Leftists ought to be a lot more suspicious about laws on incitement, given their history. Incitement is a problematic concept. It assumes that the perpetrator of an act is lacking in the ability to decide for themselves. So when English courts jailed Chartists for incitement, they were not only denying freedom of speech, they were attributing the actions of the working class to 'outside agitators'.
Catharine Mackinnon does something similar when she says that pornography is akin to the command 'kill' to an attack dog (Only Words). Not only does she argue for the suppression of porn, she reduces men to the status of dogs, who are incapable of deciding whether or not to accept the command.
In message <Pine.SOL.4.10.10003231624140.7636-100000 at phoenix.Princeton.E
DU>, Rakesh Bhandari <bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU> writes
>This talk of banning the Bell Curve is a red herring. The question is why
>the editor did not force careful answers to criticisms that have been made
>for 30 years as a condition of publication.
I think there were more than enough good and cogent replies in the press and books to The Bell Curve, which decisively lost the argument. The idea that publishers should oblige writers to carry hostile interpretations in their work is problematic.
In message <s8da19c9.059 at mail.ci.detroit.mi.us>, Charles Brown
<CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> writes
> I want fascistic racism dead in a museum
>like torture chambers from the Inquisition.
But you won't achieve that through the law. You can only achieve that through political persuasion. If the law prohibits fascist organisations - as did many laws passed under the Bruning government in Germany in the 1930s - but the political argument has not been won then we know what the consequences will be: the law will be applied exclusively against leftist organisations, while the right will evade them.
In his latest book Eric Foner makes the point that the New Left in America was hamstrung by its preoccupation with effecting change through the least democratic part of the American state: the supreme court. -- Jim heartfield