>>> Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> 05/05/99 03:15PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
> >>> "rc-am" <rcollins at netlink.com.au> 05/04/99 11:50PM >>>
>
> >>CB: The German and French examples are contra your general criticism on
> this thread. Their definitions of "racism" and "racial vilification" are politically correct from a left point of view. Even these reforms in
Charles,
I won't enter into the entire debate now,
CB: Yes, I'll reply and then you don't say anything in response, because it will get to be a debate :>)
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but you do recognize, do you not, that some people who are in pretty much agreement with your general take on racism, and the priority you give to the struggle against it, are rather vigorously against you on the topic of hate laws.
C.B: Yes, I know lots of anti-racist people who can't get to that. It is a rather radical proposal.
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The general position from which some of us condemn out of hand the NATO aggression in Serbia is inextricably linked to our general opposition to any expansion of the police power of the bourgeois state.
C.B.: I know I think that is too extreme and is actually ultra-leftist. I don't agree that it is an expansion of the power of the bourgeois state because I consider fascistic racists to be a special auxillary PART of the bourgeois state. They are sort of a special death squad kept in proto-form, nurtured until there is an emergency or crisis of bourgeois rule when they can be expanded into a full fascist army or storm troopers for a fascist crushing of working class revolution. So, in getting rid of fascists , one gets a net decrease of the police power, the terrorist , repressive apparatus of the state. Get that ? The KKK and Nazis are PART of the bourgeois state. Don't be fooled by the unofficial status. They are like special white supremacist militia.
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I will just state the point dogmatically here: Hate crime laws will *never* be used against racists. They will be used, rather, to support the death penalty for Mumia.
C.B.: Here the point is obvious. We do not have hate crime laws. And we have the death penalty for Mumia. Therefore, not having hate crime laws is not preventing us from having the death penalty for Mumia. The logic should be very clear.
Given the reaction against that racist murder in Texas, I definitely believe hate crime laws will be used against racists. Timothy McVeigh would have been prosecuted under a hate crimes law if it was clear that he was a fascist, because there would be an enormous outcry from white people for it.
Fascistic racists do such despicable things that it is possible to rally enormous public support against them.
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Almost every issue of the WSJ contains a column in which the likes of you and me are branded "racist," while the proponents of the destruction of affirmative action are branded anti-racist. So it will be in the police departments and the courts if hate crime legislation is passed.
CB: That correct. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution is used by the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down affirmative action as reverse discrimination The 14th Amendment is an anti-hate law. It has been perverted in a way analogous to exactly what you say is a potential for anti-hate crime laws: An anti-hate law is being used to support hate; that is anti-affirmative action is a hateful and racist position. An anti-racist law is being used to further racism. Reverse discrimination is a racist doctrine.
Yet, we would still struggle to win the 14th Amendment as law if we didn't have it, even though we know the bourgeoisie could pervert it. At least I would. In fact, the 14th Amendment is the basis of some of the hate CRIME laws that are on the books right now. There are already anti-racist motivated crime laws on the books right now. I would not repeal them.
Yes, we will have to struggle fiercely to keep the laws from being misused. However, it is a wrong approach to have no laws in our program. For one thing, the bourgeoisie will misattribute ILlegality to our Alegality of our program. They will accuse us (falsely)of wanting to make illegal changes in the government.
Charles Brown