Why do we still tolerate the KKK?
Does anyone else wonder where are the calls to outlaw the KKK as a terrorist group?
I can't be the only person wondering this.
The Klan is a terrorist group. They commit acts of terrorism. Simple as that.
It's not difficult.
Just imagine if the guy who drove the car into the crowd in Virginia was Muslim.
Can you imagine the reaction from the White House? From Congress? From the media?
Any group that fictional Muslim had ever even talked to would be rounded up and suspected of being a terrorist group.
And then imagine the new security laws.
But since the Klan has been committing acts of terrorism for over a century, we are going to just give up...apparently. It's a terrorist event for moralizing rather than for counter-terrorism.
Am I crazy? Or is it society?
Comments
They don't have the top notch tailoring of German Nazis
and their pseudo-Spanish penitent garb is really very poor.
Once they get their clothing together, the Feds will be all over them.
/s
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Or....
when they change color.
At that point Chameleons will be outlawed.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
The simple answer?
Yes!
Stop These Fucking Wars
peace
Edit; to clarify, my answer is to Both gjonhsit's concluding questions.
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
So how would that be enforced?
Anyone that espouses that ideology would be arrested and thrown in prison, maybe tortured while their at it, even though they may not have committed any crime other than believing in some bullshit?
Bring the bullshit fraud that is the war OF terror home?
Maybe we should rescind the Posse Comitatus Actwhile we're at it and expand it to the gangs in Chicago or the antifa in Berkley or the militias in Idaho. The possibilities to expand the police state are endless.
Right!
Because those types of tactics would NEVER be used on lefties. Now would they?
(Thanks Al.)
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
We've already brought the GWOT home
I know that you are aware of the laws already.
It's just that we are hypocrites about how we enforce it.
Like the draft versus our endless wars, if we enforced the laws in less hypocritical ways there might be a stronger outcry against them.
We should enforce this like Germany outlawed the Nazi party.
Republicans need to do this. They are in danger of being the racist party.
In the meantime, can you deny that treating a terrorist attack like a normal, high-profile homicide case only happens here because he isn't muslim?
Having lived in Germany for 40+ years, I personally have
come to the conclusion that, however lofty and moral the claimed motivation, her anti-free-speech laws are a bad idea.
I’ve also come to oppose the regressive tax that supports what boils down to a pro-establishment, pro-government “public” TV and radio complex controlled by a caste of well-off, well-connected elite gatekeepers.
sorry I am confused and only back
in Germany for ten months.
Who is meant by "her"? And which anti-free-speech laws are you talking about, German ones or American ones? Please explain.
I must say I enjoyed a lot of documentaries in the German TV media world, documentaries you would never be able to see in the US TV media world. So, I guess, I have not been enlightened enough to understand your comment. Please explain.
https://www.euronews.com/
@mimi
Her is obviously Germany. GEZ is the TV tax that many Germans hate.
Terrorist attack
The murderous asshole who drove into the crowd of protesters IS a terrorist, IMO. While he may have been a part of the Unite the Right rally (Nazi's and KKK by another name), his act appears to be one of the individual. If others are found to be a part of a conspiracy to commit murder by driving into the crowd, they too should be charged and treated as terrorists.
However to use that homicide as an excuse to shut down free speech is a very ugly and slippery slope that we have gone way to far with already. The War on Terrorism is succeeding in normalizing the destruction of guaranteed Constitutional rights, particularly the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments.
Public records show that the federal govt. declared Occupy as a terrorist organization before the first tent was ever set up in Zucotti Park. Uneven application of what is a very subjective law hurts the left far more than the right. The left needs to be very vigilant about the rights of all of us under the Constitution.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I agree, GG, however
whatever the label you put on those treasonist bastards, they were a heavily armed invading, occupying army waging war on a sovereign municipality and should have been halted at the city limits. Free speech is one thing, free war is another. They can say what they want as long as they leave their weapons and body armor at home.
There is no such thing as TMI. It can always be held in reserve for extortion.
Weapons, sadly...
We have the NRA to thank for lobbying legislatures to allow for open carry laws. Virginia is an open carry state with a few restrictions. Seeing hate groups marching with open carry firearms is very disconcerting, but unfortunately legal.
This whole Unite the Right demonstration was designed to created conflict. The city and state officials did nothing to help in limiting the conflict between the right wing hate group and the those protesting it.
We have to be very aware how all these moving parts have been and are being put together to force even more limitation upon our Constitutional rights. What happened in Charlottesville over the weekend was no accident.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Yep, using a vehicle as a weapon in a crowd = terrorism
It's so in France, and other parts of the world (Israel included), so it should be here as well.
The exception is when it's a horrible accident like in NYC and the parade that happened in the South (Alabama?).
I agree with you on expansion of the police state (and the
and the state militia and the city police).
While the Posse Commitatus Act has never been repealed de jure, it is not functional de facto.
We had state militias kill four unarmed college kids in Kent State for demonstrating against a war. Is it really that important that it was the state militia, not the fed military? And since then, we have militarized state and local police. So who really needs the US military to step in?
Police now have vehicles that can withstand IED explosions, which our military did not even have when we first invaded Iraq.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP
Linking only for pics of Boston streets during the search for the Tsaraev brothers
https://truth11.com/2013/04/20/martial-law-has-been-declared-in-boston-t...
eh
new post jumped up and somehow I got redirected.
Thanks George for introducing the new normal n/t
Fighting for democratic principles,... well, since forever
For the same reason it was O.K. for Americans to send money to
the IRA and a “thing” for New Yorkers to name someone convicted of terrorism in the U.K. as Honorary Grand Marshal of the St. Patrick’s Day parade?
Let’s face it, sometimes certain kinds of terrorists are popular, and other kinds at other times aren’t. It’s politics and raw emotion at its purest. To expect consistency and rationality is a fool’s errand.
In fact, as the experience of the Japanese-Americans shows, sometimes you can be non-violent, loyal to American ideals, squeaky clean, obey the law and teach your kids to obey the law in all circumstances, work hard to build successful farms and businesses with no help from anyone except your own family — and still be imprisoned for no other reason than that everyone else (including Dr. Seuss) has been conditioned by the Powers That Be to distrust you.
racism and tribalism are
raw emotions. you can't outlaw emotions. you can abuse emotions in the conquest of political power over others, but you can't regulate them legally, at least I wouldn't know how.
It is as simple and banal as just not liking someone and therefore denying that person equal opportunities. How do you want to prevent those "feelings of not liking someone" legally?
https://www.euronews.com/
@lotlizard
There is an official government Terrorist List which the IRA was not on (splinter groups have been added).
Federal courts have recognized the IRA as an Insurgency (so that they could charge people with Aiding a Foreign Insurgency)
The 1983 Grand Marshal, Michael Flannery was never charged with anything in the UK. He was charged in the US with violation of the Arms Export Control Act and found innocent.
He was never charged anywhere with Terrorism and never convicted anywhere of anything.
Sinn Fein has been a partner in government of the D'Hondt method Norther Ireland Assembly for 2 decades.
In the European Parliament, Sinn Fein representatives sit with the European United Left–Nordic Green Left (GUE-NGL)
Sinn Fein members and former IRA members have been welcomed all over the world to teach their experiences with conflict resolution.
These are the results of the June 2017 Westminster Elections for Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein is in green:
"People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases."
reading your comment again it comes to my mind
that the conditions, where to ...
are not anymore existent. The partition of labor in the miniscule group of a family can't cope anymore with the expectation that ... your own family ... can help.
People try, but all I can see that everyone is stretched beyond their physical and emotional strength to provide the labor that needs to be put in for a family unit, including raising the kids,
to survive and make it with a minimum of dignity and sovereignty.
Just saying.
https://www.euronews.com/
The First Amendment includes freedom of association.
Do we really want government deciding which groups have a right to exist and which groups don't? One administration might pick the KKK and another might have picked SNCC or CORE. The sure zeroed in on pro-union socialists circa 1880 and the Communist Party of the USA almost the day it formed.
We tend to assume laws will be enforced as we wish and only as we wish. That's never been the case, especially for the left. Weren't the laws that forced Snowden to take up permanent residence in Russia enacted either in preparation for WWI or to control socialists, depending upon what you believe?
And how do you find out if people are simply going underground with the KKK? What kind of violations of the Fourth Amendment would be employed to find out what that meeting in so and so's home is really about?
How about just punishing those who commit crimes, as we have since the 1600's (and further back than that, if you count the English forebears whose laws we adopted?
And calling people who commit crimes "criminals," as we did before 911?
I think "domestic terrorism" is a very slippery slope that the left should oppose, not seek to expand. https://caucus99percent.com/user/3903/my_content
while i generally agree with your main point,
i have to say that if you can't call the KKK "terrorist", i can't imagine what organization would qualify for the label. Terrorism is what the KKK was created to do.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Call them whatever you want. If it is important to you, for
whatever reason, to call someone a domestic terrorist, rather than a thug, a criminal, a murderer, a racist, etc., be my guest. I'm not sure why it is so important, but be my guest I don't recall hearing the term "domestic terrorist" before the Patriot Act, yet our language had enough words to to allow people to condemn the KKK in the strongest terms. I don't know why we are being indoctrinated to equate anyone who scares or repulses us with flying into the twin towers, but we have been. I would recommend at least thinking why it became so important since 911, to use "domestic terrorist," rather than the words we used since 1620 C.E. for bad actors. However, I never said calling someone a domestic terrorist should be criminalized. It's not a great idea, IMO, but I never said anyone should not be able to do it.
The essay is about making only belonging to an organization a crime, whether or not an individual does nothing else wrong, including jaywalking. I think it's dangerous and, once done, will not be limited to the KKK. And I think we need to think about it very carefully.
While the statute that covers international and domestic terrorism has a lot of comforting words about breaking state or federal laws, there are parts of it that could be dangerous even to peace demonstrators, for example. I think we need to remember that states--and the federal government have laws against unlawful assembly, trespassing, etc. and, yes, even jaywalking. https://caucus99percent.com/content/could-you-be-international-terrorist
There is little doubt in my mind that people who sat in at colleges in the 1960s and those who congregate in Congress to demonstrate are trespassing. Occupy probably violated laws against vagrancy by sleeping in public areas for weeks. Anyway, I think we need to think very carefully about what we want criminalized. It's not as though government never abuses its statutory power. See also Big Al's comment upthread. https://caucus99percent.com/comment/287794#comment-287794
i'm pretty sure people were calling the KKK terrorists
long before 9/11.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Maybe, maybe not. But I said "domestic terrorist."
They already do
The KKK can exist. Hamas and Hezbollah cannot.
That does not justify seeking expansion.
Why do we tolerate?
Because we're not like the other sites? Because we are the 99% so there will be racists. Most of those inciting terrorists are up there in the 1% if you ask me, not down here with the hoi polloi. Who's next?
Martin Niemöller
I like Freedom of Speech. I don't like violence or terrorism, please don't conflate the two. Thanks.
What if the driver had been Mexican? I live in Cloverdale, California. It has plenty of racists who think Mexicans are all illegal and criminal. Northern California has plenty of racist assholes armed to the teeth, we just don't have a lot of monuments for them. It will be a great day when statues of missionaries get torn down, and dams removed to restore river systems. Think positive.
peace
you know why I get somewhat tired when people
(edited typo)
quote Niemoeller over and over? Because I think one should consider the problems surrounding the translation of his words and from which speech of Niemoeller they have been taken or translated. (It may be worthwhile looking to the reference paragraph of that wikipedia page). It's ok, but the man, imo, is put on a pedestal void of critical thought.
Just saying, my mother was confirmed as a German Lutheran Christian at age 15 in 1934 in the church Niemoeller preached in Berlin-Dahlem. My father, just a year older than my mother, was talking about the "Bekennende Kirche", ie the "Confessing Church" or abbreviated in German as "BK", which also could stand as an abbreviation for "Bibelkreis" (= a group of people who meet to read the bible).
The unfortunate thing is that the Nazis had also a "Bibelkreis" organization with the same abbreviation in German (BK) as the Confession Church (or Bekennende Kirche) had, ie BK as well. As a kid and teenager I believed that my father was quite positively influenced by the "Confession Church" of Niemoeller.
The first time I started to question that was some 65 years later, my father being dead already, and my aging mother (in her eighties) remembering her confirmation at the St Annen church in Berlin-Dahlem,, where Niemoeller preached.
She remembered her confirmation as being a very scary affair, because that pastor "was a radical" and the SS or SA stood in the back of the church in a threatening demeanor watching over the "radical pastor's" every word. I was stunned the way my mother's emotions popped up in her memory. She was more scared over the "pastor" than over the "SS" or SA. Ok, she was only fifteen. She clearly was scared and confused. Only in the autumn of 1934 did Niemoeller change his former support for Hitler into a clear opposition against the Nazis. So, the dear pastor had gone through a journey of searching his conscience for quite a while.
Having Niemoeller quoted so often by American political activists makes me itch to say, you know the guy Niemoeller was not perfect, it took him a while to "get" the Nazis, get racism etc.
Ok, I needed to get that of my chest.
https://www.euronews.com/
Who said he was perfect? Not me.
hi, glad to see you back I missed seeing your comments around here. Hope all is well and good.
Regarding that famous quote, if you have a better poem, song, or quote to oppose staying silent, please contribute it. I am happy to use any example to say what I am trying to say, like don't stay silent in the face of censorship, speak up even if the person you are defending is different. Should I have just left it at "Who's next?". I thought it good in case younger people who may not even know the history might see it, sorry it bothered you.
Let's not just say we're tired of this or that, everyone is tired. I am sick and tired, but still keep trying. Please keep contributing thoughts and ideas, everybody.
Unplug from Facebook for a while why not? See what fills that time instead, you might be surprised. Or not.
Cheers
peace
no, your comment didn't bother me at all,
(you thinking that it did, is though to me a rather common reaction).
I just tried to put a little shaddow into the otherwise black and white scheme of who resisted heroically and who didn't. I think we are all on a journey and discover that we all don't know everything, including the unintended consequences of our own perceptions and judgements.
Peace.
https://www.euronews.com/
"the unintended consequences of our own perceptions"
good one! "and judgments". Thanks for providing an example of why I like to see you back here commenting. Makes me think more, without arguing much. In fact something shifted in my sleep and I came back this morning to edit out most of that quote, but now I'll just leave it. As a testament to my own perceptions and judgments from yesterday. heh Thanks.
peace
No human ever was perfect, including those who
wrote down the New Testament. Some of them have been heinous. That does not mean nothing they said or wrote can't teach us valuable lessons. And that quote is not describing anyone who was perfect or who resisted heroically. It is describing someone who stood silent far too long in the face of great wrongs, until it affected him. That's no hero.
IMHO
When we quote Niemoeller, it is not as a celebration of the author, but instead, it serves as a warning to us all about allowing tribalism making us complacent when harm comes to others.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
First Amendment rights
As abhorrent and terrifying as the Unite the Right group was, I defend their right of free speech under the First Amendment and I will continue to do so. Yes, he sight of neo-Nazi racists marching in our streets was bone chilling. But what is even more terrifying to me is the systemic erosion of our Constitutional rights by our own government.
What concerns me greatly is the unequal and uneven protections afforded to those of us who do wish to protest whatever we are voicing our concerns about.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
The more things change, the more they stay the same
In the 1920s the Klan could and did openly march down the main streets in Washington DC, some tens of thousands strong. (Accounts differ as to exactly which streets and how many participants.) The only proviso was that they show their faces.
Oddly enough, that was the high point of their movement, and it's been all downhill ever since. Maybe going so public started to creep people out, who knows?
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Lots of evidence of town folks shutting down and chasing out
of their towns KKK parade marchers.
Someone did a really good diary a few years ago at TOP chronicling incidents in Northern towns (I think in the 1920's-30's) in which the hooded racists tried marching and people chased them out. Refuse to go over there or I'd post excerpts.
Fascist asshole gets full wrath of crowd:
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
That was me
It never got much traction eventhough I put a lot of work into it.
And this one
Great job on those KKK history pieces at TOP, gjohnsit.
I see that you pulled them too - good job; those frauds don't deserve them.
Tried to go to link that you put in the comments, presuming it was to the essay in question, but it took me to TOP and said it had been deleted. Did you also re-publish that one here at C99 too?
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
I need to point out
That the state in which the KKK attained its greatest power was Indiana. Too often we fall into this cartoonish version of history in which former confederate states are the source of all racism and the former union states have little guilt. Even Abraham Lincoln who has been made into some sort of saint, was by his own proclamation racist and white supremacist. This is paradoxical because he was consistently against slavery, but in his own words from the introductory speech he gave at the 4th Lincoln Douglas debate in Charleston Ill:
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: It will be very difficult for an audience so large as this to hear distinctly what a speaker says, and consequently it is important that as profound silence be preserved as possible.
While I was at the hotel to—day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. [Great Laughter.] While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied every thing. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.] My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes."
People try to explain this away, but the explanations ring hollow. Illinois dealt with the paradox of being actively racist while not allowing slavery by having anti-black laws that were more objectionable than the Jim Crow laws of the late 19th century. The mass lynching that inspired "Strange Fruit"--also Indiana. The most horrendous act of racism of the civil war was probably the draft riots in NYC. Am I excusing southern racism? By no means. I have had my share of clashes with southern bigots, including having someone who introduced himself as a member of the White Citizen's Council pull a gun out while I was leafleting a strip mall (an inflection point in an exciting morning in which my partner in leafleting and I were later chased down an interstate highway in a VW Beetle by two WHC guys in a pickup--exciting days but we are both still alive). Racism is evil anywhere it exists, but let's not make Charlottesville just another excuse for confederate bashing.
Excellent thorough comment, Roy Blakeley.
Thanks for the context and personal anecdote.
Heard Ta-Nehisi Coates on Democracy Now this morning said something similar about Lincoln.
Which was fortunate for me, because I've practically given up on them since she has depressingly bought into the Trump 24/7 Russian Red Herring Mania too.
Though it must be said, to their credit, that they cover the activism on the ground, which nobody does, and often bring excellent historical framework to their reports, which also hardly anybody does as well as they do.
In fact, Coates himself said as much when Amy (or Juan) questioned him on his thoughts about local city councilman (I think in Charlottesville) being able to secure reparation funds for blacks. Said he hadn't heard about that, and joked that that was why he came on to this show, ostensibly to hear about such kinds of things:
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
Content deleted by HAW
Confederate *bashing?* We will never know whether Lincoln
whether Lincoln was a racist or only a politician, when slaveowners were going nuts because the British had made slavery illegal. Maybe he figured he had to say things in certain ways if he was going to get people to even listen. When Obama ran for the legislature in the blue Illinois state legislature in 1994, he was pro-gay marriage. When he ran for President in 2008, he was against it. His DOJ made the same hideous arguments in court that Buscho had. He somehow even halted a case brought by the Log Cabin Republicans. After a while, he told his D of J to stop fighting the equal marriage issue in court, but only in those circuits in which the Circuit Court of Appeals had already decided in favor of gays. One small step, but, still, in the right direction.
However, when Obama was running for re-election in 2012 and did not want to risk a battle with gay lobbyists and the gay bundlers of the Democratic Party, he made some mealy-mouthed, awkward speech about the gay parents of his daughters' friends. Nothing ringing from the boss of ringing speeches. And when the matter went to the SCOTUS, his administration sided with of the gay woman. So, do I conclude that Obama was a homophobe or a politician who may or may not actually have been for equal marriage all along? Hillary and her husband have a very mixed record, to say the least, on both the Confederacy and gay marriage.
I am not really clear why I should care, in connection with Charlottesville, whether or not Lincoln was a racist. Not as though I can dig him up and shame him. But, let's assume he was a racist who: advocated against slavery, ran for POTUS only on not extending slavery, but, thanks to the rebellion, wound up ending slavery in America, won the civil war, treated surrender with dignity and managed to keep the nation together. Then, for his trouble, he got assassinated for his trouble by a pro-slavery murderer. And, unlike other Presidents, he never owned slaves or advocated for slavery. Far outdid me and everyone I know.
As far as Indiana, sure condemn wrongs of the past, but Indiana was not a de jure Jim Crow state until a federal law was passed in 1964. (I don't know what Indiana did in connection with voting.) Let's acknowledge, too, that some, maybe many, people in all states, even today, are bigoted. But there is a difference between that and slavery and between that and legal discrimination. But, if we are not to bash the Confederacy in connection with Charlottesville, why are we bashing Indiana in connection with Charlottesville? Charlottesville began with taking down (finally) a statue erected during Jim Crow as part of celebrating the slave-owning past. White supremacists came from a number of states to protest that and one of them ended killing one person and injuring twenty. What has Indiana to do with any of that? And, btw, gjohnist was not bashing the Confederacy anyway, only the Klan. I don't know that anyone on this thread did.
As for the confederacy, since you brought it up, a number of states of the United States were so adamant that slavery should be extended to the territories that they sought to end their association with the US. (The only "state right" cited in the Articles of Secession was the alleged right to own slaves.) After they lost a war, they instituted Jim Crow and began celebrating their slave owning "ante bellum" past in many ways, including costume balls for young people.
But for your comment, I would not have brought up any of that in connection with Charlottesville, which which I applaud for taking down a celebration of slavery tims. Bash Charlottsville or Virginia today, no. "Bashing," whenever relevant, the Confederacy and anyone who thought slavery and/or Jim Crow was a good idea or romanticizes the days of slavery? Yes. Why not?
ETA: I had posted this on 8/15, thinking I was replying to Roy Blakely's post to Mark, which is here: https://caucus99percent.com/comment/287920#comment-287920 I saw it only when I replied to Blakeey about the same issue on another thread. https://caucus99percent.com/comment/289121#comment-289121 My deepest apologies to Mark.
Decades ago, the pro-Nazis held a march
up north. I recall it being in Ohio, please correct if wrong. The ACLU and other prominent liberal groups defended this very unpopular action. They stated it was protected speech under the First Amendment which was correct. The fruitcakes holding the march behaved themselves, and didn't attack and kill the protesters against them. The police were there and kept a non-militarized/competent eye on the event. This country has really gone to hell in a handbasket since then. Rec'd!!
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
Skokie, IL, and it wasn't as simple as that
The case was argued all the way to the Supreme Court, which found in favor of the would-be marchers - but by then the idea had palled on everyone and only a few Nazi-wannabes showed up. They were greatly outnumbered by counter-demonstrators, and gave up and went away after about ten minutes. (They snuck in a couple of unpublicized demonstrations in Chicago itself instead.)
Here is a rather thorough analysis of the Skokie case: http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3589&context...
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Video of the march:
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Oh, behave!
Still, the holding of the case is that the First Amendment is
there to protect even speech that we find most abhorrent. The Skokie case gave members of the LGBTQ community the Constitutional right to a parade permit forty years ago, when people found that kind of parade abhorrent.
The First Amendment gives and it takes. If it protected only speech a majority of us liked, it would not be necessary.
I suggest you talk to someone at the ACLU
about this. I understand why the KKK is allowed to exist in this country, but they will be able to better explain it to you.
You might want to ask more important questions.... like why the police in Charlottesville were ordered to stand down. The white nationalist group who applied for the protest permission won the issue in a federal court when the city of Charlottesville tried to change the deal. Talk to that federal judge and find out why he ruled the way he did.
What you are suggesting is very slippery slope and making me think of turn that liberals have taken on Freedom of Speech. It's not a good turn.
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
Oh, I don't know... Just ask
Robert Byrd or Strom Thurmond.
Oh wait, they're dead.
Oh, they were Democrats?
What is this History stuff?
Certainly we've "progressed" beyond History
In Maxine we trust.
And Billy Boy talking to Teddy Boy says "He should be getting us our coffee."
Good times.
Prof: Nancy! I’m going to Greece!
Nancy: And swim the English Channel?
Prof: No. No. To ancient Greece where burning Sapho stood beside the wine dark sea. Wa de do da! Nancy, I’ve invented a time machine!
Firesign Theater
Stop the War!
White supremacists haven't progressed beyond history.
Free speech is a lie. It has never existed. It never will. Ever.
Anyone here knows if this had been a left-wing protest in the vein of Occupy, the protesters would have been in jail or dead before it even began because both Dems and Repigs punch the fuck down on anything even remotely left-wing.
Like DMW said above, the only reason these dumbass stochastic terrorists were allowed to do their idiotic shit was because they were no threat to the power structure. In fact, said power structure is perfectly happy to have terrorists like the Nazis and the fuckin' KKK as their shock troops.
And besides, the toilet paper we call our constitution does nothing more than enshrine plutocracy and that little event we call the 'Murican Revolution was nothing more than a changing of the guard: trading one group of bourgoeoisie for another.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
imagine if
https://imgur.com/gallery/G2tnI
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
Prohibition took away alcohol through a constitutional amendment
“No-platforming” and theories of “unconscious bias” and “microaggression” are taking away free speech and free thought without any kind of formal constitutional process.
It reminds me of teenage Red Guards bullying their elders during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The only thing missing is the forced wearing of signs and dunce caps admitting “white privilege” or whatever.
"Orwell was an optimist."