5 ms·

You mentioned Milo downthread, but I'll give another counterexample: the ACLU sued the city of Charlottesville when they said they'd only permit Unite the Right

by geofft 7y ago

You mentioned Milo downthread, but I'll give another counterexample: the ACLU sued the city of Charlottesville when they said they'd only permit Unite the Right to happen at the larger McIntire Park on safety grounds. As a result of the lawsuit, the rally happened at the much smaller and busier Lee Park. (Personally, that's why I no longer support the ACLU - this wasn't analogous to the Illinois Nazis case, and as everyone expected, violence happened and someone died. I felt like the ACLU had let their focus on civil rights absolutism drive them to defending someone whose civil rights weren't actually under threat instead of spending their resources on actual ongoing threats to civil rights.)

dmix 7y ago
ACLU changed their policy of supporting everyone against any freedom of speech and freedom of assembly repression by the government AFTER Charlottesville. That only supports the OP's point. That was the point they gave into to pressure from outside groups and gave up their values. Compromising once is enough to compromise it always and their recent posturing on social media has done nothing to dissuade that this is the case. They've only doubled down and joined the outrage mob driven political system. I personally don't want to live in a world where every political ideology needs their own legal defence non-profits which only do things for political ends... not for a higher purpose. Largely because they lose tons of credibility in the face of dismissal when they compromise their values for politics. Credibility is very important in this sort of thing. Plenty of other major human rights groups including Human Rights Watch and the ACLU long defended far-right groups and the world didn't burn down in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, etc. They did it because they same thing that shuts those 'bad guys' down will be used to bring down the 'good guys'. I highly recommend the founder of Human Rights Watch's book on this topic when they defended Neo-nazis in the 1970s: Defending My Enemy: American Nazis in Skokie, Illinois, and the Risks of Freedom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryeh_Neier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryeh_Neier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am... https://www.amazon.com/Defending-My-Enemy-Neier/dp/0525089721 https://www.amazon.com/Defending-My-Enemy-Neier/dp/052508972...
- geofft 7y ago
  Again - I disagree with the view that they "gave up" their values, and I don't want to live in a world where every political ideology needs its own non-profit, either. I think the ACLU can and should be an organization that defends the right to freedom of speech of everyone regardless of political affiliation. I'm arguing that their lawsuit in Charlottesville didn't actually serve the goals of protecting civil rights or defending principles which are important to protect other people's civil rights. I'm arguing that the Charlottesville case was different from the Illinois Nazis case - Unite the Right wasn't primarily about speech, it was about violence, and the speech acts that Kessler et al. wanted to do would have worked just fine in the other park, which would have been logistically easier from a public safety perspective. I'm arguing that if Charlottesville's original decision had stood and established precedent that somehow later applied to a "good guy" protest, that would be okay, because of the specific facts of the Charlottesville case. I'm arguing that the ACLU was right to take on the Illinois Nazis case, and would be right to take it on again today. You don't need to convince me of that. (If the ACLU has somehow managed to get itself into a position where it's not willing to do that anymore and it hasn't convinced people like me that it's learned its lesson from Unite the Right, then they're truly incompetent.) It is of course a little difficult to separate the idea of protecting civil rights from political ideology: the idea that civil rights are worth protecting is a political ideology itself! But I think the broader point, which I agree with, is that you should be willing to protect the civil rights of people who do not think that civil rights are worth protecting.
  - dmix 7y ago
    > Unite the Right wasn't primarily about speech, it was about violence This is easy to say with retrospect. How many other major protests in history would you have compromised had you known there would be violence? Any embedded provocateur could easily kill any protest. Any extremist portion of any political group, no matter how small, could kill the mainstream purpose of the wider legitimate group. I'd much rather we strongly defend their right to protest in public spaces, regardless of ideology, and instead we react to any planned or actual violence (which is already illegal). Including targeting individuals who have that as part of their agenda. Not attacking the larger groups at the point of their freedom of assembly. Which is all ACLU ever protected them from when they defend their right to protest in one city park instead of one far away from downtown. I'd love to see where Unite the Right people fought for the right to commit violence in court and where ACLU had any part of that...

by geofft 7y ago

dmix 7y ago

ACLU changed their policy of supporting everyone against any freedom of speech and freedom of assembly repression by the government AFTER Charlottesville. That only supports the OP's point. That was the point they gave into to pressure from outside groups and gave up their values. Compromising once is enough to compromise it always and their recent posturing on social media has done nothing to dissuade that this is the case. They've only doubled down and joined the outrage mob driven political system. I personally don't want to live in a world where every political ideology needs their own legal defence non-profits which only do things for political ends... not for a higher purpose. Largely because they lose tons of credibility in the face of dismissal when they compromise their values for politics. Credibility is very important in this sort of thing. Plenty of other major human rights groups including Human Rights Watch and the ACLU long defended far-right groups and the world didn't burn down in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, etc. They did it because they same thing that shuts those 'bad guys' down will be used to bring down the 'good guys'. I highly recommend the founder of Human Rights Watch's book on this topic when they defended Neo-nazis in the 1970s: Defending My Enemy: American Nazis in Skokie, Illinois, and the Risks of Freedom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryeh_Neier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryeh_Neier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am... https://www.amazon.com/Defending-My-Enemy-Neier/dp/0525089721 https://www.amazon.com/Defending-My-Enemy-Neier/dp/052508972...

geofft 7y ago
Again - I disagree with the view that they "gave up" their values, and I don't want to live in a world where every political ideology needs its own non-profit, either. I think the ACLU can and should be an organization that defends the right to freedom of speech of everyone regardless of political affiliation. I'm arguing that their lawsuit in Charlottesville didn't actually serve the goals of protecting civil rights or defending principles which are important to protect other people's civil rights. I'm arguing that the Charlottesville case was different from the Illinois Nazis case - Unite the Right wasn't primarily about speech, it was about violence, and the speech acts that Kessler et al. wanted to do would have worked just fine in the other park, which would have been logistically easier from a public safety perspective. I'm arguing that if Charlottesville's original decision had stood and established precedent that somehow later applied to a "good guy" protest, that would be okay, because of the specific facts of the Charlottesville case. I'm arguing that the ACLU was right to take on the Illinois Nazis case, and would be right to take it on again today. You don't need to convince me of that. (If the ACLU has somehow managed to get itself into a position where it's not willing to do that anymore and it hasn't convinced people like me that it's learned its lesson from Unite the Right, then they're truly incompetent.) It is of course a little difficult to separate the idea of protecting civil rights from political ideology: the idea that civil rights are worth protecting is a political ideology itself! But I think the broader point, which I agree with, is that you should be willing to protect the civil rights of people who do not think that civil rights are worth protecting.
- dmix 7y ago
  > Unite the Right wasn't primarily about speech, it was about violence This is easy to say with retrospect. How many other major protests in history would you have compromised had you known there would be violence? Any embedded provocateur could easily kill any protest. Any extremist portion of any political group, no matter how small, could kill the mainstream purpose of the wider legitimate group. I'd much rather we strongly defend their right to protest in public spaces, regardless of ideology, and instead we react to any planned or actual violence (which is already illegal). Including targeting individuals who have that as part of their agenda. Not attacking the larger groups at the point of their freedom of assembly. Which is all ACLU ever protected them from when they defend their right to protest in one city park instead of one far away from downtown. I'd love to see where Unite the Right people fought for the right to commit violence in court and where ACLU had any part of that...