>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 03/23/00 02:19PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
>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.
Wow, just like the USSR - special libraries under lock & key for the elite. Look how well it worked there!
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CB: Labadie Collection is in the US of A, comrade. You don't really think that the USSR had big brother and your land of the "free" does not have big brother, do you ? Your mind is more controlled than you realize, socially and politically constructed.
I could swear that you were the one who slipped in the loaded word "elite" and I didn't use it. Do you think I don't know what I said ? And isn't putting words in someone's mouth a method of secret police forces ?
Do you really think that there will be no police in the socialist stage of the American revolution ? No criminal laws ? How about nuclear energy or toxic waste , biological toxics ? Would it be an "elite" that had limited access to them, or will anybody be able to just walk up and get a little radioactivity in your liberal utopia ? Oh how freee weeeeeeee will beeeee, weeee.
I sure like the record of the USSR better than that of the USA. Americans who think they are so free are so self-deluding.
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I own a copy of Mein Kampf. I quoted from it in Wall Street. I would be very pissed off if someone tried to deny me the right to read it.
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CB: Sorry. Your not being pissed off about owning a copy of _Mein Kampf_ is not as important as me not having to worry about the existence of fascistic racists. That's how the balancing of the scales comes out to me.
But actually, you could read it. It would just be through a complex registration and regulated process. You couldn't take it out of the library , but would have to read it there. Plus, you could quote it, but not promotingly.
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One of the many reasons the Nazis were horrible is that they burned books they didn't like. I don't see how turnabout is fair play here.
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CB: This elevation of reading books, ideas, speech to the highest most important activity in society is the philosophical crux of your arguments here. Books are not sacred or more important than freeing people from the threat of fascistic racism. No, not all books are inherently absolutely good or more important than anything else just because they are books. The cliched image of book burning as the highest wrong in society is biblio-fetishism.
So, would you say that the Nazis killed a lot of people but, it would not be fair play to kill them to stop them from killing people ?
It is not burning books because we don't like them ( that tired refrain , as if this is based on my personal likes and dislikes. I could start going around on this list and accusing everybody of taking every position they take because of personal likes and dislikes with as much validity as you and Justin are doing it here. Should we get rid of capitalism because you don't like it ? Should we not vote for Hilary Clinton because you don't like her ? Should you be able to own a copy of _Mein Kampf_ because you like to and will be pissed off if you don't ? Give me a break. ). It is stopping the wide publication of books because they contain arguments for organizing genocide. I have made the objective arguments in ten different ways, and you choice to ignore what I actually say, and try to reduce it to my personal likes and dislikes. If you really want to argue it that way, when I fairly turn it around on you it will not be fun believe me.
Just to repeat THE OBJECTIVE, HISTORICAL reason for make a special exception of no First Amendment protection of fascistic racist speech is fascistic racist speech and organization have resulted in the last five hundred years in the genocidal usurpation of the Western Hemisphere from the Indigenous peoples, the genocidal enslavement of Africans, worldwide colonialism , the holocaustic genocide against the Soviets and Jews, the genocidal war on Viet Nam, et al. Therefore, we can ban fascistic racist speech without worry of suppressing some ideas or words that will unexpectedly result in improvement of society.
That, by the way, is THE fundamental rationale for the political value of freedom of speech upon which your argument lies entirely: that allowing free flow of ideas that may seem bad or wrong at first will result in discovery of ideas that turnout unexpectedly to have a positive effect in ACTIONS. Even the liberal rationale ultimately makes this key link between speech/thought and action. But we can with certainty conclude that fascistic racist ideas will not result in such unexpectedly positive actions. Yes , there are definite conclusions we can draw from history, and this is one of them. Every issue is not eternally open, indefinite, uncertain.
Why don't you tell me what you think is the rationale underlying freedom of speech ?
CB