On Behalf Of Paul Kneisel
> Laws on group criminal libel mean that someone who writes "All Elbonians
> sexually molest their children" can be arrested and if convicted undergo
> the same civil penalties but go to jail as well.
How about "Turks have oppressed Kurds", which has led to massive repression
for criminal libel against advocates on behalf of Kurds in Turkey? Or the
suppression of minority groups all over the world who charge oppression?
Letting the government define such libel will except in extraordinary
circumstances lead to majoritarian oppression, not the defense of minority
rights.
I generally hate libel law, since it is mostly used by the powerful to
suppress criticism. Unlike in much of Europe, the US, thankfully, has
restricted libel actions to a narrow set of situations. Notably the case
that ended much abuse of libel law in the US was the SULLIVAN decision,
where southern government officials sought to charge Martin Luther King and
his supporters with a form of group libel for an ad condemning the treatment
of protesters. In one of its best decisions, the Supreme Court rejected
libel as a dangerous infringment of speech, since its vagueness makes it
ripe for abuse by government acting to suppress minority viewpoints or those
criticizing power.
Charles dismisses free speech, citing McCarthyism, but while a number of
Communists were jailed, the Supreme Court did eventually declare most of the
attempted deportations (cases centered on Harry Bridges) and convictions
void on First Amendment grounds. They had serious failings in the early 50s
(which critically allowed the left unionists to get devastated) but the core
case law that emerged out of the period ended up being quite favorable to
dissent.
Those core rights have extended to lefties as well, from rights to
demonstrate to the right of a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party to
burn the American flag - hell just their name would have gotten them jailed
before the first amendment law was extended in the late 50s and 60s.
And there is no inconsistency in promoting tolerance of intolerance. There
is without question a tension, but I do not think that fascist authoritarian
views are suppressed by mirror-image authoritarian measures - they just go
underground and spring up again. But broad aggressive tolerance that speaks
the truth without suppression, even tolerance that seems to risk its own
survival, disinfects hate and lies. The very survival and revival of
facsist ideologies in the former Eastern Bloc, where suppression of fascist
ideology was supposed to be complete, just shows how fascist views can breed
underground and come out even stronger because of the lack of free speech to
combat them.
But let me emphasize the "agressive tolerance" part of what I said. This
means that the price of tolerance and free speech is active memory of the
victims of the Middle Passage, of the Holocaust, of genocides all over the
world. It is aggressive documentation of the racism that still pervades the
US and the world. It is mass mobilization when Nazis or racists gather to
show that more people preach tolerance than hate, so that no one is
attracted to hate groups in order to be "with the crowd." It is active
consumer boycotts and other grassroots protests against corporate sponsors
of hate to avoid ever letting such views be considered "normal" or
acceptable, even if we don't trust the state with the power to completely
suppress such hateful views.
And one problem with giving the state the power to suppress such groups is
not just that the state will inevitably misuse that power. It's that it
will induce laziness in progressive groups in actively combatting the hate
lingering beneath the surface. Austria is a good example, where fascists
like Haider and company choose their words (more or less) carefully, but the
racist hate survives. Some have argued that Haider is little different from
conservative racists in the US, but that's the point. Anti-Nazi laws made
little difference in Austria in rooting out the hate, even if the symbols
are suppressed.
What will make a difference is active, positive promotion of tolerance, of
the mass rallies in solidarity with "foreigners" and education to confront
the ignorance and hate. That's what it took in the South to end formal Jim
Crow; that's what it took in California in the 1990s to confront and
overcome anti-immigrant racism.
Relying on the state for such confrontation is not just dangerous, but it's
ineffective and is a poor substitute for the active anti-hate campaigning
and education that is the real key to changing peoples hearts and minds.
-- Nathan Newman
