There's two kinds of bad faith here, I think. One kind of bad faith is that of the Illinois Nazis. Obviously, had they succeeded in their political goals, the

There's two kinds of bad faith here, I think. One kind of bad faith is that of the Illinois Nazis. Obviously, had they succeeded in their political goals, the ACLU would be purged and fundamental civil rights would be abridged for all but the chosen race. Still, they had a valid free speech concern, and the ACLU believed in a society where anyone could conduct a march, even if the Nazis didn't and were being hypocritical. So even though the ACLU was helping a group who was more than ready to backstab them, the ACLU was still able to accomplish its own goals. The general-case interest of the ACLU in protecting everyone's right to protest lined up with the specific-case interest of the Nazis in protecting their own right to protest. The other kind of bad faith is that of Unite the Right, which was not being denied the right to rally - only the right to rally in a physically easier-to-control space, and which had not raised concerns because of the content of their messaging but because of the pro-violence groups that were participating. As a result of the bad faith, the ACLU was duped into believing there was a threat to civil rights, which there was not, and they were coopted into assisting the organizers with a goal that they didn't actually agree with. I agree that it's hard to tell, but in the case of Unite the Right, opposing activists had been warning (with evidence) that the plan of the rally was to create conditions for violence and that their goals weren't merely speaking and peaceably assemblling. In the Skokie case, there were no such concerns. I even think it's reasonable for the ACLU to have gotten it wrong - provided they did a retrospective on how they got it wrong (that was not merely "we shouldn't defend neo-Nazis anymore"), which to the best of my knowledge they didn't do.