Charles writes: >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 ?< as Bill Lear notes, that's not what I said at all. Originally, 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. <<< I wrote: >>But people like those killers can't be opposed by yelling and screaming at them, since they work under cover.<< Charles now ripostes:>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.< sure, I'm in favor of counter-demonstrations, as I said. But I think that the main reason why people like Timothy McVeigh (of the Oklahoma City bombing) do what they do is largely rural white-male resentiment toward women, "minorities," Jews, city-folk, yuppies, the corporate-government complex, etc. It's too bad, but counter-demos against Nazi-type groups is not going to drive such folks away from resentiment and violence. If we had a mass socialist movement, however, maybe some of these folks could be educated about who their real enemies are. With luck, anti-Nazi demos might contribute to the development of a new movement of this sort... >>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. << >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.< that sounds good to me. I didn't rule that out. What I'm opposing is increased state repression. And if we're going to educate people against Naziism, I think a mass democratic socialist movement (or even the fragmented actually-existing Left) would do a better job than the public schools. >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.< who is going to do the burying? the US government? is there any reason for the Left to trust that institution? or is it the left that will do the burying? with what shovel? >>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. << >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 against 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.< Once again, this tells us not to trust "our" government. I didn't say that the government would hold back from repressing the left until they were given more repressive power. Rather, I said that allowing them to ban Nazi speech would encourage them to do the same to us (even more than they already have done). But we should protest any cases where the government lets the Nazis or Klan off the hook, especially when that same hook is used to impale Leftists. It's useful to point to contradictions between different government actions or between government rhetoric and actions. >No fascistic racists have been convicted or unprotected by the First Amendment that I have found.< weren't Nazi sympathisers jailed during WW2, simply for being Nazis? Aren't you advocating that they should be convicted by law or unprotected by the First? Why do you trust the government to hold back from repressing the Left (more than it's done already) if given the ability to do it to the loony Right? after all, some Trotskyists were jailed during WW2 (under the Smith Act, I believe) as part of the war effort. >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.< I didn't say it was. I think our "period of grace" is due to the fact that the Left is no threat to the established order. >>The only way to oppose Nazi demos is with counter-demos. << > This seems to contradict your first statement above.< No it doesn't. I was talking about the impossibility of having a counter-demo against people who hide away in labs in Idaho (or wherever) cooking up explosives or drive around in cars taking pot-shots at people of ethnic groups they hate. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
