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 ? >>> Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 08/10/99 01:54PM >>> Charles wrote: >But then if neo-Nazis in the U.S. are so harmless, who shot Rickie Byrdsong in Illinois ? The Boogie man ? Took less than four people to blow up the Oklahoma City Federal Building. < But people like those killers can't be opposed by yelling and screaming at them, since they work under cover. ((((((((((( Charles: There is reason to believe that the undercover killers are often part of groups that are public before they kill. The counter-demonstrations is to try to discourage people joining the groups, bolster anti-racist sentiment. (((((((((((( The Nazi demo in DC, on the other hand, shouldn't be opposed (by the government) since it brings the Nazis out in the open where they are exposed and can be ridiculed. ((((((((( Charles: It is not clear to me that the U.S. mass mentality is so clear today as to know to ridicule Nazis. We need a campaign to remind many of what the Nazis actually were. Your argument here is a piece of the famous opinion of Justice Brandeis ( and someone said Locke) that the best way to treat noxious doctrine is to release it into the air, the anti-festering metaphor. I prefer the anti-toxic gas metaphor: don't release it into the air; bury it. (((((((((((( We shouldn't side with government repression of the Nazis (for being Nazis, as opposed to for blowing up buildings and/or killing people and the like) since the same laws that repress the Nazis will be applied to what's left of the left as soon as it starts growing again. The last thing we need to do is to strengthen the repressive apparatus of the state. ((((((((((((( 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. (((((((((( The only way to oppose Nazi demos is with counter-demos. (((((((( Charles: This seems to contradict your first statement above. CB
