Personally? police cordons between the groups, and if you don’t have the manpower, don’t allow the assembly because it’s impossible to guarantee it’ll be “peaceable”.
Spot on on all counts.
They currently have that right. I’m for legal amendments that abridge those rights when it comes to hate groups.
Do you believe that the right to free speech should be extended to Nazis and other hate groups? Why should hate groups enjoy rights they would deny those they hate? Do you believe society is necessarily worse off for denying hate groups the right to openly express their hatred? In what way is Canadian society worse off for denying someone like David Irving the right to express his views? Finally, in what way would American society be worse off if neo-nazi, KKK and other hate groups were denied the right to express their views in public?
But that’s your dramatic rendering of the ‘avowed mission’ of the KKK. One might say it’s what their views amount to or lead to, based on incidents in the past. So maybe it’s their mission effectively, but it’s not actually ‘avowed’ by them. Besides which the great majority of people you’d probably class as ‘white supremacists’ don’t belong to the KKK; even among the probably much smaller number I’d call WS’s still a small proportion.
One of the central problem with ‘banning ideologies’ is where people with the power to ban would do what you just did, present any view on the right they think is unacceptable as ‘the KKK’ and further infer ‘avowed missions’ which aren’t avowed.
There’s a reason for you to adopt this tactic. It’s so you can shift the argument from where it belongs, which is tactics.
If BLM supporters demonstrate violently, say attacking the police as has happened, they are breaking the law (those particular people not the entire movement) and that law breaking is not to be judged based on the positive (reform police practices) or negative (‘pigs in a blanket fry em like bacon’ etc.) aspects of people claiming to be under that banner. If white supremacists peacefully demonstrate in favor of people of other races having a lesser set of rights than whites, they the WS’s are within their rights to express that odious view. If the violent right and left brawl in the streets the individual incidents are to be sorted out depending on who did what exactly, like any other crime. That’s the obvious truth in the American tradition.
What such hate groups have to accept is that if you wish to gather publicly to display or celebrate your rancid views, do expect the opposition to come out, too. Freedom of speech cuts both ways: action begats reaction. And if you have unpopular views you have a right to express them, and others have the right to tell you you’re full of spit, among other things. You can’t have it one way, that you can burn crosses on lawns without someone coming along with a bucket of water. Each side has a right to demonstrate their point of view.
What isn’t two-sided in the Charlottesville tragedy is who was responsible. Leaving out the judge who allowed the gathering, and the policing who were supposed to be monitoring and policing, anyone driving a moving vehicle into people with wanton disregard is to blame; and anyone else threatening anyone else. To blame the killed and injured for standing up to what THEY believe in, as our lamebrained leader would have us believe, is simply beyond the pale. Let’s be clear who the criminals really are.
The larger question in the internet age is whether such groups have an absolute right to gather and protest; the right to lawful assembly, which by definition must remain lawful, though the more radical and hateful you views, the more likely the violence quotient, too. Since we can all go online and say whatever we want, pretty much, I do wonder if such views have a total right to be in public places, which belong to all of us.
You can yell and scream and bleat all you want online, and while doing so aren’t in much position to kill or main those who disagree with you.
You can’t set up different rules for different ideas. If White Supremacists are banned from public places, you need to ban all political speech from public places. At least that the way the law works right now in the US. And I agree. Our goal is not to create a society where no one is ever at risk of bodily harm. We could do that if we wanted, but that would be a very, very different society.
If you’d read the thread, you’d see that it’s quite relevant. We acknowledge that the laws permit the kinds of protest that took place this past weekend, but we’re questioning whether this is a healthy catharsis for society or if it just encourages socially corrosive thoughts. I submit that it’s the latter.
See, I don’t understand this thought process and why so many seemingly intelligent Americans buy into it. If we decide that we’re not going to permit rallies that combine the possession of firearms and emblems of obvious racial animosity, why does it necessarily follow that we have to ban all political speech. Germany bans any speech that promotes Nazis and plenty of other countries have laws against hate speech, and they also tolerate controversial speech at the same time. They don’t police all thoughts, just those that anyone with common sense could presume might lead to violent conflict. I think too many Americans have been indoctrinated to buy into slippery slope arguments.
Nobody is arguing the creation of politically sterile society that is free from controversy, hurt feelings, or worse. But I would also submit that many of the same libertarians speak from the position of never having been impacted by the viciousness of ethnic hatred. White males ought to have their freedom to say controversial or even offensive things, but those who have less political and economic standing in society ought to live in the same society without the fear of having their liberties taken and lives threatened.
If you’d prefer to argue with many things I haven’t said, then please feel free to continue to amuse yourself with your straw men.
What I did say, if you care to address it, is that you’re wrongly equating people whose mission is subjugation with people whose mission is fighting those subjugators. The difference in content of their goals is not relevant to whether their speech should be suppressed. But it sure is relevant to understanding whether and for what purposes they might engage in violence, which was the context of my remarks.
They don’t. I thought we were discussing people who show up with rifles at political rallies in general. It’s certainly a practice that has extended beyond the “alt-right” for some time. As I pointed out, people on the left have done it, and people on the right unassociated with Nazis have done it as well. I recall an incident where a black conservative showed up at some Obama event with a slung rifle and created quite a stir (I remember it mostly for the comical lengths that MSNBC went to in a failed attempt to hide the man’s race and twist it into some sort of an “evil white racists” thing). RKBA / 2nd Amendment rallies frequently feature armed individuals. Here is an example from a few years ago in Utah. I don’t think people there generally wanted to “intimidate minorities”. Hell, one of the speakers at the event was a black Congresswoman.
They should have rights they would deny to others for the same reason that you should be allowed to use your right to free speech to advocate that their rights be curtailed.
The Constitution allows people to encourage socially corrosive thoughts. If you want to curtail people’s rights because they might misuse them, I don’t support that either.
Carrying a Nazi flag is offensive, but it is still protected. Carrying a Confederate flag is offensive, but it is still protected. Burning an American flag is offensive, but it is still protected. Many forms of pornography are offensive, but they are still protected. Carrying a sign that says “Fuck America” is offensive, but it is still protected. Chanting “blood and soil” is offensive, but it is still protected. It is not AFAICT possible to frame an amendment that will outlaw just one or two of those on principle and leave the rest in place. Therefore it’s all or nothing, and I pick All.
Regards,
Shodan
I never said it had to be that way. Go ahead and ban Nazi flags, and the WNs will just invent a new, semi-NAZI symbol that will work just as well. We’re not anti-non-whites, we’re just pro-whites! Do we get to ban the upraised, clenched black fist next?
That last sentence seems like a stark contradiction to me. You can say offensive things, but not if someone else feels threatened by it? What offensive things don’t make certain people feel threatened?
It is entirely possible. Other democracies have done so successfully without the “all or nothing” approach.
Given which side currently wields most of the political power in our country at the moment, which disfavored groups do you think are most likely to have their rights curtailed if we start curtailing the rights of disfavored groups?
So you want to turn this into a Republican vs. Democrat issue?
I hoped we could at least transcend that when it comes to neo-nazis.
You said the first time “The KKK’s avowed mission is to kill and torture black people” not “their mission is subjugation”. So I was not “amusing myself arguing things you didn’t say” but rather responding to what you clearly did say and which you’re now modifying substantially.
If you claim an idea is not separable from violence as implied by “avowed mission to kill and torture” that’s very different from just saying an idea favors ‘subjugation’, a much more elastic word than ‘kill’ or ‘torture’ used literally, and light years away from saying ‘the two sides shouldn’t be equated’. What’s to be ‘equated’, in terms of the groups’ ideas, is decided according to each person’s judgment in the free exchange of ideas.
Nor is it relevant ‘for what purpose’ any group of demonstrators engage in violence, just if they do engage in violence, according to specifics of the incident, as with any crime separate from politics. To ban an idea you have to show much more than it is ‘in favor of subjugation’. By retreating to that you’ve made your argument meaningless, weaker than the first time around. 
There are plenty of laws that punish all actual attempts to implement Nazism/ White Supremacy. Punishing beliefs, even potentially dangerous ones, is at best useless and at worst counter-productive.
Your (factually incorrect) claim about what the KKK avows is quite obviously not central to my point. Your focus on it–for two whole posts now–instead of the substance of my post speaks quite loudly enough.
You either don’t understand my argument or insist in deliberately mischaracterizing it. Either way, nowhere to go from here.
No, it’s a valid point. When one propose some new law or regulation, it behooves one to think how that law or regulation is going to be put into practice when someone one abhors is the person charged with executing that law or regulation. There is a reason that we limit the power given to the government. If you’re OK with it, fine. But just think about it.
No, I don’t, but I’m trying to help you understand that if we’re going to break the American taboo on banning people’s free speech rights because of the content of the speech, I suspect the list of people who’s free speech rights get revoked will probably be disheartening for you and your side (now, at least, and probably disheartening for me and my side later).