Freeze Peach 🍑 (USA)

If the content of your speech is literally trying to convince someone to kill another person, it’s not actually protected speech.

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This seems like a good jumping off point for something I wanted to bring up.

While the Twitter reaction to the ACLU meandered, it is important to note that the Virginia ACLU in Charlottesville posted a tweet “reporting” that a “witness” (mind you they were covering the white supremacist side of things looking for police violations) said the driver of the car was reacting to antifa protesters throwing a rock at the car. While the Virginia ACLU deleted the tweet and the media personnel involved apologized for reporting and not documenting including his personal name in the action, the national ACLU came out with their tweets about defending hateful speech because the Virginia branch was getting (justifiable) shit for it and then people started in on the national ACLU resulting in the usual suspects making articles about why criticizing the ACLU is foolish.

Just pointing out that these things are a little hard to follow, and tend to be less obvious than people want them to be. Whatever your feeling about the ACLU leveraging federal funding for universities to make their arguments against rescheduling protests after violence breaks out, many people are criticizing the ACLU not for supporting White Nationalism by defending it in court but for literally posting a defense for a white nationalist that committed an act of murder.

EDIT

Tangential to the events, but I didn’t think it deserved a dedicated thread.

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I realise I’m an outsider looking in here, but of late my view has become fuck the ACLU, and fuck their freezepeach absolutism.

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Ah yes. Free speech, as long as it’s speech you like!

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I support free speech. I don’t support immunity from the consequences of free speech. What’s done in the dark will be brought to the light, and in the light it’s incumbent on all of us to eviscerate it.

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There is a reason why nowhere in the world outside of America thinks that freeze peach absolutism is a good idea.

Yesterday was a demonstration of why.

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…which is the same reason we have our First Amendment. As you may have noticed from our history, our First Amendment doesn’t protect speech we like. Our First Amendment protects speech we don’t like. That’s a good thing.

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The quintessential authority on these matters has now weighed in:

(Yes, that Mike Godwin.)

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The first ammendment doesn’t protect death threats. What should we call it when a bunch of people show up screaming about how they want to wipe out other races?

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Could you elaborate on why protecting the free speech of Nazis is a good thing? Because again with the absolutism - not a good thing.

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I am aware of your history. It is not a good thing. YMMV.

The First Amendment did not protect abolitionist publishers in the antebellum South. It did not protect emancipated Americans during Reconstruction. It did not protect anti-conscription campaigners during WWI. It did not protect union organisers in the 1930’s. It did not protect Japanese-Americans during WWII. It did not protect civil rights workers in the Jim Crow South. It did not protect socialists during McCarthyism. It did not protect Gay Rights campaigners in the 1970’s. It did not protect whistleblowers during Bush and Obama. It is not protecting you now.

Rights on paper are only worth the paper they’re printed on. You can’t restrain fascists with laws after they’re in power. You need to stop them from gaining power to begin with.

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Good point. See, we don’t have free speech absolutism.

The reason we let “bad speech” be heard at least, is so if someone ever tries to ban “good speech” they can’t. Because “good” and “bad” is subjective. Imagine how much worse McCarthyism would e if it could have silenced people worse than it did? Imagine if Trump had powers like the President in Turkey to silence critics?

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“Intolerant”, “abhorrent,” “racist”, and “unAmerican” are four adjectives that immediately come to mind, but feel free to use your own.

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I believe it to be based on the idea of “if we restrict the speech of Nazis while we’re in power, they’ll restrict our speech when they’re in power”.

Guess what? Empowered Nazis are going to restrict your speech no matter what you do. If you want to avoid that, you have to avoid giving power to Nazis.

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I’d call it a direct threat and worthy of national guard intervention, since these domestic terrorists are overruning the streets.

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Citation required.

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Because we don’t silence the speech we find offensive. We cheer the speech of which we approve. We need more speech, not less.

Also, this.

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I’m going to bed, but if y’all want to debate the pros and cons of protected speech, I suggest splitting the thread to a new one. Given my experience derailing things, it will probably be appreciated.

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Yes please.

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I don’t think you and I see this situation the same way.

I see it as a lot of people publicly planning mass murder. Because that’s exactly what happens every single time fascists are allowed to participate in public.

You seem to view it as some kind of valid exchange of ideas.

I, personally, believe that people loudly planning to murder a whole race or even multiple races, should be rounded up and put some place where they won’t be able to start up a genocide.

Prison maybe.

Nazism is, by definition, an open and public conspiracy to commit genocide. I think that might deserve punishment.

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