At 04:35 PM 8/10/99 -0400, Charles Brown wrote: >I believe your conclusion below is that we should do nothing about fascistic racist groups, no ? Is this the line that the best way to respond to such groups is to ignore them ? Charles, they are boogie men not because they are not vicious, but because they do not pose any serious threat to the political system inth eus (in the way the nazis did in 1930 germany). Despite their rhetorics - I do not think that neo-nazi, religious right and other lunatic right groups are about to take power or even gain any major influence in the us. If that wre about to hapen - you would see the whole hell breaking loose, FBI, CIA, NSA - you name it - going after them. If you hear of the existence of such groups, it is because the powers that be want you to hear about them, and direct your hatred in that direction. They are the Orwellian 5-minutes of hate, a decoy designed to divert public anger from real miscreants (mainstream politicos, corporate bosses, etc.). I do not mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist - but diversion and provocation are perhaps the oldest tricks on the book the powers that be use to defuse discontent. I'd rather see the Left collecting funds to buy political influence, rather than engaging intotally futile theatrics of counter-demonstration against nazi (or kindred) boogie men. > > >Charles: I happen to have a paper on this. In fact and at law, the First Amendment in U.S. history has protected KKK and Nazis and has very rarely protected the Left. The first Supreme Court case (Schenck)on the First Amendment was not until WWI when, in the famous opinion in which Justice Holmes says the First Amendment does not protect crying "fire" falsely in crowded theatre, Holmes decided that the First Amendment did not protect the Socialist Charles Schenck from handing out leaflets opposing WWI as a capitalist war in which workers were doing all of the dying. Schenck, Eugene V. Debs and others went to prison unprotected by the First Amendment. Then came the Palmer Raids in the early twenties against the Communist Party, and a Communist Party member was jailed in _Whitney_ despite Justice Brandeis' opinon which was a paen to free speech. Great words. Bad results. Then in the late 40's the whole leadership of the Communist Party was not protected by the First Amendment ag! >ainst Smith Act convictions. Even when the Communists were released from jail the rationale was not such as to strike down the Smith Act as unconstitutional. > >No fascistic racists have been convicted or unprotected by the First Amendment that I have found. > >My point is that the left has not been protected by the First Amendment, so the typical scenario that the Left will not be protected if the Right is not protected is poor reasoning. In the history above, the Fascists were protected throughout, but it did not result in the Left being protected. So, the current period of grace for the Left is not dependent upon the Fascists' protection. Even if that is 100% true, that does not mean that the nazis run the show in the us. If anything, they are useful tools of th epowers that be from time to time - like police dogs. They may be unleashed on the crowd from time to time and never punished for attacking humans, but that does not mean they run police departments. You do not attack police dogs, but people who unleashed them. wojtek
