I heard about this on a New York Times podcast, and became livid, just beside myself. This goes completely against one of my most deeply felt beliefs, the central importance of protecting even the most odious speech. But even if these staffers (and other liberals and progressives who feel similarly) don’t attach the same value to that principle, this is still stupid and counterproductive. What do they even think the ACLU is? :mad:
First off, just think in terms of branding. The ACLU is not just another liberal organization. It has a very special, even unique, brand which depends on its defending everyone’s rights to free speech, not just the rights of ethnic minorities and “woke” white folks. If you throw that away, then you’ve taken this special brand and just dumped it into the muck with a million other generic progressive groups. And then it just becomes another group that lobbies on behalf of people and groups it is simpatico with, rather than one defending a higher principle. In the NY Times podcast, they noted that there really is no other major group defending free speech as an absolute principle for everyone. That is a special mark of distinction–don’t throw it away, for fuck’s sake!
And the fact that the ACLU defends the constitutional rights of really gross white nationalists, now and forty years ago in Skokie, gives it protection–cover, if you will–for all the work it does which really does lean to the left. It makes a much tougher target for the right to attack, or try to dismiss as a blindly partisan group, than if it only intervened to defend the constitutional rights of people and organizations progressives like.
At the end of the story, they said the ACLU board is unlikely to change their official stance, but that if there are enough people in the rank and file sympathetic to this view, they may just slow-walk any applications from groups they don’t like. It kind of makes me think the staffers who wrote this should be fired. They can go work for the SPLC or someone like that.
I’m in complete agreement with this OP, and am relieved to hear voices in support. (My son is rather outspoken at college on this very issue, and it’s depressing how most of his fellow students think he is some sort of evil reactionary, when in fact he’s about as liberal as they come.)
I’ve often said that those who don’t believe in the slippery slope have lost faith in the system. Yet the ACLU, I believe, was designed to work within that system. I guess it depends on whether you think an organization that defends Nazis has any place in modern society. But that just goes back to the debate already addressed in other threads.
Though personally, I don’t think the organization is particularly hard to attack as partisan. Then again, those likely to do so have demonstrated little regard for facts for many years now.
I have no problem with this at all. This is the type of discussion that we as a country really need. We have swung way too far in seeing freedom of speech as a good unto itself. We must always be willing to challenge our traditions. Nothing can be sacred.
This is a discussion we need to have. We need to figure out why we can’t say “we’ll defend everything but hate speech.” Or maybe find out that we can. That society will be better.
I know for a fact that freedom of speech can hurt people. It was mentioned by an actual member of the ACLU in another thread. The cost of freedom of speech is disproportionately laid on the disadvantaged. Every time you help a Nazi, you are hurting several minorities. There MUST be a balance.
We must realize that some forms of speech can be as bad as an actual violent act. We already admit this in defamation. Why not defamation of entire groups of people?
There is a reason why other countries with freedom of speech draw the line differently. They have considered things that our 18th century founding fathers were just not aware of. Racism wasn’t a social problem back then. It was just the way thing were. Sexism and homophobia were just natural. These sorts of things were never considered when we created the concept.
In the same way you guys say the Church needs to get with the times, we have to have governments do so, too. That means challenging firmly held beliefs. That which holds steadfastly to the old and refuses to consider the new will eventually perish.
And I can’t think of a better place to have this conversation than within the ACLU, just like it would be best if we could have gun control discussion within the NRA.
Though the comparison is imperfect, I really do see parallels with the gun control debate. At the least, they both touch on many of the same issues in relation to the Constitution.
If it is true that one mission of the ACLU (defending free speech) is, indeed, incompatible with another of its stated missions (eliminating discrimination against women, minorities, and LGBT people), it’s a good thing, and healthy, for there to be internal dissent in how that gets handled.
Now, one may argue with whether that is, in fact, true (I think it is), but that doesn’t mean these 200 ACLU people are being anti-ACLU itself. They just think a different part of its mission is suffering because of an over-emphasis on some ideal of free speech as an absolute right (which it never has been). That article mischaracterises their stance as “against the ACLU” , but that’s patently bullshit.
The shortsightedness of left-wingers who want less protection for “hate speech” baffles me. Don’t they know that they’ll be the first ones targeted under these laws? Nazis will keep on being Nazis without any real sanction, but BLM protestors will be rounded up for hate speech against the police on day 1.
As far as many are concerned, the police and powers that be are already doing it right now with impunity, so what changes? Plus, Germany and Israel aren’t yet Orwellian hellholes.
You ever challenge that belief of yours, or is it sacred? Because the way you state it there, it sounds pretty absolutist – like it’s an old idea of yours, and you’re holding steadfastly to it while refusing to consider the alternative.
The only sense in which I have misgivings about freedom of speech as an ultimate good in and of itself is the function of money and power in distorting freedom of speech — by giving unequal access to the opportunities to have one’s speeches heard.
The reason we shouldn’t say “we’ll defend everything but hate speech” is that “hate speech” would need to be defined. And if anything at all can ever be defined as hate speech, and hence no longer permissible as speech, it’s a quick trip to deciding that questioning the definition of hate speech is, itself, an act of hate speech. This is a slope that gets slippery so fast you’ll slide frictionlessly down the garbage chute.
Horse shit.
Nazi objectives are far more promoted by infringements on free speech than by the voices of Nazi apologists trying to explain why their hateful agenda is somehow a good thing. If Nazi types had to depend on convincing people that their perspective is the right perspective, we’d be safe from Nazism. Their success is always dependent on seizing the microphones so that only their voice gets heard. And dissenters silenced.
I’m not exactly a stranger to virulent sexist and homophobic hostility and mocking and baiting and bullying. People standing up to that benefit from being able to speak about it. We benefit the most from invading the social spaces of sexist and homophobic people and engaging them, engaging their listeners, challenging them to think. (In contrast, preaching to the choir, while not useless, is just bolstering support you already have). The biggest daily impediments to progress often take the form of entire conversations being erased because the sexist or homophobic remarks (or, more often in reality, the intensity of the feelings and confrontational dialog) upset someone.
Sure, like eveything in life it’s a balance between rights and obligations. It’s how we teach the kids responsibility.
And hey, if the society changes its mind, campaign on that and act as soon as your elected.
The ACLU is not “defending Nazis”. What they are doing is defending an idea, an ideal, a constitutional right. In fact, they are defending all of us. Really, there should be no debate for something that, ISTM, is quite obvious.
Sorry, you make a good point (although there are those who would disagree). I meant to say something more along the lines of “defending the rights of Nazis”.