Where did you hear this?
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Reddit, I think. Someone mentioned he had a hammer & sickle tattoo, but I forget the details.
Thatâs false. The entire case was predicated on the motive of Dankula in this case. It was a Dankula himself that said brought in âcontext doesnât matterâ and conservative media ran with it, they also quote the sheriff out of context since the sheriff explains that charges were only brought up because this guy is a Nazi hiding behind âit was just a joke.â
He also has this video on the YT:
The media has done a garbage job covering this (not surprising, they have a terrible track record on cases like this), and the alt-right is in full force spinning it away from their aims.
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I normally like jonathan pie, but it sounds like he got this one wrong. I wonder if heâll do a follow-up to admit his mistake.
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Looks like I get too much of my information from second-hand sources.
But, then, I only know this because of⊠other second-hand sources.
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Which we can probably say about almost anything in the worldâŠ
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That isnât necessarily opposed to being a fascist.
It does however lead to other communist and socialist groups who normally hate each other putting aside their differences to stand against you.
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I just want to chime in another thought on the Dankula thing. The first comment on that thread was basically, âThis is why itâs so important to have the First Amendment.â
And I just keep thinking, âWhy is it so important to have the First Amendment?â
Dankulaâs not due to be sentenced until April 23. Until then we wonât know if heâs going to prison or getting a fine, or how long that prison term or how large that fine will be.
So Iâm left thinking, even if I assume this whole situation is totally unjust:
Suppose he is fined for the amount he made from the video? Even if I think thatâs wrong, where does it fit in on my human rights watch?
Suppose he is put in prison for a few months. The country that has the first Amendment incarcerates more than five times the proportion of its population than the country where this is happening.
Jim Jeffries quipped that Americans like to talk about freedom, but since America has the highest incarceration rate of any nation, statistically itâs the least free country.
And sure, Americaâs incarceration rate could be taken as independent from First Amendment protections (even though I think itâs kind of nonsense to hold anything as independent from constitutional protections). But still, this guy would be imprisoned under a UK law. The population of the UK is 65M. Does one person out of 65M going to prison unfairly for a maximum of 6 months constitute such an injustice that is outweighs 1 in 200 Americans being in prison right now (the number of Americans who would be free if America had the same incarceration rate at Scotland)?
If the First Amendment isnât causing that situation it certainly isnât fixing it either.
Often people defend the First Amendment and free speech in general because they are ideologically committed to free speech as the goal of a society, rather than something that helps us reach other goals. To make the argument that all is lost without American style free speech, youâd need to be able to point to nations where all was lost. Instead America finds itself among peer nations where people are freer to protest, where more diversity of political views is accepted, where fewer people are forcibly confined by the government.
I position myself as an âopponentâ of free speech because I think if we ranked human rights in terms of importance it ought to be near the bottom of the list rather than at the top.
But for me, the whole idea of human rights is a human-made idea that makes things better for humans. If you want to know if a country is doing well, check out their infant mortality, not the text of their constitution. If we compare countries with good humans rights protections to those without good human rights protections we feel like we can actually see a difference.
I canât argue free speech with strong free speech advocates because it just seems like they worship at the altar of free speech instead of actually connecting it to peopleâs well-being.
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Yes. Itâs usually also, of course, a hypocritical form of worship, since itâs really a Trojan horse for so many of them for far-right ideology.
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They argue in bad faith because they see that speech which was formerly considered acceptable by society no longer is. Like I said up-thread, they take it out of context and pretend it occurs in a vacuum. It allows the protection of nazis because it changes the argument from whether or not we should allow certain people to exist, which is the actual and real viewpoint they are supporting, to whether or not they may speak. They cloak themselves in the constitution to protect calls for genocide, and free speech absolutist idiots help them wrap up.
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I routinely hear free speech absolutists argue in favour of protecting the ârightâ of Nazis, white nationalists and Klansmen to organise and advertise their ideas.
Why do I never hear these people standing up for the rights of al-Qaeda or ISIS supporters? For nearly twenty years now, any vaguely supportive mention of those groups will rapidly attract the full and hostile attention of the US state. Speech and assembly are criminalised and actively persecuted.
So, which is it? Are free speech rights absolute for all people, or are they only for those who focus their malice on Black people?
If terroristic violence is sufficient to justify the suppression of al-Qaeda [1], why would the same argument not apply to the Klan?
.
[1] And it is.
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Iâve raised this too. Take that march in Charlottesville, what if it had been people chanting al-Qaeda slogans?
And I think the comparison between al-Qaeda and right-wing extremists if fair. If aQ didnât have to contend with racism, they could easily have a Sinn FĂ©in to their IRA. Or even have ârespectableâ leaders in suits telling us that violence committed in their name was the act of small groups of crazies. They have a decentralized structure, so itâs not like their leaders directly plan or direct attacks, it resembles the stochastic terrorism of the alt-right: inspire people youâve never had contact with to do the actual terrorism part for you.
With Dylann Roof, the Parkland shooter (who carved swastikas into his ammo magazines) and quite a few less âsuccessfulâ (if this is the right word) killers you see this same pattern. I canât recall who to credit this to, but I recall being told that the point of a lynching wasnât to kill one person, it was to scare everyone else. By comparison to the 19th century, you can inspire that kind of fear by killing a far smaller number and being all over the TV and the internet.
I think people get caught up in trying to draw a precise line where on one side you have free speech and on the other side you have recruitment to a terrorist organization. I get that no such line exists, and that fact makes people nervous. If someone said, âShould we lock up Ann Coulter?â Iâd have to admit that as objectionable and dangerous as I think some of the stuff she says is, I canât say sheâs clearly recruiting for terrorists (of course I also donât follow what she says, for all I know sheâs totally there). But there are others who get defended on free speech grounds who are obviously on the same level as al-Qaeda.
Itâs frustrating because it feels like you canât get a concession on a blatantly obvious point.
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Last time I checked she was totally there. Although admittedly that was years ago. She was an inspirational figure for Jim David Adkisson.
Notable Coulter quotes:
My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.
We should be fingerprinting environmentalists ⊠As for what can be done to convince Americans that we face an enemy that hates America as much as the terrorists, we should put people like Ann Coulter on TV more, stop with the infernal nonsense of thinking liberals are decent but misguided people, and characterize the threat appropriately. ⊠Start by telling the truth about them: They are out to destroy the country.
Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason.
The Democrats complain about the Republican base being nuts ⊠The nuts are their entire party ⊠Theyâre always accusing us of repressing their speech. I say letâs do it. Letâs repress them.
We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevensâs creme brulee. Thatâs just a joke, for you in the media.
The greatest threat to the war on terrorism isnât the Islamic insurgency â our military can handle the savages. Itâs traitorous liberals trying to lose the war at home.
Liberals are driven by Satan and lie constantly.
The Democratic Party supports criminals and Islamic terrorists but has no sympathy for taxpayers.
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Such a sweetheart!
Itâs just another example of white supremacist privilege.
âPro-ISIS speaker? Someone call CSIS.â
âNAMBLA? GFY!â
âPro-Rape Club? Get lost (or back to the locker rooms).â
âWhite supremacist fascists? We really hate you guys, really, but just to prove how much we value free speech, come on in!â
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Donât forget, âStatures placed by the Klan? Protect our history!â
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This is what a real attack on Free Speech looks like.
Amazon owns WaPo. WaPo is not praising Trump sufficiently. This is using government power to punish the parent company of a critical media outlet.
This is how authoritarianism happens.
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Or this:
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Like busting the Black Panthers all over again.
First time as tragedy. Second time as tragedy too.
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Maybe if we just make sure Milo has a platform to speak at Berkeley then somehow Rakem Balogun will be exonerated?
Iâm pretty sure the one leads to the other, right?
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