Comment by scrumper
9 years ago
Think forward a little bit. The "all talk" guy with vile opinions backed by a violent mob is already in the White House. He won. Now is exactly NOT the time to try to curtail free speech in any way, lest that same precedent be used by the administration to stifle dissent by his opposition - you - in the future.
Freedom of speech (and in fact a lot of the Constitution) is constructed to curtail governmental powers so that dangerous groups in charge aren't able to fundamentally re-shape the country. Why would you want to undermine that when the country is arguably very close to being in that position?
(Personally I think CloudFlare is within its rights to fire a client it doesn't like; non-governmental entities don't have first amendment obligations, just a requirement not to break certain class-based discrimination laws. I don't know if neo-Nazis are a protected class in that respect but it's difficult to see how they would be, since they are not a political party or recognized minority group.)
edit: parentheses
Fortunately the all talk guy can not do much because there are still some other branches of government. But that doesn't mean that he wouldn't if he could.
The freedom of speech thing matters not one bit to the alt-right and the Nazis longer than it takes them to overthrow the present order, after that it will go out the window very quickly.
Democracy can be destroyed, it has happened before and it likely will happen again, there is absolutely no reason to believe that it could not happen in America.
Anyway, this whole discussion isn't about free speech to begin with, it is about hate speech and inciting to violence.
Well, those things aren't the same. 'Hate speech' is protected in America (by omission; it's not defined anywhere). Incitement to violence is emphatically not, and is an offense. That being said, I certainly don't intend to limit our debate to semantics when it's actually the broader thrust of your argument that I want to challenge. (There is quite a good write-up here on definitions[1])
I agree that there is no reason why such destruction could not happen here. That is why I believe it is particularly important not to argue for narrow exemptions to important constitutional protections on the grounds of a perceived acute threat. Those protections are shields against the kind of 'democracide' that we may face, so why would we take them apart ourselves?
Furthermore, I think we're safer for having these Nazis out in the open. Their ideas are more easily ridiculed; they are denied the romantic attraction of being driven underground; and their members are more easily monitored (and infiltrated) by the FBI such that any planned atrocities are more readily stopped. They are not an existential threat to the republic, rather, a tiny minority of dangerous people who need to be monitored and arrested whenever they break a law.
[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
I think your comment must have landed here through a time warp of sorts, it appears to have been written last Wednesday and does not take into account the developments since then.
Maybe you would like to update it to present day knowledge?
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