 9y ago

So, a lot of Americans think that if they ban incitement to hatred based on sex, race, and religion than they have to ban communists, republicans, and democrats in a few years. I really don't get how is it related. Especially if it didn't happen in other countries.

nkzednan 9y ago

There's a good episode of Opening Arguments (podcast) that talks about the ACLU/Charlottesville/etc. http://openargs.com/oa96-understanding-charlottesville/ http://openargs.com/oa96-understanding-charlottesville/

palad1n 9y ago

It's an interesting position: the paper says they defend the right of their assembly, but even then, at the end says if they cross the line, they should be held legally accountable. What's interesting is that their stated goals are in fact against the law. The paper sort of does a dance about this issue. You're allowed to hate. You're not allowed to act upon that hate. Where does that leave us? In my thinking, they're the ones who have to change. How to bring that about? We watch the watchmen. By "we", I mean the world. It's not the same situation we are in now as back when this paper was written. Should we now then, knowing what are the fruits of their assembly when they did so before, tolerate even the scheming of their purposes? I like one thing that happened this last time: the pictures of them all over the social networks asking if their employers would tolerate them. I say, let them assemble. Take note of them, now that they are emboldened to show their faces. And if they take one step to fulfill their agenda, then unleash hell on them.