6 ms·
Any thoughts on why the Klan hasn't yet been banned outright?
by lappet 6y ago
Any thoughts on why the Klan hasn't yet been banned outright?
- gojomo 6y agoIn the USA, the reason is the 1st Amendment in the Bill of Rights. Both in text & traditional interpretation, that gives them the right to speak & assemble – but not do other non-communicative actions that would be criminal no matter the motivations.
- lappet 6y agoWasn't the Klan responsible for hate-mongering and terrorist activities in the past?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 6y agoThe actual terroristic activities are illegal, and Klan members have been prosecuted (and successfully sued) for them. "Hate-mongering" isn't illegal in the US.
- lappet 6y agoSo Al Qaeda etc would be legal in the US?
- tptacek 6y agoNo? Militant Islamism, however, is.
- dogma1138 6y agoIf the Klan would’ve been classified as a terrorist organization they would be illegal they haven’t. The Nation of Islam is also classified as a hate group by the SPLC however they aren’t banned under the same laws that protect the KKK. NOI members just like the KKK have been prosecuted in the past for many things, however outside of very limited circumstances there isn’t such thing as guilt by association in the US justice system.
- tptacek 6y agoI don't believe it's the case that the USG could have suppressed the KKK by "classifying them as a terrorist organization".
- sudosysgen 6y agoThey can classify them as a criminal organization according to RICO.
- akerl_ 6y agoYou may want to read https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico-dammit/ https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico-...
- tptacek 6y agoI always wonder what people are thinking when they suggest that the US could silence an entire viewpoint through invocation of RICO or FTO designation. If the government could have declared an entire line of thought illegal, don't people think we would have done so numerous times already? We couldn't even ban membership in the actual communist party at the height of the Cold War (not for lack of trying, though).
- sudosysgen 6y agoNot an entire viewpoint. I am purely talking about the organization that is the KKK. I know that white nationalism cannot be declared illegal.
- JamesBarney 6y agoBecause there is no organization called the KKK. It's a 100 organizations with 10-30 members who believe they're the true heirs to the KKK. It's be very similar to trying to arrest the head of the Nazi party. There really isn't one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan#Third_KKK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan#Third_KKK
- sudosysgen 6y agoRICO exists. If the criminal activities were systematically prompted by a group, they can be sued and all their members may be prosecuted for these crimes, especially their leaders. So no, this is entirely incorrect.
- akerl_ 6y agoRICO is a pretty narrow tool, as it should be. It also isn’t based on group membership, it’s based on involvement in the planning / sponsorship of illegal activities. It wouldn’t matter how many Hackernews members started coordinating bank robberies; RICO wouldn’t magically allow for the rest of the Hackernews user base to be prosecuted.
- sudosysgen 6y agoSure. But if Hackernews had a hierarchy and a membership system in which lower-ranking members would do criminal acts organized by their ranking superiors, the organization could be sued under civil and criminal RICO, and then dismantled. While not all members would be prosecuted, a very large amount could be, and the subsequent criminal investigation would make it possible to indict a good proportion of the rest. It would also mean that even lower members could have been prosecuted based on their assistance to various criminal acts. It is indeed a narrow tool, and yet can be applied to organizations such as the KKK.
- tptacek 6y agoI think your problem here is not so much that you don't know what RICO is, as that you don't have a tight grip on what the KKK is. It is probably the case that many, or even most, Klan members are also members of white supremacist criminal gangs. That those gangs are subject to RICO prosecution (a major Aryan gang was taken down that way just last year) illustrates the problem with your argument. The enterprise itself has to be focused on the racketeering-predicate crimes.
- gguevaraa 6y agoSupreme Court rulings[0][1]. They consistently rule in favor of free speech and believe something along the lines of "defending the thought that we hate". They even sided with the Westboro Baptist Church (the people with the offensive signs)[2] so they're pretty committed to "absolute" free speech. [0]: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/492 https://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/492 [1]: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2002/01-1107 https://www.oyez.org/cases/2002/01-1107 [2]: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2010/09-751 https://www.oyez.org/cases/2010/09-751
- rayiner 6y agoThat protection of speech, mind you, doesn’t just extend to the KKK. There are a lot of things people on HN probably like (pornography, violent video games) that have been protected by exactly the same principles.
- cogman10 6y agoThe important thing to distinguish is that they protect free speech, not free platforms. People are free to say racist things, produce racist games, setup racist podcasts. What they aren't entitled to is google showing their racist crap, steam carrying their racist games, hacker news keeping their racist comments uncensored. You are free to burn a flag, you can't force someone to watch you burn it. If someone feels hurt that youtube censors too much, they are more than free to make their own whitepowertube. The fact that there is a ton of far right media right now shows that they aren't completely without a voice.
- rowanG077 6y agoI agree with you in general. But would like to add that effective monopolies like youtube should be excluded. Censoring something on youtube essentially means it censored completely for video platforms.
- amanaplanacanal 6y agoThere are other video hosting platforms that work perfectly well, as far as I can see.
- Thuggery 6y agoAs far as I know, the Klan doesn't actually exist anymore. In its second most famous incarnation it was a fraternal order like the Freemasons. But that disintegrated in the 40s. Since there's no legal enforcement of the brand anyone can and does use the title for cultural history reasons. Today there are dozens of disparate "KKKs" with no official continuity with the famous KKK that amount to a couple thousand people in a nation of hundreds of millions. So what would you even be banning other than the word KKK itself?