ACLU of California Statement: White Supremacist Violence Is Not Free Speech
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Re: ACLU of California Statement: White Supremacist Violence Is Not Free Speech
#2Good for them for breaking with e.g. the Virginia ACLU over this, just doubled my recurring donation. Direct calls for violence by heavily armed mobs are not protected speech or assembly.
Re: ACLU of California Statement: White Supremacist Violence Is Not Free Speech
#3So, of I understand this correctly, it's not the message they consider not to be free speech but the (inciting of) violence.
I'm all for free speech, but for some messages there's just no context in which they ever become anything but harmful, and maybe dogmatically clinging to free speech isn't the best way to approach things. Then again, it can be a slippery slope towards thought police, so maybe it's best to leave the judging of those messages to social pressure.
Re: ACLU of California Statement: White Supremacist Violence Is Not Free Speech
#4The statement could've been even stronger and yet remain neutral: "violence is not speech."
Re: ACLU of California Statement: White Supremacist Violence Is Not Free Speech
#5So, of I understand this correctly, it's not the message they consider not to be free speech but the (inciting of) violence. I'm all for free speech, but for some messages there's just no context in which they ever become anything but harmful, and maybe dogmatically clinging to free speech isn't the best way to approach things. Then again, it can be a slippery slope towards thought police, so maybe it's best to leave…
maybe it's best to leave the judging of those messages to social pressure.
Re: ACLU of California Statement: White Supremacist Violence Is Not Free Speech
#6Antifa's Violence is definitely Free Speech.
Re: ACLU of California Statement: White Supremacist Violence Is Not Free Speech
#7> We ... take the clear position that the First Amendment does not protect people who incite or engage in violence.
So does this apply to Antifa, BlackBloc, et al as well?
Re: ACLU of California Statement: White Supremacist Violence Is Not Free Speech
#8So, of I understand this correctly, it's not the message they consider not to be free speech but the (inciting of) violence. I'm all for free speech, but for some messages there's just no context in which they ever become anything but harmful, and maybe dogmatically clinging to free speech isn't the best way to approach things. Then again, it can be a slippery slope towards thought police, so maybe it's best to leave…
I think the Supreme Court has ruled on similar questions, in that there's a distinction between how the "speech" is intended and how it is construed. For instance, someone waving a nazi flag might feel to me like an incitement to violence, while to them it might feel like an expression of free speech, with no intention to incite violence. In that sense it would be protected speech, despite how I feel.
So the question becomes how do you determine if someone is intending to incite violence? They might say they are only wanting to express their first amendment rights (and perhaps their second amendment rights at the same time), while actually just intending to incite violence. Even pretending that none of the neonazi protesters in Charlottesville threw the first punch, I think a lot of the quotes from Charlottesville indicated that many of them were on the wrong side of that line, and were seeking to incite.
Re: ACLU of California Statement: White Supremacist Violence Is Not Free Speech
#9> We ... take the clear position that the First Amendment does not protect people who incite or engage in violence. So does this apply to Antifa, BlackBloc, et al as well?
Yes.
Why is it that people feel the need to bring this up? Are you that sensitive towards criticism of Nazis?
You know if you want to stop people associating the right with Nazis you really just have to deal with your damn Nazi problem.
Re: ACLU of California Statement: White Supremacist Violence Is Not Free Speech
#10The statement could've been even stronger and yet remain neutral: "violence is not speech."
Which would defeat the point, because then we'd be stuck with arguments over what is and isn't violence.