>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 03/23/00 11:14AM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
>The line here is FASCISTIC RACIST speech. It is a narrow exception
>to general freedom of speech.
So gimme some examples. Would you ban the publication of the Bell Curve? It's a hideous book, but I'd never want to ban it. Would you?
__________
CB: This is a good question. I usually confine it to explicitly Nazi and KKK type doctrines.
_The Bell Curve_ is very racist, but I don't think it is fascistic, because there is no linking of the racism with some kind of proposal for genocide as defined in the United Nations Convention for Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. There is no advocacy of murdering , torturing, imprisoning or enslaving Black people ( or women !) based on the claims of intellectual inferiority.
So, my answer at this point is no, I don't think _The Bell Curve_ would be banned under the standard I am defining.
However, that book on "the coming race war", I can't remember the name right now, would probably be banned. Or republications of _Mein Kampf_. or _The Birth of a Nation_ A limited number of copies might be kept in a special secure library, like the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan or something, sort of like keeping copies of the DNA sequences of the small pox virus, but destroying all the existing viruses. I want fascistic racism dead in a museum like torture chambers from the Inquisition.
The main thing would be a prohibition on organizing fascistic racist parties and organizations such as the KKK or Nazi Party.
CB