----- Original Message ----- From: "andie nachgeborenen" <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 2:37 PM Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Re: "Freedom" of fascist speech is an absurdity
> Pointing towards a slippery slope is not the
> samething as offering evidence that a policy is a
> slide down that slope. It is true that if we allowed
> the Nazis to march in Skokie (which btw they did not
> do), that _might_ have started the ball rolling to a
> fascist dictatorship in the US, but it's not very
> likely. Principles have to be rooted in context. If
> there is no immanent danger, then certainly free
> speech trumps, no matter how vile the speech.
>
> Marvin's post also makes the classic confusion of the
> issue of state censorship backed with police powers,
> which was not an issue with Weimar, where Hitler got
> only a short prison setence for a terrorist attempt to
> otherthrow the government and where Brownshirt terror
> (never mind Nazi speech) went unpunished the
> complicity of the authorities, and of protest by
> citizens' groups about other speech, which was what
> some of the German left attempted, mixed with
> self-defense against Nazi attacks. The latter is an
> exercise of free speech, not censorship, It's not
> censorship to day, we citizens hate what you say and
> despise your views;' it is censorship if the
> government prevents you from speaking or prosecutes
> your speech.
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I don't know if the confusion you refer to is semantic or substantial.
You seem to be suggesting that it is only when the state intervenes with legislation that the right to free speech is violated, and you counterpose this to "protests by citizen's groups about other speech", as for example in the case of Skokie, which does not presumably constitute such interference. (BTW, I didn't consider the failure to stop the march would have led to a fascist dictatorship).
I would say it all depends on whether the other side - in this case, the Nazis in Skokie - is allowed to freely speak and march or is heckled and drowned out and thwarted or even beaten into silence and submission, all of which I would consider as interference with the right of free expression. As you know, there are laws on the books which recognize such forms of protest as disruption.
Which is not to say it is a bad thing. If only the German left parties, which engaged in these actions at Nazi rallies and press distributions had succeeded in silencing and forcing them into retreat. A more recent example was when left-led students at Concordia University in Montreal drowned out a speech by the visiting Benjamin Netanyahu and forced him off the stage in protest against the Israeli occupation. That constituted interference with Netanyahu's right to free speech, IMO, and was widely regarded as such - even by the organizers. Some of us remember doing the same during the Vietnam war when the administration sent its representatives to the campuses. I think such actions can be justified in the circumstances, and if you want - in order to legitimize them - to call them other than interference with the other side's freedom of expression, I won't quibble about it.