>>> Paul Henry Rosenberg <rad at gte.net> 10/27 12:19 PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
> Charles: Right on. Predominantly mental
> laborers tend to think of freedom of
> thought , consciousness
> and conscience (speech, assembly
> political protest, religion) as the HIGHEST
> right. But being determines consciousness
> for materialists. Freedom from genocide
> is a right equal if not prior to the freedom
> to communicate etc.
>
> Regular folks understand this better
> than intellectuals.
Only, of course, it was intellectuals in the Progressive Era who were largely indifferent to the right of free speech. It was the ultra-scruffy IWW who championed it. ______________
Charles: I should have said petit bourgeois intellectuals. There have been organic intellectuals of the working classes who have been the main advocates of free speech , understanding it as closely linked with freedom from want and racism. The abolitionists would have been opposed to free speech for the KKK. How much you wanna bet ?
I am FOR the right of free speech, especially for "progressives" and abolitionists. In fact, I am an abolitionist. Also, the Abolitionists were intellectuals. But there is a difference in the socialist/communist/ labor tradition of struggle for free speech and the bourgeois and petit bourgeois liberal free speech tradition. ________
There WAS no First Amendment doctrine at the time -- no legal foundation AT ALL to protect speech. There were limits (theoretically, at least) on the Federal Government, but not on the local authorities who were, ____________
Charles: I agree with your point here, although, more accurately, there were no Supreme Court decisions, but there was a Constitutional Amendment,which is a bit more than "no legal foundation at all". ____________
after all, the ones who were jailing the Wobblies on behalf of the local bosses. __________ Charles: Yes, this issue of freedom for fascistic racists to speech is an odd duck in the overall history. Most of the time it is the progressives fighting for free speech and not getting it. The latter is a main point of my argument. The First Amendment has NOT in most of history protected LEFT speech in fact. Your discussion of its denial in the Progressive Era is just more data supporting my argument in that regard. In the Progressive Era as ever since, the right of the KKK to speak wasn't seriously challenged. So, KKK speech was protected, but it didn't translate into protection of the speech of the Wobblies or other progressives. Therefore, the strategy of defending KKK speech as a way of defending progressive speech ignores the facts of history. _________
It was the Wobblies' staunch resistence that paved the way for the Supreme Court using the incorporation doctrine to extend First Amendment protections against ALL levels of government. ______________
Charles: But for Communists and Socialists this was a false protection: In the first Supreme Court cases on the First Amendment Holmes found that Debs and others' speechs against the capitalist WWI were like "crying fire falsely in a crowded theatre" and were a "clear and present danger" not protected by the First Amendment. Nor were the Red victims of the Palmer Raids, nor, the Communist Party member Whitney nor the CP leadership in the early 50's. This is the hoax. The Supreme Court didn't find this speech protected.
Of course, this doesn't at all mean I am not for vigorous struggle for free speech for progressives, continuing the people's struggle for genuine freedom of speech. _________
And 80 years before the IWW it was the Abolitionists.
Thus, in the name of los people a "left" intellectual denounces the acheivement of the people as effete intelluctualism. ___________
Charles: You don't have to put left in quotes referring to me. I'm authentic left. I didn't denounce any of the achievements of the People. Where did the People ever struggle for freedom of speech for the Nazis and KKK ? Never. I denounced the effort by bourgeois intellectuals to extend what freedom of speech has been won by the People to fascists. This is the Abolitionist/ Progressive/Socialist/Communist postion on this issue.
_____________ So, what else is new?
BTW, I, too think the UDHR is vastly superior to the Bill of Rights. But it hasn't been rejected by the US bourgoise -- they haven't even HEARD of it! __________
Charles: The bourgeois are more aware than you give them credit for. Like all ruling classes in history, they are a tiny minority and must rule by superior class consciousness. Somewhere bourgeois lawyers specialize in making sure that the UN standards don't become the world legal standard. _______-
Using the state to suppress fascism is like using broad spectrum antibiotics to suppress livestock diseases -- it breeds even greater virulence which then spreads to attack a much more vital target. _________ Charles: My bio metaphor on this is that fascistic racism is like small pox virus. We can exterminate it even though it might have some human use many years from now.
Your metaphor is as out of touch with reality as Justice Brandeis' s metaphor that noxious doctrine is best treated by releasing it into the air (??!!) rather than suppressing it. The historical, social and political reality of racism and fascitic racism don't follow the analogy of either your metaphor or Brandeis' __________
We're supposed to be systemic thinkers, remember????
________
Charles: Speak for yourself. I AM a systematic and holistic thinker, a dialectician, as is my argument on this issue.
In the TOTALITY, on the whole, in balancing the value of the right to freedom of speech for fascists against the mass murders and ongoing murder and oppression , the LOSS OF FREEDOM , including freedom of speech for the victims of fascistic racism that systematically follow from this "freedom" for fascists, I judge that fascistic racist speech should be outlawed.
Charles Brown
Detroit