From Buckley to Bannon: Whither the Scribbler Scrapper of the Right?

Bannon was an outsider who wanted to use the Republican party for his own quite different agenda. The relationship of the Republican party to Trump is the same but in the other direction (i.e. they also want to use Trump to further their own quite different agenda). The problem is not within “conservatism”. The problem is that in a two party system you can’t really have a schism.

While the ‘populists’ wanted change from the direction we were headed, it is not apparent they want change from here, so I question if they want anything accomplished, especially when much of that proposed is just a continuation of the old. Politicians aren’t always elected to accomplish things, and that isn’t always the way to grow the base.

“Whatever the outcome of the civil war Bannon intends to fight, it’ll be waged against the backdrop of a declining instead of an ascendant movement…”

Thank you for this post, I hope that you are correct but the mechanisms of institutional power of our security state, the Department of Justice, FBI, NSA and the military, are caught in this split and at this moment it is not clear who will out. With the privatization of our cyber security system (witness Snowden and the NSA) and the hollowing out of our conventional military and the oceans of cash pouring in from Putin through our banking system, I’m not convinced that the Republican Party has not already been swallowed by the fascists. Unless the Democrats can succeed in creating a broad-based anti-fascist front in the next 18 months, I’m worried that gerrymandered districts and Koch brothers cash will allow for a complete consolidation of fascist control in 2018. Tonight’s formal dance with the devil in the Arizona desert will tell us a lot and I am very worried about a bloody American “Kristallnact”. Namaste

‘When Steve Bannon joined Donald Trump’s campaign as a key advisor last year, the left was right to be worried. Bannon’s reputation as a master strategist followed him through a stunning electoral upset and all the way into being Trump’s right-hand man in the White House. But today, the full shape of Bannon’s ultimate vision has finally become clear in his moment of triumph: Steve Bannon has just completed his yearlong plan to become increasingly irrelevant before eventually getting himself fired.

Machiavelli, meet your star pupil.

With the president’s ear, a seat on the National Security Council, and a media empire at his disposal, Bannon deftly assembled every resource he needed to get himself sidelined over and over until his removal. And as liberals wrung their hands over the shadowy man behind the curtain, Bannon was already enacting the first stages of a scheme to dither into nothingness that future generations will undoubtedly study for its genius. Like the chess grandmaster who can see every move before the first piece is even lifted, Steve Bannon knew exactly how to get what he wanted, and executed his train wreck of a tenure with pinpoint precision.

Bannon hit the ground running almost immediately, slamming through a legally shoddy travel ban as the first in a chain of unforced errors whose strategic elegance would make Sun Tzu weep. From there, he wove a web of manipulation, effortlessly alienating potential allies, stoking pointless factionalism inside the administration, and making the POTUS increasingly frustrated with him until he was shunted to the margins. In just a few short months, Bannon lost influence, access, allies, and power at an unprecedented rate, demonstrating to a rapt nation just how formidable of a tactician he truly was. Few could be as disciplined as Bannon with their goal so tantalizingly in view, but Bannon–no ordinary politician–waited with mantis-like patience to become completely impotent before finally getting himself fired, his ultimate masterstroke.

With every piece of his yearlong plan finally falling perfectly into place, Bannon’s legacy as a master strategist and go-nowhere flash in the pan is undoubtably secure, but we have to wonder if even this might all be part of some larger scheme of his. Will Bannon now pick pointless fights with the GOP or Fox News, focus on losing even more ground with the Trump administration, or simply burrow into irrelevance through inflammatory comments and avoidable public scandals?

Whatever he decides, one thing is now very clear: Whatever Steve Bannon sets his mind to, he’ll get it done.’

http://www.clickhole.com/article/master-strategist-steve-bannon-has-completed-his-y-6521

Trump lost the election, and was saved only by the Electoral College scam. Bannon’s loudly declaring victory so that he could do more of his losing strategy was guaranteed to lose him credit with his boss. If Bannon’s strategy had actually won the election, he would have I think been vastly more influential.

In principle it’s possible Trump is really so stupid as to think he won the election but, he fakes a lot. In particular, I think he was faking any interest in re-industrializing the national economy (not least because industry hasn’t disappeared so completely.) I think he was faking any distaste for finance, not least because a good portion of his business career has been about high end real estate and amenities for financiers.

I do think the Grover Norquist strategy of winning votes to cut the budget hasn’t been so effective in delivering the goods as the ruling class wants. But making the government small enough to fit into a bathtub isn’t the only way to kill the beast. I think Trump is modeling his strategy on hostile business takeovers, where the profitable parts are retained and the non-profitable parts sold off. Except in governmental terms, that means Trump is promoting the common conservative agenda on taxes, etc. as much as possible. And for the parts that do people good, he’s sabotaging government. He can’t replace Obamacare with something better, so what? He can just let things fall apart. Serves the same goal as defunding. Bannon the electoral loser is of no use to this program.

TM@6 asks two questions: Yes, and no.

“You folks obviously reject both.”

Perhaps anonymousse has the wrong amendment in mind. The big feature of recent right wing rallies, starting with the Tea Party, has been openly carried weapons. That’s been too much for the ACLU, and everyone else on the left.

but @7
I forgot ‘the most serious’ point –

Whatever he decides, one thing is now very clear: Whatever Steve Bannon sets his mind to, he’ll get it done by having Trump ”decanted red wine decanted through Melania’s used pantihoes.”

(P.S. I was not quite accurate – there were also some states which are in a state of civil war.)

bruce wilder: “…which in the absence of a functioning loyal opposition or a responsible media, is likely to drive an increasingly ill-considered and brittle authoritarianism.”

Yet the media and the loyal opposition have functioned. The media has accurately reported on the consequences of proposed policies and legislation (e.g. the various bills to repeal / replace the ACA) and the loyal opposition has in fact largely opposed those policies and legislation to the extent of their power. What should they be doing differently?

A sort of Marxist point about our present distempers: the conditions of existence have changed, probably irrevocably, for the Scots-Irish coal miners of West Virginia, the libertarian ranchers of the West, and the industrial workers of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and they’re not happy about it. Should Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, or Elon Musk feel any more sympathy for them than their ancestors felt for Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, or Geronimo? A similar observation could be made about our lack of sympathy for the Taliban and the Salafists.

One difference is striking, though, about our current last ditch defenders of traditions outmaneuvered by modernity. They’re more widely distributed, and they’re also much better armed. The days of Whatever happens — we have got — the Maxim gun — and they have not have succumbed in their own fashion to a modernity not even the Moderns themselves seem to understand. Not yet, anyway.

Marx thought that once the conditions of existence had changed sufficiently, the past would be, or could be, swept away by revolutionaries with their eyes on the future. Seen up close, from the vantage point of an individual life, the process is far uglier, no matter subsequent theoretical revisions from the foundries of Marxist ideology, or cheerleading from neoliberal think tanks. Somewhere between Faulkner’s The past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past, and Gibson’s The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed, there’s a place to stand that won’t offend either our conscience or our common sense. Maybe. One hopes. YMMV.

– and ever since in my homeland a dude decided to run as ”birther in chief” – and NOT
(as”President”) – and hardly anybody noticed that fact – or better said – hardly anybody said: Hey wait a minute ”a birther” can’t run for President – that’s verboten -(in any civilized society) – all these very… thoughtful ‘pieces’ somebody is writing on blogs or in the guardian or the NYT about Trump or Bannon or any of the F…faces – remind me on one of my favorite ‘pranks’ – where the people get invited to some High Class Art-Exhbition and one of the major Art Historians of this planet gives a tremendous complicated speech about the Earth-Shattering Awesomeness of the Pictures – only to release later – that all of the pictures were painted by some monkey -(or a Orange Orang Utan?) – and the ‘fake’ exhibition had the only purpose to teach US Gullibles a major lesson. -(y’all may decide yourselves what it could have been?)

Now the lesson I got from it: You better don’t write too thoughtful about ‘art’ if you are aware that a Orange Orang Utan has created it?
That fact needs new ways of verbal expressions – and somehow WE just don’t get it neither from the NYT nor from the Guardian?

‘The relationship between President Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, has disintegrated to the point that they have not spoken to each other in weeks, and Mr. McConnell has privately expressed uncertainty that Mr. Trump will be able to salvage his administration after a series of summer crises.’

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/us/politics/mitch-mcconnell-trump.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Also: Markets have given up on Trump’s proposed ‘tax cuts’ and ‘infrastructure spending’.

https://twitter.com/adam_tooze/status/900001363068833792

Far Right rallies cancelled everywhere:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/act-cancel-america-first-rallies-largest-anti-muslim-group-counter-protesters-a7906836.html

And the statues keep on coming down:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/roger-b-taney-statue-taken-down-charlottesville-clashes-racist-supreme-court-judge-a7900771.html

Trump loses support in crucial rust belt.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/08/politics/trumps-approval-is-starting-to-look-like-romneys/index.html

It seems that the only people still mesmerised by Trump’s (rapidly eroding) power are centrist Democrats.

Oh, and about those hardcore Trump supporters ‘who will never leave him’.

‘Over the next 72 minutes, the president launched into one angry rant after another, repeatedly attacking the media and providing a lengthy defense of his response to the violent clashes in Charlottesville, between white supremacists and neo-Nazis and the counterprotesters who challenged them. …

But as the night dragged on, many in the crowd lost interest in what the president was saying.

Hundreds left early, while others plopped down on the ground, scrolled through their social media feeds or started up a conversation with their neighbors. After waiting for hours in 107-degree heat to get into the rally hall – where their water bottles were confiscated by security – people were tired and dehydrated and the president just wasn’t keeping their attention. Although Trump has long been the master of reading the mood of a room and quickly adjusting his message to satisfy as many of his fans as possible, his rage seemed to cloud his senses….

The president …tried to connect this lengthy self-examination to his supporters. Meanwhile, a growing number of them were calling it a night and heading to the exits.’

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/presidential/analysis-as-trump-ranted-and-rambled-in-phoenix-his-crowd-slowly-thinned-20170823.html

Citizen Cory Robyn, now that we have had our “Kristallnact” in the Thrilla in Phoenix please tell me that there is enough of a split in the oligarchy to get rid of Trump and not end up with a President Pence or, more likely a President Ryan. The mechanisms put in place 225 years ago to assure rule by the better class and mitigate the power of the mob have worked to place us where we are right now and it strains my limited limited imagination to see that those mechanisms can work to change anything.

“the only people still mesmerised by Trump”

Are you referring to *those* people who spent the last seven months protesting and resisting Trump’s agenda, with at least partial success? I’m glad they are so “mesmerized” and I hope they continue as vigorously, rather than declaring premature victory.

Because, in practice, once the state asserts the authority to muzzle people, it always ends badly?

If you spread lies about product x by multinational corporation y you’ll be muzzled by an army of lawyers before you know what hit you and the state would muzzle you in no time. (They would even shut you up if you were speaking the honest truth – for a while at least.)

If I say publicly that Layman is a [insert something very evil] you’d be within your rights to sue me and the state would certainly muzzle me if the accusation was baseless.

If I say publicly that I want to kill or even just hurt someone, the state will muzzle me.

But if a bunch of Neo-Nazis and related scum spread lies about minorities and plan to kill or enslave them – well, that’s freedom of speech, I really don’t get it.

State already muzzles people all the time.

TM @ 26 (08.23.17 at 6:06 pm)

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the Marxist point (sort of) is that beyond the stage of hunting and gathering, cultures evolve in the context of specific economic and technological conditions. When those change at the rate they have since oh, say 1750 or thereabouts, existing cultures, particularly, but not exclusively isolated ones, can be stressed beyond their capacity to adapt. The choice of populations used in my examples had to do with particular American mythologies, expressed in the urban/rural divergence which most people seem to think is at least a partial explanation for the rise of Trump. They weren’t meant to be exclusive examples of such stressed cultures, nor completely definitive explanations for the upsets we’re witnessing. Hence the sort of bit….

Here, TM, let me buy you another drink.

@novakant

It’s hard to tell whether you’re serious. The threat of a lawsuit for libel can be applied to anyone who libels, and it’s not BTW a state suppression of speech. The threat of a criminal charge for communicating a specific, tangible threat applies to anyone who communicates a specific, tangible threat. If these white supremacists aren’t being sued for libel, it’s probably because what they’re doing doesn’t constitute libel; and if they aren’t being charged with communicating a threat, it’s because what they’re doing doesn’t constitute communicating a threat.

If you think any of them are engaging in libel or communicating specific, tangible threats, point to the example. If you can’t point to an example, what are you talking about?

Layman

Because, in practice, once the state asserts the authority to muzzle people, it always ends badly?

Layman

The threat of a criminal charge for communicating a specific, tangible threat applies to anyone who communicates a specific, tangible threat.

How does the second statement constitute an exception to the first or, alternatively, how does it not constitute an exception?

anonymousse @ 8: “Serious question: ‘I may not like what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’”

Serious answers:

(1) The quote goes, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

(2) Its strength in argument is that it is attributed to that hero of the Enlightenment, the philosopher and advocate of civil liberties named François-Marie Arouet but pen-named Voltaire.

(3) However, that is a false attribution: Voltaire never said nor wrote it.

(4) As an “Argument from Authority” [which is a type of fallacy anyway] which turns out not actually to come from any authority, this is already worthless, but let’s look at the statement itself, shall we? Is the problem with current or historical white-supremacist and fascist activism merely that it is “disliked” or “disapproved of”, the way they themselves or others dislike or disapprove of differing races, religions, and sexualities? Or rather that it is imminently (and historically) violent and directly threatening to the rights or physical safety of others — which generally crosses the line between what is and is not protected as “free speech” under our First Amendment, like “assault” (a simple threat, actual contact being “battery”) or defamation or fraud or false fire alarms (shouting “fire” in a crowded theater) or bomb threats or threatening the life of the President. [“Words, mere words”]

For Corey: Can I trade in my second copy of the 1st edition for a copy of the new one with added Trumpiness ? :-)

The marketplace of ideas and the idea that the right ideas will win in an open debate is bullshit. Some ideas need to be shut down, and the people who advocate them need to be forced out of the public arena. Every other country understands this. It’s time America did too, before it all falls apart over

Some countries have shown that this approach is maybe not unprobelmatic

Now I agree that Nazi and racist and fascist ideas need to be countered. (And that carrying weapons around is just nuts – a bad thing in the US, but a different one.) But, the record of states on which ideas “need to be shut down” and which people “need to be forced out of the public arena” isn’t so hot, either. And, you might have noticed some racial based attacks on people, in, say, the UK recently too, despite some different laws. That leads me to think that changing these laws might not be the best approach, even if it were possible.

@45
”But, the record of states on which ideas “need to be shut down” and which people “need to be forced out of the public arena” isn’t so hot, either.”

Well – I don’t know how often it has to be written or said – that the record of states on which fascistic Ideas and Nazis has been… let’s say ‘lawfully excluded out of the public arena’ is pretty hot.
Not only in German but also lately in Austria. the Netherland and France.
And do you know – when ‘Fascistic Right Wingers’ in France threatened the Muslims of their countries with ‘extinguishing’ them – French Laws against Hate Speech made it very clear that a modern democratic state doesn’t tolerate such Hate Speech.

And isn’ that… really… ‘hot’?

Yes, seconding nastywoman, there are actually lots of states where shutting down hate speech has worked. And in response to Layman, who gets to decide who gets shut down? Well, the government obviously. If your problem is you can’t trust the government to distinguish between violent hate speech by a group that actively murders people and wants to overthrow the government and kill whole swathes of your populace, and some annoying fuckknuckles the government disagrees with, then your problem is the government, not your lack of maximal free speech.

I would remind everyone who thinks that this shit is going to end well to read the Turner Diaries. That’s the script these evil people are working from. If you think they’re going to thank you for letting them talk about their “ideas”, well, you’re very naive indeed.

Matt can you actually give any examples of European laws being used for ill that would outweigh the benefits of shutting down nazis?

And just think about – how absolutely ‘HOT’ would it have been if US Laws would have forbidden ”A Racistic Birther” to run for President?

I don’t know, about as “hot” as it was when fascists were kept from running for office in France, the Netherlands, Austria, etc? Really, I don’t see what these claims are supposed to be about.

faustusnotes , I suppose you don’t consider Russia part of Europe, but my point has been, those laws don’t actually seem to shut down Nazis in Europe! But, people do get convicted under them in the UK sometimes. And if they seem to do no good, and sometimes, hurt, what is the point? I suppose it makes you feel better. But you’ll need to show me more than that. I mean, Geert Wilder’s views are not so much different form Richard Spencers, so what good are these laws doing? Please explain that to me.

@ novakant, apologies as I mis attributed that last comment of faustusnotes to you.

@54
”If outlawing drugs doesn’t stop the drug trade or drug abuse, why do you imagine that outlawing speech will ‘shut down’ Nazis?”

Or is that the problem: Thinking if a certain law is not working as well as intended it’s not worth passing such a law?

You mean Italians shouldn’t have laws against speeding because ‘it doesn’t stop them’

That’s… HOT!

The right to opinion and the right to assembly are connected rights. But I think – along with Bentham – that rights are a kind of social fiction. As such, they must be adapted to social contexts. In Europe and Japan, after WWII, there was an attempt made by the allies to enforce denazification, defascization and destruction of the Japanese imperialist organizations. At the same time, there was an attempt to use ex nazis, ex fascists, and ex Imperialists against communists. It is in this context that the abridgement of the right to, say, publish Mein Kampf in Germany has to be looked at. Arendt pointed out how many ex Nazis succeeded in establishing public careers in Adenauer’s Germany. Even so, the ultra right never really gained the power it had even in the Weimar period. That’s a big contrast with Japan and Italy. In Italy, the fascist party has flourished to the point that it was a valued member of Berlusconi’s coalition. In Japan, the denial of imperial atrocities has become canonical in text books and speeches by politicians. Interestingly, occupied Italy and Japan were really American projects, whereas all the Allies occupied Germany.
What this exercise should tell us, I think, is that – as with all “universals” – time and circumstance change what the state suppresses and why. These peeps who want free speech for Nazis in Charlotteville have been hella quiet about the suppression of speech represented over the past 17 years by the prison of Guantanamo Bay. In fact, the right to association for Islamicists has been under fierce attack, and nobody seems to be sweating it – but throw in a few bullying white male faces from the “heartland” and it becomes an issue. Reflecting, of course, the large sexist and racist inequities in the system.

Indeed, here’s a Nazi rally in Belin, just last week. I thought the speech constraints were foolproof?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/19/world/europe/berlin-germany-neo-nazis-rudolph-hess.html

Layman

Yes, mister catch-me-in-a-contradiction,

If an examiner detects an error in your working, whose fault is it that you don’t get full marks, yours or the examiner’s? I’m not going to apologise for having paid careful attention to what you have written, not even if I have paid more careful attention to it than you have.

… there are exceptions to most rules.

Indeed there are; so one should be extremely careful about posing as the defender of a rule without exceptions.

Of course, this constraint has a potential to be abused, but all constraints have that potential.

Yes, absolutely, exactly so. Therefore, the discovery that a constraint has the potential to be abused is not, by itself, a conclusive argument against that constraint.

Post- war on terror is another story, since the government asserts the right to kill people in faraway places based entirely on words they claim have been spoken; words that in some cases are basically abstractions rather than direct threats. That’s an argument, IMO, for protecting speech rather than further constraining it.

But it’s no longer an argument that constraints on speech always end badly; as the indicative phrase ‘another story’ emphasises, it is an argument about particular constraints on speech in a particular context ending badly in particular circumstances. That’s a different sort of argument, and, precisely because of the absence of absolutist universalism, one much more worthy of respect. But then, what’s the connection between US government drone strikes and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville?

Layman, outlawing drugs does stop people using drugs.

Matt, noni don’t consider Russia to be part of Europe but since you’ve raised it, why don’t you tell me which anti-Nazi law in Russia is being used to persecute non nazis? For example, Russia’s campaign against gay activists is based on a law specifically targeting gay activism. And it’s successful, so successful that western gay rights organizations are very worried about it! Ditto singapores laws on inciting racial or religious hatred, pakistans laws on insulting the prophet, thailands laws on insulting the king … it may come as a shock to some of the gentler folks hereabouts but banning things and using state power to enforce that ban works.

Also, for all his many flaws wilders was not a Nazi, and the presence of these laws in Europe has eg forced marine le pen to expel her daddy’s cadre from the national front and distance it from street fighting thugs. It’s also so poisoned the national front brand that left and right unite against them. Have you noticed that happening in the USA?

J-D: “I’m not going to apologise for having paid careful attention to what you have written, not even if I have paid more careful attention to it than you have.”

It’s a joke, from Roth’s _Our Gang_. I guess it went past you. You really should pull that cork out; it isn’t helping.

Keith: “If you can be sued for libel/slander or prosecuted for incitement to murder why not incitement to racism or homophobia ? ”

Maybe because murder is concrete; it’s an act that produces a residue of evidence. People don’t really argue about either the victim is dead or not. Racism and homophobia are ideas, not acts, though of course they may lead to acts; and ideas themselves don’t leave incontrovertible physical evidence. People argue about those ideas – about whether they have them or not – all the time, e.g. “I’m not racist, you’re the racist!” If you exhort your followers to kill the outsiders, I’m guessing you’ll get caught up by the existing legal prohibition.

why don’t you tell me which anti-Nazi law in Russia is being used to persecute non nazis?

I did do this – it’s a law against promoting “religious and ethnic hatred” and was, in the first article I linked (which you apparently didn’t look at) used to prosecute the people who run the Sakharov Museum when it put on a display, “caution! religion” about how religion had promoted violence. Orthodox fundamentalists broke in, smashed the museum, and then the museum owners were prosecuted for “promoting religious hatred.” Other laws against “extremism” have been used to prosecute opposition members, including members of the National Bolshevik party. (Not a party I like, but basically punk anarchist kids.)

it may come as a shock to some of the gentler folks hereabouts but banning things and using state power to enforce that ban works.

Indeed – but if you can up with a way so that only people you like are in power, and they only use the rules in ways you like, this might be good. The world doesn’t seem to work that way, though. And, I don’t so much share you opinion of Wilders (or, for that matter, the Freedom Party of Austria and others.) They are media savy, (as is Le Pen the younger) but the ideology is the same.

It’s also so poisoned the national front brand that left and right unite against them. Have you noticed that happening in the USA?
The large line of Republicans (some of whom are clearly racists) who lined up to denounce the Nazis and Klan members in Virginia, and Trump’s statements on this, fit this at least as well as the Euro crypto-nazi parties. So, yes, at least as much, this has happened in the US.
So, I understand your point, but think the answers are much harder here than you think. In the mean time, I’ll try to stick with liberal principles as long as possible.

Layman

Keith: “If you can be sued for libel/slander or prosecuted for incitement to murder why not incitement to racism or homophobia ? “

Maybe because murder is concrete; it’s an act that produces a residue of evidence. People don’t really argue about either the victim is dead or not. Racism and homophobia are ideas, not acts, though of course they may lead to acts; and ideas themselves don’t leave incontrovertible physical evidence. People argue about those ideas – about whether they have them or not – all the time, e.g. “I’m not racist, you’re the racist!” If you exhort your followers to kill the outsiders, I’m guessing you’ll get caught up by the existing legal prohibition.

There have been cases where people were convicted of murder and where it has subsequently been discovered that the purported victim was not dead; also, there have been cases where it has never been definitely discovered that the purported victim was alive, but somebody has argued that case. I can cite examples if anybody is interested.

Moreover, it is not necessary (and nor should it be) to prove that somebody was murdered in order to get a conviction for incitement to murder. In order to get a conviction for incitement to murder, it should be necessary to prove the fact of the incitement; but evidence sufficient to prove the fact of incitement is going to be the same kind of evidence regardless of what was being incited. If it’s possible to prove incitement to murder, it’s possible to prove incitement to anything else in basically the same way, using the same kind of evidence.

Layman

What makes you think free speech protections – or any other protections – are immune to politics? It took politics to enforce the constitutional right to vote after a century of Jim Crow, and politics is now whittling away that right. Southern states banned abolitionist writings, Eugene Debs went to jail, Coughlin’s newsletter was suppressed, all under formal guarantees of free speech. What a liberal politics allows, a reactionary politics can deny. So the argument is about degree, methods, not rights for, in the end, if enough reactionaries want to suppress speech, they will find a way.

– and seriously – and if I may? –
(as this blog seems to be dedicated to a German dude who wrote about ”Vernunft”)

To come up with an argument – that we shouldn’t implement certain very ”vernünftig” laws – BE-cause they might not work as well as we hope –

WHAT IS THAT?
Is that ”Trump”?

Come on Matt, you seriously believe the republicans have repudiated Trump and the nazis? In case you doubt their commitment to mainstreaming this shit, remind yourself which party Trump is representing. Ask yourself when they will get rid of him. Until they do, they’re happy to ride the coat tails of a nazi. This is the benefit of America’s free speech environment – that one of its two main parties has been taken over by a neo nazi.

White supremacist: “Kill all Jews!”

novakant: “no!”

Layman: “let’s discuss…”

Re Layman and others: Free speech in the US is not as absolute as the self-identified “free speech absolutists” like to claim. For example, Oprah Winfrey had to defend herself in court for just mentioning mad cow disease in her show. She was sued for defaming the meat industry, without even having named any specific business. As far as I recall, the case was dismissed on a technicality but *not* on 1st amendment grounds. This is not an outlier. There was a time when books questioning genetic engineering were difficult to publish in the US, while they were commonplace in Europe. It is noteworthy that the 1st Amendment only protects speech from government censorship while being silent on private censorship.

The point of all this is that there are different interpretations of freedom of speech in different countries but the often made assumption that the US interpretation is universally the more liberal is wrong. In some areas, US interpretation is more liberal than say the German, and in other areas it’s the other way round. The second takeaway is that there are limits on freedom of speech everywhere. Where to draw the limits is always contentious but there is no place in the world without such limits and the often stated belief that the US is an exception to this rule is a dangerous illusion.

And of course re 70, writing critically about your employer (regardless which equipment you write it on) is protected speech. That you seem to be unclear about that, Layman, is a bit disconcerting.

Or – what I often suspect – is it this -(very American) idea – that some gubernment is always out to get US?
That if the US ‘gubernment’ would pass some law against Hate Speech – it wouldn’t pass it to protect all of these victims of Hate Speech in ‘the homeland’ against truly evil Fascists and Nazis?

As the average European seems to be very happy if her or his government is protecting her or him – from the fascistic F… faces?

Sooo – is the problem actually that even ‘liberal’ Americans will not trust their own ”gubernment” if such a government passes a law – to protect their Jewish or Muslim Sisters and Brother – the way a ”good liberal” should protect them?

@88
”If you outlaw Nazi symbology, as Germany did, you still have Nazis who think Nazi thoughts, recruit other Nazis, march in the streets trying to spread Nazi ideas.”

Not really – as Germany not only outlawed some symbology but also the ideas – for example to ”kill Jews” which could be considered an integrated part of the symbology aka the ideology.

– and thusly you take a YUUUGE step to ”outlaw the _ideaS! of Nazism and that’s how do you do that? –

Stopping Nazis!

And are you just pretending NOT to understand it?

@90
”there is something strange going on when a remark about eating beef can land you in court but hate speech can’t, because freedom of speech.”

Oh – even less – much less than ”hate” speech easily can land you also in court in the US – if you just call somebody who or what he actually ‘is’.
And the fact that Trump finally didn’t sue a lot of the women who told US all what Trump really is – and that some right-wingers like to call it ‘Hate Speech’ too – we probably just owe to the… let’s call it ”circumstances” our wonderful so called ‘President’ is currently struggling with?

@ nastywoman, I remain skeptical that Germany has successfully eradicated the content of people’s heads by outlawing them. In fact, I know they haven’t, as I have already given you an example of a Nazi rally in a Berlin within the past two weeks.

@ TM, the Oprah suit went to trial, and Oprah’s defense was that she was engaging in free, protected speech, and the jury agreed with her. You’ll need to find another example of the badness you’re alleging.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/oprah-triumphs-over-the-texas-cattle-ranchers-1147137.html

TM: “I don’t wish to take sides here regarding free speech for Nazis, but there is something strange going on when a remark about eating beef can land you in court but hate speech can’t, because freedom of speech.”

You’re conflating two different matters here. Oprah was in civil court, sued for libel, not in criminal court for violating a constraint on speech. In the exact same fashion, you are free to bring a lawsuit against hate speakers for libel. You might even win, but unless the hate speaker was extremely careless, and actually uttered an actionable libel, I suspect you’ll get the same outcome as the ranchers who sued Oprah did.

I still invite you (all of you) to offer two things:

1) An actual example of a threat made by white supremacists recently which in your view should have been treated as a violation of the law against inciting violence or the law against communicating a threat; and

2) A law you think should exist which suppresses hate speech, your view of what that law would accomplish, and an example where that result has been achieved.

Layman 93, no I’m not conflating different matters. What is the case is that you think that the matter I brought up isn’t related to free speech, and you are wrong. The power to haul somebody into civil court for uttering an unwelcome opinion is chilling to free speech, even if there is a chance (but only a chance) that after spending potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars on your defense you might not win in court. Your implicit claim that passing a law for that express purpose is not an infringement on free speech is patently wrong and there’s not much more to say about this.

Layman 92: Is it obvious to you, or is it not obvious, that writing critically about your employer is protected speech? Regarding getting fired for protected speech, that matter is far more complex. There are situations where your speech is perfectly protected and yet it is perfectly legitimate for the employer to fire you, and there are situations where that is not the case. Your a priori however seems to be that the employer can always fire an employee for protected speech, and there you are wrong. In the US you may be right but not necessarily elsewhere. Not everybody in the world agrees that employees have no rights.

The problem with your whole demeanor is that you take the free speech status quo as it happens to be in the US and declare: “this is the definition of free speech that everybody must agree with”. And the rest of the world just says “huh”. If you want to be taken seriously, make an argument that is not circular.

@93
”I remain skeptical that Germany has successfully eradicated the content of people’s heads by outlawing them.”

That’s good! –
It is always ”good” to remain skeptical – even if in Germany Facistic ideas – and Nazis – AND wars – have been eradicated so successfully – that for example – commenters on this blog had complained (kind of) about ”German Pacifism” –
AND the German Right Wing Party – which would be the closest to ideas of US Right-Wingers-(and still an ocean away from US Nazis) gets only about 10 percent of German voters.

And that’s pretty successful!

Right?
And I really think that by outlawing them it helped a lot in eradicating some really nasty content of people’s heads .

William timberman, presbyterians are not “religious dissenters”. They’re another type of religious arsehole.

Dipper, Nick Griffin is not and has never been a hero. If you think he is, can I suggest you spend some time on self reflection?

Hidari, yes that’s right there are no nazis in North Korea and for sure if we ban Nazi speech we will be exactly the same as North Korea the very next day.

Jesus fuck is it primary school around here?

@ nastywoman, it is already a crime to incite violence or communicate a threat. That aside, I’m amazed that you trot out the German right-wing party as an example, since 1) that party is widely acknowledged as a neo-Nazi party, 2) which means that Germany has not in fact banned neo-Nazi ideas or even neo-Nazi parties, 3) and I note that this party is vastly larger and more successful electorally than any comparable party in the US, 4) despite the fact that the US does not ban hate speech, 5) which in turn calls into the question the efficacy of hate speech laws in suppressing actual hate or hate groups or hate political parties, which is what I have been saying all along.

@TM, when you write, as you did, that “…there is something strange going on when a remark about eating beef can land you in court but hate speech can’t, because freedom of speech…”, you are 1) wrong, because you can be sued for hate speech, as I have pointed out, so you CAN be hauled into court just as readily for the one as for the other; and 2) you’re conflating civil law with criminal law.

Beyond that, writing critically about your employer is protected speech, in the sense that no law may constrain what you can write (excepting threats, incitement, etc); though I remain mystified as to why you ask. I wrote that “…what companies do about…” such writings is not a matter of free speech laws, and that is entirely correct.

Also, too, I’m sorry you don’t like my demeanor. I don’t like yours, either, but I think I’m overcoming that, reading your words, and responding reasonably to them.

@faustusnotes, if it is indeed the case that Cantrell said what you say he said, then he broke an existing law and should be charged. If you mean to say that it is a problem that he has not been charged, I agree with you. If you mean to say that he would have been charged if the US had banned hate speech, I can’t imagine why you think that. The same applies to actual attacks by people: These attacks are already crimes.

You say I’m defending Nazis; which, quite frankly I consider to be a malicious attack. I am not defending them; I think they’re execrable. I don’t in turn say that you’re ‘fucking stupid’, though I am inclined to think that your mental processes are not now working as they ought. Maybe you should take a deep breath before posting that sort of thing again?

I repeat my request above. Propose an actual hate speech or hate group ban you think will work, explain what ‘work’ means, and give an example where it has worked. Germany is not a good example as their neo-Nazi problem seems worse than that of the US.

@ Faustusnotes. This is ridiculous. Another complete misquote. I said that Griffin is an odious racist, but that a crass prosecution made him into a hero. That is completely not the same as saying I think he is a hero.

We are done. I am not replying to any more of your comments.

@101
Five Points with the preface that IF you try to write about German Hate Speech Laws – YOU NEED TO INFORM YOURSELF in order NOT to write nonsense.
1) The German right-wing party called AFD -(by their Party Program pretty far ”left” of the US Republicans) – is NOT a ”Neo-Nazi” party as ”Neo-Nazi Parties” are ‘verboten’ in Germany.
2) Which means that Germany has in fact banned ”Neo-Nazi Parties”
-(Please inform yourself – you can google it!)
3) and I note that the AFD is much much smaller and much less successful electorally than any comparable party in the US -(Republicans)
4) despite the fact that the US does not ban hate speech, 5) which in turn calls into the question the efficacy of NOT having hate speech laws in educating Americans that hate or hate groups or hate political parties, IS NOT A GOOD IDEA – which is what I have been saying all along.

”Look what you made me do”!!!

Layman, insulting Jews as a group, or gays, or blacks, is not in the US an actionable offense, not even in civil court. You are simply wrong, you can’t sue for racism or hate speech. However, insulting the beef industry, as ridiculous as this sounds, is an actionable offense, at least in Texas and up to 12 other states. You should take a look at the law in question used against Oprah. It wasn’t ordinary libel law but a special “food libel” law passed by the ag industry (with the help of a corrupt legislature) specifically to suppress critical speech, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_libel_laws. These laws afaik are unique to the US and I guarantee you that they would never pass constitutional muster in Germany (which I cite due to familiarity with the law there but I suspect the same could be said for most or all of Europe). In fact, there is an important decision of the German Constitutional Court which ruled in 1991 that the civil courts *must* protect freedom of speech when adjudicating libel suits. No comparable upper court ruling exists in the US afaik.

Your claim that libel laws don’t put limits on freedom of speech is just patently ridiculous. Speech that can get you ruined is not much freer than speech that can get you imprisoned. It appears that your conception of freedom of speech is extremely narrow. You are entiteld to that narrow conception but you should understand that it isn’t universally accepted, and you are not entitled to define how the rest of us ought to think about freedom of speech.

Dipper
In what way was that prosecution harmful?

The first sign that you’re out of your depth is when you think that

has anything to do with free speech rights.

… seriously, it’s like you’re just repeating talking points you don’t understand. [if you understood them, you would realise they were wrong.] So.
Point 1: the relevant text of the US legal system is as follows: “Congress shall make no law […] abridging the freedom of speech [&c]”.
Now, this needs some exposition, because it’s widely misinterpreted. “Abridging”, here, means
“having the effect of abridging, causing abridgement”. Not, “written with the intent of abridging”, there’s no element of causation or intent in the grammar. A purported law falls afoul of this provision if it causes abridgement, even unintentionally. Secondly, the phrasing is “shall make no law”: the congress can’t “make” laws that cause abridgement [from the above, even inadvertently]. A purported law that happens to cause abridgement is beyond the power of the congress to “make” and thus must be without legal effect, at least to the extent of the abridgement caused.

Point 2: private property rights are established by law. I’m not going to detail this one.

This is not a difficult syllogism, I think.
+ Purported laws that abridge free-speech rights are ultra-vires, and void to the extent of the abridgement
+ Private property rights are established by laws
+ purported private property rights that abridge free-speech rights are ultra-vires, and void to the extent of the abridgement.

Layman

For avoidance of any doubt, I do not say that. I’m an enthusiastic supporter of BLM, one who understands that laws against hate speech will inevitably be used to silence movements like BLM.

There are a number of jurisdictions — I have no idea how many — in which there are laws against hate speech. I also don’t know in how many of those jurisdictions those laws have been used to silence movements like BLM. I do know that it makes no sense to draw conclusions about the inevitable consequences of laws against hate speech without investigating the experience of jurisdictions that actually have such laws, so I wonder (inevitably) how much of that kind of investigating you have done.

J-D @ 110: “Indeed, I can’t at the moment thin[k] of any examples whatever of incitement (to anything at all), but that does not justify the conclusion that there is no such thing as incitement.”

(1) There is, of course, infamously, “inciting a riot” (see 18 U.S. Code § 2101, also the 18 U.S. Code § 2102).

(2) More generally, see “inciting or producing imminent lawless action” (such as violence) in the US Supreme Court case Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).

– and if I may? –
It’s always tremendously entertaining when my fellow Americans discuss ”Freeeee Speech” – and if ‘y’all don’t believe me google ”Citizen United and Glenn Greenwald’s defense of the Supremes Citizen United Decision” plus all the ensuing commentary” – and then let’s all join hands and come (united) to the decision that ”a law” which is sooo -(un-Kantish) NONprecise and can have so many insane interpretation should be overhauled right away by Immanuel!

Let’s get the German dude out of his grave to give US some laws as precise and to the point as German Hate Speech laws! and let’s add:
”The world moves on, another day, another drama, drama
But not for me, not for me, all I think about is karma”

Sigh.

@nastywoman, Germany’s NDP party is indeed a neo-Nazi party; is often called a neo-Nazi party; and only still exists because the German government botched an effort to shut it down in 2003. As bad as the Republican Party is, it is not analogous to the NDP. Virtually every claim you’ve made in this thread about the efficacy of Germany’s anti-Nazi laws has been wrong.

@ Collin Street, your syllogism at 111 is clever, pithy, and entirely wrong under the law.

@ TM, yes, of course I’m discussing First Amendment matters in the context of US law, since the First Amendment doesn’t apply in Britain, or France, or Germany, etc. If you look back that the comment that started this thread – #8 – you’ll see that it was explicitly about US law and speech protections, US hate speakers, and the attitudes of liberals about both. Similarly, the comment thread about speech in the workplace stems from #68, which was expresssly about speech in a US workplace.

@ J-D, I’m glad you agree that banning Nazi symbology or speech doesn’t eradicate Nazis, but surprised that you don’t know I offered that comment in response to a statement that Germany had eradicated Nazis by banning Nazi symbology. The point of the observation was to rebut the idea that speech and symbology constraints are efficacious in eradicating hate groups or hateful ideas. Similarly, my request for examples of incitement to murder was in response to a claim from faustusnotes that the white supremacists at the demonstration in Charlottesville actually made statements intended to incite violence or murder but were not arrested for it. I was asking for examples to support this claim. Are you not actually following the discussion?

Also, @ J-D, in the US there are essentially no hate speech bans comparable to those in other jurisdictions as they generally cannot survive the First Amendment test. I am aware that there are such bans elsewhere, just as I’m aware that they don’t seem to end hate or hate groups. I have asked repeatedly for someone to offer the outline of such a ban intended to stop what happened in Charlottesville, as well as evidence that it actually has the effect of eliminating white supremacy elsewhere. I’ve been told about Germany, where banning Nazis clearly hasn’t banned Nazis; but I’ve been offered little else.

@ Raven, same response on incitement. I’m aware that white supremacists sometimes make statements inciting violence; and have said that they should be arrested under existing law when they do so. My question was specifically about Charlottesville and the claim that they did so there but were not arrested.

Again, does anyone care to offer a proposed hate speech ban for the US, modeled on one which exists elsewhere; and to offer evidence that the ban actually had the effect intended? If not, I’m done, other than to apologize to anonymousse, who was apparently right that some on the left are ready to abandon the defense of free speech as a basic liberty.

Layman

@ J-D, I’m glad you agree that banning Nazi symbology or speech doesn’t eradicate Nazis, but surprised that you don’t know I offered that comment in response to a statement that Germany had eradicated Nazis by banning Nazi symbology. The point of the observation was to rebut the idea that speech and symbology constraints are efficacious in eradicating hate groups or hateful ideas. Similarly, my request for examples of incitement to murder was in response to a claim from faustusnotes that the white supremacists at the demonstration in Charlottesville actually made statements intended to incite violence or murder but were not arrested for it. I was asking for examples to support this claim. Are you not actually following the discussion?

It is not reasonable to expect me to discern that a comment of yours is intended to be understood as a direct response to a specific earlier comment if it omits any citation of that specific earlier comment. In this comment your own remarks are preceded by a direct quote from one of my earlier comments, and there’s no reference (with or without quotation) to any comments by anybody else; the predictable effect is that I read your comment as a specific direct response to mine; that’s not my fault.

The criminal law in general does not have the effect of eradicating whatever is declared to be a crime; the fact that a particular law does not have the effect of completely eradicating some banned practice is not conclusive evidence that the law is a bad law.

I see that Raven has offered a response to your challenge to produce examples of incitement to murder.

Also, @ J-D, in the US there are essentially no hate speech bans comparable to those in other jurisdictions as they generally cannot survive the First Amendment test. I am aware that there are such bans elsewhere, just as I’m aware that they don’t seem to end hate or hate groups. I have asked repeatedly for someone to offer the outline of such a ban intended to stop what happened in Charlottesville, as well as evidence that it actually has the effect of eliminating white supremacy elsewhere. I’ve been told about Germany, where banning Nazis clearly hasn’t banned Nazis; but I’ve been offered little else.

I made my remarks in response to a comment of yours (which I quoted directly) in which you wrote: ‘I’m an enthusiastic supporter of BLM, one who understands that laws against hate speech will inevitably be used to silence movements like BLM.’ Do you still want to defend that assertion, or is it fair for me to regard your change of topic as a tacit abandonment of that earlier claim?

I’m not disposed to argue that German law is better than US law; I’m also not disposed to argue that US law is better than German law. I don’t assume that Australian law is the best, or can’t be improved, just because I’m an Australian, and I’m equally unimpressed by similar attitudes to the law of any other jurisdiction. It’s always possible that the law can be improved; hence I’m extremely suspicious of anything that seems to be anywhere close to an argument that the law can’t be improved. If all you’re arguing is that you don’t know of any proposal to change the relevant US laws which would be an improvement, then we have no disagreement; but is that all you’re arguing? Do you get the impression that there’s a point on which we are in disagreement?

Again, does anyone care to offer a proposed hate speech ban for the US, modeled on one which exists elsewhere; and to offer evidence that the ban actually had the effect intended?

Jim Crow: was that the intended effect, or did the US constitution fail to prevent it?

@J-D My point is that Nick Grffin’s actions were made heroic by a prosecution based on restricting his speech that made him into some kind of crusading heroic figure. He is not heroic, his politics are the worst kind of politics, but prosecuting just makes him a martyr. It is worth noting that the one episode that firmly terminated his career was put-on him on Question time, where his freely expressed views got the proper treatment.

What is under discussion here is not whether Nick Grffin is a hero, but whether criminalising free speech is beneficial, and my view is that in this case it clearly wasn’t.

J-D @ 116: Oh my goodness, you don’t even follow current events, do you? On August 3rd a young woman named Michelle Carter was sentenced to two-and-a-half years (15 months actually in prison, the rest suspended) Massachusetts for inciting her 18-year-old boyfriend’s suicide, via cellphone texts and calls. — Quote: The judge ruled that “free speech” does not include incitement to suicide, which is a crime – in Carter’s case, “involuntary manslaughter.”

Dipper

@J-D My point is that Nick Grffin’s actions were made heroic by a prosecution based on restricting his speech that made him into some kind of crusading heroic figure. He is not heroic, his politics are the worst kind of politics, but prosecuting just makes him a martyr. It is worth noting that the one episode that firmly terminated his career was put-on him on Question time, where his freely expressed views got the proper treatment.

What is under discussion here is not whether Nick Grffin is a hero, but whether criminalising free speech is beneficial, and my view is that in this case it clearly wasn’t.

Did you not grasp that I was denying what you assert? You assert that ‘Nick Griffin’s actions were made heroic by a prosecution’; I deny that Nick Griffin’s actions were made heroic by a prosecution.

Raven
I plead guilty to the heinous charge of not following local crime reports from the other side of the world, and throw myself on your mercy, hoping you can find it in your heart to forgive me. But I’m still not sure what point you were trying to establish by your citation.

Oh, and J-D @ 129: “I plead guilty to the heinous charge of not following local crime reports from the other side of the world” — Actually, I’d pondered whether to bring up the very non-local-to-me 1953’s UK Derek Bentley case (“Let him have it!”) re incitement, and decided against it because that was (a) 64 years old, (b) such a dubious example of actual guilt that his conviction was eventually overturned as a miscarriage of justice. The Michelle Carter case was in Google News headlines this month; I didn’t get it off my local newspaper; I don’t live within a thousand miles of there; I didn’t cite it as “local” but as current and relevant to topic. However, feel free to make Google your friend and look up incitement to violence, incitement to murder, incitement to crime, etc., then see what (more suiting your criteria) shows up.

As the crowd is moving on and we’re past the six-month point of the new administration this may be a good occasion to respond in general terms to what the departure of Bannon and Gorka means from my own perspective.

I find a lot of common ground with Scott Adams on the larger arc of where we’re generally headed. The departure of Bannon and Gorka at this point makes sense within this frame. The president’s low approval numbers may remain right up to the point where he’s re-elected. His negatives were high before he won and after. What he needs to do to get re-elected he’ll do. His timing has been very good (not impeccable) so far and the departure of Bannon/Gorka pairs with the pardon of Sheriff Joe, who’s revered as a real hero by Trump supporters. Lindsay Graham, no Trump fan, observes that the ‘unstable’ president is entirely rational in running against the Republican congress and the media – two groups even more widely-loathed than the president. The run-up to 2018 will see Republicans expand their numbers in the Senate http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/347394-the-7-most-vulnerable-senators-in-2018 although a lot can happen before then. The Dems, of course, don’t much care as long as the cash keeps pouring in. They skim off the top and Clinton Inc. is back in business indifferent to the toxic effect the family has on the electoral prospects of Democrats at all levels. As I’ve noted here, occasionally, for the better part of three years, circumstances for many African-Americans have not improved despite the election of Democrats. The fact than the NYT and most media outlets ignore their day-to-day struggles (California illiteracy rates, for example) does not mean that Democrats and their media allies are not concerned by attrition and low turn-out among African-Americans.

So, in that sense, both Trump and the Democrats are ‘winning.’ Calling average Americans nazis is fine as long as the average Americans are conservatives, or republicans. Pretty much any comment thread at CT confirms as much. The outrage on both sides is manufactured for political gain and to raise funds. There’s more pork to be had from holding office and that’s what motivates the DNC and the RNC.

Trump’s populism remains robust and virulent within a toxic, hostile environment. Trump will hold his base by running against Congress and the media. Those that hate Trump will. Independents and many minorities will vote with their pocket books in 2020. If the economy is in good shape and Trump hasn’t involved the US in any new wars his chances of re-election remain excellent.

This whole lengthy, heated, lengthy debate (did I mention how long it is?) about free speech for Nazis has been missing the point.

We’ve had the First Amendment for a long time. What we haven’t had until recently are politicians who are willing to admit Nazis and white supremacists to the mainstream. That’s the difference between George Lincoln Rockwell and Richard Spencer, and why you never heard Nazis saying, “Hail Nixon!”

Does anyone else recall the Republican fury when the Obama DHS talked about the danger of right-wing extremism?

https://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/extremist-report-draws-criticism-prompts-apology/?mcubz=3

@23

“It seems that the only people still mesmerised by Trump’s (rapidly eroding) power are centrist Democrats.”

This being CT, you just knew that someone would find a way to blame centrist Democrats. At least we’re calling them what they are and not the fog-inducing “neoliberals.”

Layman
You could start by picking a few of the jurisdictions where actual hate speech laws actually exist and demonstrate how those actual laws have actually been used to silence actual movements like BLM; that would be worth more as evidence than any amount of hypothetical extrapolation. Wikipedia has a list of hate speech laws by country; you can be the one who picks examples from that list for investigation, but if you’d really rather have me be the one, let me know.

I’m happy to. First you propose a hate speech law, and then I’ll explain how it can and would be applied to BLM. I’ll wait.

The problem here is that you think your proposal is dispositive.

In chemotherapy, people take extremely toxic chemicals. They make you very sick; if you don’t check doses carefully, they’re more than capable of killing you. But, and this is important, they kill the cancer cells faster. Fifty percent faster, or twenty, or ten. You take them until you’re half-dead, and the cancer is three-quarters dead. Take a break, give yourself time to recover — we select the chemicals so that you’ll recover faster than the cancer does — and repeat. You’re half-dead, again, and the cancer is … not quite fifteen-sixteenths dead. And again, and again, and again. And eventually… well, you can’t think of yourself as cancer-free. The chances they got every cell aren’t good. But maybe you have — it’s possible — and even if not you’ve bought yourself some time before you have to do this again.

So. Yes. Hate speech laws, as you suggest, will limit communication of ideas we don’t have a problem with. Laws are always thus; we always draw the laws so that the marginal thing they ban is actually usually OK, for reasons that should be obvious. We do it so that the things we don’t like are more affected than the things we do, and because we’re happy with the trade-offs involved.

Because that’s what grown-ups do, Layman. They make trade-offs.

[there are other things here, such as the idea of using censorship frameworks to limit the spread of undesired ideas from person to person, the so-called “chilling effect”. But your basic approach, “convince people that censorship means impeding communication they’re OK with, and they’ll stop supporting censorship!!”, isn’t going to work. We are perfectly aware of the point you’re trying to demonstrate. We support what we support anyway, because the cure is not as bad as the disease and we can show it with science. Again: US free-speech framework did not stop trump, did not stop jim crow, did not stop stonewall. Does not work the way your theory demands.]

In any event: what’s your plan, Layman? You’re very straightforward about the things you don’t like, but negative feedback is the second most useless thing in the world: “don’t do that” is, literally, one point removed from communicating nothing at all. Tell us your plan to stop the nazis.

J-D @ 134: “ Why are you labouring to establish these points to me when I have never doubted them?”

Was it some other ‘J-D’ who posted #110: “I am completely unable to give any examples of incitement to murder… Indeed, I can’t at the moment thin[k] of any examples whatever of incitement (to anything at all)….” — and then rejected the quite recent Google News headline-making example of Michelle Carter’s incitement to suicide because it was not “local”? … At which point I suggested one might Google for other examples fitting whatever criteria (such as geographical propinquity to one’s own location) one deems suitable to bring up on the World Wide Web for debate.

J-D @ 136: “… if I were in any doubt whether such a thing as incitement ever happens, it might be worth my while researching for examples; the reason I haven’t is that I’m not in any doubt on this point.”

That’s nice; however, will all your debating partners always be equally certain? Might it help to have those examples handy to cite to allay their doubts as well? Do you think they will, like you, reject all examples non-local to themselves? But… will they all be local to you?

Hidari @ post: “Perhaps the first American President who was not openly/covertly racist was George W. Bush (perhaps Jimmy Carter and George Bush senior might also qualify).”

Harry Truman’s integrating the Armed Forces counts for nothing? LBJ, despite his background pre-1964, took great efforts and had his party pay an incredible political price to push through the civil rights bills of 1964 and 1965 (he foresaw losing the South for at least a generation as a result, and he was right). As practically a footnote, see Teddy Roosevelt’s last public speech before his death.

We don’t and can’t really know whether JFK would have done what LBJ did; all his possibilities died with him. But RFK didn’t seem like a racist; else I doubt Rosie Grier would have stayed his bodyguard, as he had many other career options. Would the brothers have been that dissimilar?

Also two other points about free speech…

1) the reason the bnp made publicity from that case, and the reason in general th tfsscists use these cases to make pr, is that they have unfettered freedom of speech. As the article’s dipper links to observe, the bnp has unlimited free speech. They have a blog, offices, the rightnto speak to the press, and to raise money. If their offices were raided and their computers confiscated, if distributing their newsletters was illegal and griffin had no access to the internet, and if giving them money was illegal, they couldn’t open a bank account and third parties were not allowed to funnel them money, the court case would have been unnecessary and of no value to them. Their ability to leverage attacks on their speech as vote- or support-winners depends on them being allowed essentially unlimited speech. dont argue that suppressing speech doesn’t work on the basis of laws that do not actually suppress speech.

2) laws passed on a flimsy pretext to target group x are not good examples of how God laws to suppress speech will work. The examples Matt gives above of laws in Russia being “misused” to suppress anti govt speech don’t work because the laws being used were always intended to have this use, and the ostensible reason for these laws’ passing (protecting the nation, whatever) is largely irrelevant to their real action. As a counter example, in most countries with anti child pornography law you can still access “barely legal” or “teen” porn, because the laws were passed to target kiddy porn and that is what they do – they weren’t intended to prosecute obviously non-kiddy porn. In contrast, “obscenity” laws are explicitly designed to target whatever the establishment considers obscene, which is why they are easily used against b&d porn etc. and using eg the Russian laws – which are effectively suppressing exactly the speech they were intended to suppress- as examples of why laws can be misused is counter productive. These laws show that suppression laws can be targeted and very effective.

And again, for the Americans in the audience: if you can’t trust your govt to enact basic laws for the purpose they were written, your problem is the government not the laws. You live in a democracy, so start taking responsibility for your government. The rest of us do – grow up and do it yourselves.

Raven

Was it some other ‘J-D’ who posted #110: “I am completely unable to give any examples of incitement to murder… Indeed, I can’t at the moment thin[k] of any examples whatever of incitement (to anything at all)….”

No, that was me. But how does that explain your labouring to persuade me that there is such a thing as incitement, when I never doubted it? Those statements are not expressions of doubt about the fact that such a thing as incitement exists.

— and then rejected the quite recent Google News headline-making example of Michelle Carter’s incitement to suicide because it was not “local”?

I didn’t reject it; you evinced surprise that I didn’t know of it, and I suggested that there was nothing surprising about my not knowing of it, as there was no good reason to expect that I should know of it.

That’s nice; however, will all your debating partners always be equally certain?

I don’t know. Do you think I am likely to encounter somebody who disputes the existence of such a thing as incitement?

@ Faustusnotes.

The problem with such things as suppressing free speech is that the easy cases are easy, but the difficult ones not so. My point was that suppressing free speech was effectively being used to prevent serious crimes being brought to light.

And still it continues with women in the Labour Party being demoted or deselected for challenging the record on child abuse and misogyny in Pakistani heritage communities.

“I would also point out that Britains most prolific sex offender and all the people who were enabling him were white, and most of them were rich.”

A classic Corbynite manoeuvre. “Don’t look here, look over there”. Yes there are a number of clusters of child abuse; the BBC, private schools, the Church of England, and those are all mainly white and powerful. If there is a common theme here, it is that people in positions of power were able to exploit that power to prevent enquiry into their activities. The notable thing about the crimes of the men of Pakistani heritage is that the protective cordons put round their activities were erected by a largely white group of police, social workers, councillors (often Labour), and some Pakistani heritage councillors on the grounds that “community cohesion” was an over-riding concern. Lots of muslims of Pakistani origin have denounced the activities of these men, so the issue is on the power structures in and around these communities and how these were used to prevent crimes being investigated and prosecuted, one tool being the arrest of people publicly bringing attention to these crimes.

A note on the racism of presidents: The personal wokeness of the presidential mind may be interesting, but the perspective in which leftism is purity of heart and mind fails even worse than usual in regards to presidential power. People will still claim Jefferson as antislavery because they focus on individual attitudes as expressed in words. But they ignore Jefferson’s policy on Haiti, for instance.

Within days of the rebellion against Qaddafi breaking out, reports of the lynchings of black Africans by the insurgents were available, for those who cared to know. Obama let Cameron and Sarkozy take the lead internationally, and Rice, Power and Clinton domestically, for obvious reasons. But the fact remains, Barack Obama supported the people who lynched blacks. Still too tan for the Klan, but, there it is.

– and REALLY and the last time @ 148

– to use all these (few) examples – where ”a Law” proved – that IT wasn’t Fool-proved BE-cause from time to time people -(or even Greenwald’s) – happen to screw up even the most ”awesome worded Laws” – is so…. so?…. sooo ”Trumpish” – that the German Dude whose great quote gave this blog THE name – probably would become a fan of… Taylor Swift?

BUT the saddest comment for sure goes to the dude who wrote:

”But the fact remains, Barack Obama supported the people who lynched blacks. Still too tan for the Klan, but, there it is.”

Good Lord? –
Dude?!
That nearly is on par to the Trumpest-birther-s… and I’m not talking about some ”fact” I’m talking about the nasty and sick subtext…

Oh dear dipper. You ask me to accept that you personally do not believe griffin is a hero but then you suggest that a child abuse ring was alllwd to function because his brave speech was suppressed! Sure you don’t think he’s a hero! However, sadly you’re wrong – he didn’t do anything for stop that child abuse although he did waste no time seizing on a way to use it to further his own racist agenda. We now know thanks to a few social workers that the police ignored repeated pleas from the victims. We also know they did this lot to protect Muslims out of fear of racism, but because they thought the 12 or 14 year old girls in question were lying slurs. It’s doubtful they even bothered to inquire as to the racial and religious background of the accusers. Of course this ring would have been broken up years earlier if some rich white person – any, even one! – had bothered to tell the police about jimmy savile. But they didn’t , and the same police that protected (white) jimmy savior and helped him rape hundreds of girls also – shock – stood by while a Pakistani gang did the same thing. Yet only one of these things drew griffins attentionand only one exercises yours. And while they both have a lot to tell us about the corruption and class consciousness of British police they tell us nothing about britains laws on race hate, or the crushing effect of censorship laws. Do we even need censorship laws, when a rich who’re guy can rape hundreds of girls over decades and all of his colleagues can hide and. Support his actions, until after he’s dead? Please do tell me about how rapists are being protected by laws against racial vilification, and pleas do show me how they helped jimmy savile!

Or alternatively, admit that you’re a despicable human, and slink away.

Layman, what do libel laws have to do with censorship by government? None of the cases you cite involve governments shutting down free speech (okay, the turkey one does. But do you seriously think the turks’ problem is badly designed laws? No, their problem is that a power hungry arsehole is going to use the law any way he wants and a lot of scary people are supporting him).

Colin, you conplain that Obama let Cameron and sarkozy take the lead – is your preference that he was more interventionist? Should he have taken the lead and committed the full force of American arms to protecting those black Libyans? Given that Africa is full of black people, every time a crime is committed a black person suffers – does this prove that Obama is the real racist? Is your position that obama is the real racist? Please explain! I fear your blathering is incoherent, and you actually have no political position except that a black man was a bad person. Tell me it ain’t so!

Here’s how it looks to me. Pretty much all the mainstream candidates and most of the electorate in the US, Canada, Australia, etc. are utterly indifferent to race, gender, sexual preference, religion, etc. This is very, very bad for cranks who look to justify their paranoia and for cynics keen to ride fear to power. As several here noted during the run-up to the election, the overwhelming majority of voters in the US favor some form of amnesty, and very few Brits favor booting out European nationals who’ve been living in the UK.

27,000 Klan marched through the streets of Washington D.C. in 90 years ago. That number is down by 99 percent. But to hear some folks tell it the opposite is true. Until 1968 it was illegal for blacks and white to marry in the grand old state of Virginia. The US ambassador to the UN is an American woman of Indian ancestry who likes guns and opposes relics of the Confederacy. And on and on and on.

The race, gender, and religious discriminatory practices and laws of the 19th and 20th century have been removed by some highly imperfect people against the wishes of various reactionaries up to the point where today the big crisis is mis-gendering a trans first-grader in an elite California public school.

The conclusion for some?

Things have never been worse.

Faustusnotes you really do live in a hall of mirrors. Your argument seems to be that the state was right to prosecute Nick Grffin even though he was saying the truth. Nick Griffin did nothing to advance any sort of investigation, he was simply feeding off the failures of the state to promote his own brand of racism.

Your statement that people thought the girls were lying is not correct. If you had read the Jay report you would see many counter examples where it was accepted that there were girls being sexually abused but police and prosecutors did nothing about it.

Trying to judge events by the standards of the time is difficult even when those standards are just a few years ago, so a key indicator of what society thought about the events is to see if there were complaints, and it is clear there were complaints by social workers, by parents, and by children, so it is hard to excuse those involved in taking no action.

I am not only concerned with the Griffin case or the many child abuse cases that take place in pennine and other towns where there is a Pakistani heritage population. These are relevant in the context of comments about social strife and freedom of speech. Jeremy Corbyn and the labour party have not to the best of my knowledge sacked or deselected anyone for speaking out against Jimmy Saville or child abuse in other cases, but they have for drawing attention to the number of child abuse cases involving Pakistani heritage men.

As for freedom of speech being suppressed to enable criminal behaviour to take place, here’s a classic tale of intrigue, corruption in high places and low-life violence.

and last not least @
”What is the trade-off being offered?”

Well – even if I really don’t like such a question – as it somehow reminds me on these ”Armed Trumpists” – who don’t seem to see ‘any benefit’ either in giving up their guns – let me try to give an honest answer?

I have to confess – I really love ”them European Anti-Gun Laws” – as without any doubt I benefit from them by reducing my chances of getting shot to nearly zero.
And that’s a very good thing – and being honest – on my last trip to my ‘homeland’ (the US) I had a few encounters where referring to an educating Hate Speech Law would have been pretty ‘benefical’… at least for me.

And do you understand such an answer to your question?

Layman
I can imagine many things; but your earlier claim was not about what I can imagine, but about what is inevitable. Just because I can imagine something does not make it inevitable; just as your imagining something does not make it inevitable. If there really are consequences of hate speech laws which are inevitable, and not merely imagined by me or by you, then you should be able to find examples of them in thos jurisdictions which have such laws; if such examples are not to be found, they are not inevitable, and your earlier claim falls to the ground. It makes no sense to draw conclusions about the inevitable consequences of hate speech laws without investigating the actual experience of actual jurisdictions that actually have such laws; your preference to rely on imagination is a methodological failutre.

Dipper
If there was a law that was making it difficult to bring serious crimes to light, that could be a problem with that law; but since you haven’t referred to any such law, I’m not sure what your point is.

If there is a common theme here, it is that people in positions of power were able to exploit that power to prevent enquiry into their activities.

So, what conclusion do you draw from that observation? If people with power abuse their power in their own interests, what should be done about that?

Kidneystones @ 157

“Here’s how it looks to me. Pretty much all the mainstream candidates and most of the electorate in the US, Canada, Australia, etc. are utterly indifferent to race, gender, sexual preference, religion, etc”

Actually one of the biggest political issues in Australia right now is Equal Marriage. Constitutional recognition/Treaty for/with Indigenous people and Violence Against Women are also politically important. Maybe the political discussion around them tends to be moderate because most MPs try to take a non-adversarial approach to these issues.

perhaps you are trying to say most people don’t discriminate on these issues now? Possibly true that ‘most’ don’t but there certainly is still discrimination and violence, plus a historical legacy that hadn’t been sorted out, as the examples above show.

You note that there has been progress on these issues, and that is true, but what seems to be happening in America is a backlash, enabled by Trump.

Layman
I agree that laws which impose criminal penalties for defamation are not a good idea; you have not made clear whether you intend that to be part of some larger conclusion.

alfredlordbleep @ 160: “Trump’s preemptive* pardon… *(if not technically preemptive certainly in spirit)”

Also, as Prof. Andrew Rudalevige pointed out in WaPo (and elsewhere if you want to conserve your WaPo linkages), there was not the usual five-year-wait after conviction (nor “accepting responsibility” nor “making restitution”, in fact there seems not even to be the admission of guilt that legally is inherent in accepting a pardon — Arpaio is treating this as though it were an absolution, overturning his conviction); and there was not the proper grounding of a miscarriage of justice… it takes more than saying so to make it true… Trump’s specific claim that Arpaio was “convicted for doing his job” is specifically false: “Arpaio was convicted for doing the opposite of his job. As a sworn officer of law enforcement, he violated the law and then ignored court orders designed to bring his policies in line with statutory and constitutional mandates.”

@170
”So, when you look, what effects do you find?”

He might find the effect that ”A fascist candidate” who ”was quite recently the runner-up in the Presidential election in France” lost while a F…face in our homeland won?

But can that make you really hate Hate Speech Laws?

Dipper, I did not say the problems in Rotherham were down to just one policeman – I referred to “a network of corrupt cops” from South, West and North Yorkshire police. I should also point out that the ethnicity of the offenders had been brought to official recognition by the Heal report in 2006, and possibly earlier when the Risky Business project was set up. Contrary to your allegations, the Jay report that you pretend to have read states clearly that no one involved saw ethnicity as a barrier to acting on the child sexual exploitation issues. The Heal report describes the development of a culture of sexual exploitation amongst south Asian men from individual taxi drivers to organized crime. Nowhere in any of these reports is Griffin’s “contribution” noticed, because all the people involved already knew the problem and did not need rabble-rousing fascists turning it into a political tool.

Here is what Griffin said in 2004: “their [Muslims’] good book tells them that that’s acceptable”. Is this meant to have been helpful?

Regarding Jayne Senior, your rhetorical question is thoroughly unhelpful. She is being investigated as a result of three(?) complaints about her activities during her time in Risky Business (?) and we do not know the content of the complaints, so we cannot conclude if they have anything to do with her activities in connection with the child sexual exploitation issue in Rotherham. Furthermore, most of her activity in the period she worked at Risky Business was not connected to public speech, but to actions within the organizations to raise the profile of the issue and get action, so even if these complaints are malicious retaliation for her activity they are not necessarily an attempt to stifle speech.

Finally, if you bother to look at information on CSE in the UK, you’ll find that the level of CSE in Rotherham is not unusual for an area of its population and level of deprivation. Havering, for example, had 119 reports in 2015/16, for a population of 230,000, which suggests it would have had significantly more than 1400 abused children in the 1997-2013 period. What happened in Rotherham was a tragedy and the failure to act on it was reprehensible but the situation there was not unusual for a poor area in the UK – which is further evidence that the racial composition of the abusers had little relationship to the scale of the problem or to its solution. You can see more on the scale of the issue in London and the challenges police face here. If you think that this problem was going to be solved by everyone agreeing with Nick Griffin that “the Quran says you can rape children” then you are very, very stupid.

Layman,

But when I look, I see that there are open Nazis and fascists in German. There is even a legal fascist party in Germany, one that has won seats in lower assemblies.

There is no such thing as a legal fascist party in Germany. Did you ever check the actual definition of fascism? If not, you should make that little effort before you continue embarrassing yourself.

Raven @158 and @171

I too have used the Man for All Seasons clip. But during the Bush-Cheney season of horrors.

And on that note today’s Guardian has a story on Trump’s looking hell-bent on finding Tehran in violation of nuke deal (“Intelligence analysts, chastened by the experience of the 2003 Iraq war, are said to be resisting the pressure to come up with evidence of Iranian violations”).

Like his pardon of Arpaio Trump goes far beyond pleasing the base. We are looking at two of the most contemptible acts of his occupation of the Oval Office (if the upshot of the Guardian story holds).

Go thou, and fill another room in hell—Richard II

@ Mario – the German government apparently disagrees with you about the NPD. Even the German constitutional court seems to disagree with you. They declined to ban NPD, but not because it wasn’t a fascist party.

@ J-D I answered that here.

@ Faustusnotes. Nazir Afzal who prosecuted the Rochdale abusers in Wikipedia:

“He suggested that ‘white professionals’ over-sensitivity to political correctness and fear of appearing racist may well have contributed to justice being stalled”. He said “I do feel that there’s a deficit of leadership in some parts of the Muslim community. They could be much more challenging of certain behaviours”

Layman,

Even the German constitutional court seems to disagree with you

Oh, they used that language? Did they call them an ‘openly fascist party’? Do you have a link?

Dipper

@ J-D I answered that here.

In that earlier comment you wrote:

The notable thing about the crimes of the men of Pakistani heritage is that the protective cordons put round their activities were erected by a largely white group of police, social workers, councillors (often Labour), and some Pakistani heritage councillors on the grounds that “community cohesion” was an over-riding concern.

The reason that child sexual exploitation happens around the world is not ‘Because white people throw a protective cordon around the activities of men of Pakistani background’, and that is also not the reason why there is a problem around the world of institutions systemically failing to respond properly to child sexual exploitation.

@ Faustusnotes. Nazir Afzal who prosecuted the Rochdale abusers in Wikipedia:

“He suggested that ‘white professionals’ over-sensitivity to political correctness and fear of appearing racist may well have contributed to justice being stalled”

How is that different from a wild unsubstantiated guess?

Layman,

You were caught not knowing what you are talking about. And now you are trying this?

There is no ‘Nazi’ flood that has to be stopped by subjecting society to the equivalent of a chemotherapy. There aren’t that many real fascists around, neither in Germany, nor in France (well, if you take the word ‘fascism’ seriously, and don’t just use it as a slur, the FN isn’t fascist either), nor, afaict, much of anywhere else. What there is is a dandy left that just is terminally out of touch with reality and the working class, and is making up a fascist threat to feel good about itself.

@ Mario, that’s a ‘yes ‘ then?

Dipper @ 192: “… I saw this on a feed, and it captures the moment perfectly.”

In a sense, yes. By fallacious omission. The writer, Clive Crook, credits Trump supporters with being “a little less than half the country”.

Well. In the popular election results, sure, Trump got 46.1% to Clinton’s 48.2% (just 2.1% less, around 2.9 million fewer votes) — but that was a share of the electorate, not the country, and the GOP’s intensive voter-suppression campaign against Democratic voters [with no equivalent on the other side] had a lot to do with it.

As to polling the country, articles like this seem to suggest lower figures than that opinion essay does… and descending, with each new week….

Layman 109: You have nowhere qualified your statements as being specific only to the US and the First Amendment. In fact you have repeatedly used the term “Freedom of speech” or variants thereof (specifically at 70 “free speech rights”; this was the immediate context of one of our disputes, see 85). Free speech doesn’t specify a US legal doctrine but an internationally recognized and in many countries constitutionally guaranteed human right so when you make claims about what is or is not implied by Free speech, you are not limiting yourself to US law. You also have also explicitly made claims about states generally (“once the state asserts the authority to muzzle people”).

So in summary your claim at 109 is clearly factually wrong, as were several others of your claims. I’m sorry but you have lost my respect. That wasn’t a clumsy choice of words in the heat of the argument, that was a series of false claims you have made and affirmed repeatedly even after they were pointed out to you (patiently and respectfully btw). I expected better of you.

kidneystones @ 194: “The black-shirts of the intolerant ‘left'(?) and their violent attacks on those who don’t shut-up and comply are the new kids on the block. What’s more they’re going to help get Trump re-elected…”

Which is exactly why we wonder about who they really are, and what their true allegiances are, especially after all those violent supposedly “anarchist” protesters at political protests who turned out not to be anarchists at all, but agents provocateurs….

Dipper
Why are you trying to distract my attention from child abuse that is taking place here where I am to child abuse that is taking place on the other side of the world?

In attempting to return to C. R.’s opening salvo I juxtapose two quotes:

Before he left, Bannon’s parting words to Trump were to resist the siren calls of so-called moderates, who were pushing him to soften his stance on things like Charlottesville. Moderation would never win over Democrats or independents. The best thing was to appeal to the base: “You’ve got the base,” Bannon said. “And you grow the base by getting” things done.

—C. R., the Guardian

Getting things done? Clearly mouthing off counts a lot.

There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, and this will always be ‘the man in the street.’ Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.

—J. Goebbels

Footnote. Thanks Raven for your meticulous replies to my previous interpolations. I have been reluctant to go off-topic, or seem to, in acknowledgment. So I attempt to be topical above.

Furthermore, an occasional reminder of Goebbels on propaganda is worth a gander.

Dipper, I’m not demanding that you condemn both or either of the child abuse situations. I simply want you to explain why the race of one child abuser is relevant but the race of another is not. I also want you to explain why you think the police protected the Rotherham abusers for fear of being called racist, when the same police protected a much more prolific white abuser. I have also pointed out (and you have ignored, of course) that other areas of Britain have higher levels of abuse (I gave the specific example of Haringey) over the same period, but that since this abuse was not by Pakistani men you’re ignoring it. In fact if we consider the pattern of abuse observed over the whole of the UK during the past 15 years, pretty much the only thing about the Rotherham case that is unique is the race of the abusers – in general the gangs involved in CSE are white, and only in Rotherham has the race been limited to Pakistani men. Yet you, Dipper, presented Griffin as a hero for attacking those men on the basis of their religion, and you want us to think that the police who failed so many victims in so many areas of the country for generally banal reasons are uniquely protecting this particular group of men for sinister political correctness.

And, once again, you have no evidence that political correctness or fear of being branded racist influenced decision making in this case. From the Jay report:

All the senior officers we interviewed were asked whether ethnic considerations influenced their decision making. All were unequivocal that this did not happen. However, several of those involved in the operational management of services reported some attempts to pressurise them into changing their approach to some issues. This mainly affected the support given to Pakistani-heritage women fleeing domestic violence, where a small number of councillors had demanded that social workers reveal the whereabouts of these women or effect reconciliation rather than supporting the women to make up their own minds. The Inquiry team was confident that ethnic issues did not influence professional decision-making in individual cases.

Your arguments literally make no sense in the face of the broader problem of CSE in the UK, and they also don’t stand in the face of everything that has been reported on the specific problem in Rotherham. No one was silenced by fears of racism, no police activity was curtailed by it, and Nick Griffin was never a hero for saying the Quran encourages child abuse.

Everytime somebody brings up “Rotherham” in a comments thread it’s a rightwing tool:

Nazir Afzal:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/03/nazir-afzal-there-is-no-religious-basis-for-the-abuse-in-rotherham

@ 206. Cheers for this. Tis not country-specific, as you know, but I’m appreciative none the less.

Let me add that I’ve read your comments across the threads for some time and come away with the a deep appreciation of your knowledge and your intellect. Bold type adds emphasis to an argument so full of holes that it’s practically all air. You seem quite comfortable with your own views and I leave you to them with best wishes!

No Dipper, I’m not spinning my wheels. You claim to care about the fate of working glass girls but only, it seems, if they’re victims of foreigners. You have no concern for the higher rates of CSE in Haringey, where white men are doing it, and indeed you seem to believe that the only abusers in the UK are muslims. How else are we to interpret your laser-like focus on a single area, and your refusal to consider any explanation except “them mooooslim did it”?

Also, it’s not spinning my wheels to quote from the report you claim to (but haven’t) read. Let me repeat, since it’s so difficult to get anything to sink in with you:

All the senior officers we interviewed were asked whether ethnic considerations influenced their decision making. All were unequivocal that this did not happen.

Dipper

@ Novokant. “Everytime somebody brings up “Rotherham” in a comments thread it’s a rightwing tool:” No it really isn’t. The fate of working class girls is about as left wing as you can get. The “left” try to shut discussion down because it holds up a mirror to them and their politics and they don’t like what they see.

Nobody in this discussion (left or otherwise) is trying to shut it down. Some people are making contributions to the discussion which you disagree with or disapprove of or which conflict with your contributions to the discussion, but contradiction is not silencing. People who use being contradicted as a basis for complaining of being silenced are using a tactic that deserves no respect.

There isn’t anyone who will not when circumstances allow act in some degree of self interest. Power corrupts everyone. We need institutions and rules to allow that power to be properly reviewed and criticised.

I agree. So, do you have any suggestions for changes to institutions and/or rules that will improve the response of those in power to the problem of child sexual abuse? and if that’s the objective in what way do you think discussion of the ethnicity of perpetrators contributes to it?

The refusal to recognise the many-sided and nuanced aspect of many issues leads to clumsy judgemental analysis that supports a crude power-based politics where some people get to control the fate of other people with no restrictions or external controls.

I haven’t seen anybody here doing that; what examples of that do you perceive in this discussion?

kidneystones @ 212: So we’ll just leave things at ‘Bold type made no difference to the argument’, because when those same 2½ words were quoted in plain text reprising the argument, to address your typographic quibble, you made no further attempt to suggest it was “so full of holes that it’s practically all air” (as in #207); you have, as you say now, “nothing further to add.”

@J-D. Novokant was in effect trying to make discussion non-legitimate, and Jeremy Corbyn has effectively done the same in the Labour Party, but on here you are correct no-one is shutting it down.

“So, do you have any suggestions for changes to institutions and/or rules that will improve the response of those in power to the problem of child sexual abuse?” well to reads across from banking, a government authority which had the power to intervene and mandate remedial action, and a whistleblowing compliance culture in which people are required to attest that they will raise issues they come across and are free to anonymously report any breaches they find. That way social workers or police will be able to raise allegations as they see fit without having to worry about whether the status of the accused gives them some kind of protection, whether that status be due to ethnicity, religion, connections, job, or being in the Freemasons.

“I haven’t seen anybody here doing that” well this is, in the grand scheme, a trivial and inconsequential place, but there are a couple of authors who moderate the discussion of their posts in a way which effectively shuts off criticism. When it occurs in a more significant arena I will be bringing it to your attention.

@ faustusnotes. Our conversation is taking place in the context of a discussion about suppressing free speech. All child abuse is bad, and all allegations should be investigated properly. But I’m not aware of anyone taken to court yet for suggesting that the majority of child abusers are white, or for suggesting that white men in Havering are committing child abuse. That’s why the focus on ethnicity in this discussion.

Dipper, was Griffin taken to court for suggesting that, or was he taken to court for suggesting that the Quran encourages muslims to abuse children? Because one is not the other. He’s also the only person who was taken to court for this supposed crime – there were multiple reports and public announcements before 2005 about the issue and he was very late to the game.

Also if we’re talking about freedom of speech, we know that Savile was very good at suppressing reports about his crimes, which is why the documentary only came out after his death – and a bare what, six months after the BBC published its hagiography of this serial sex offender. Which issue would you say hit the national press first, eh? And how long after Griffin “raised the alarm” (/traduced a religion) before the warnings were properly acted on. Rather than being taken to court for “suggesting the majority of child abusers are white”, people investigating a single white child abuser were threatened with violence and the destruction of their careers, and the organization responsible for broadcasting his story was also protecting his abuse. Who exactly was the beneficiary of speech suppression here? The Pakistani criminals in Rotherham, or Savile?

Also it would be impossible to take someone to court for saying the majority of child abusers are white, since it’s a simple fact (I presented a link to the Metropolitan Police saying so up above). But saying the majority of child abusers are muslim because their holy book encourages it would be untrue, and thus a lie intended to hurt a community. Wouldn’t you agree?

Dipper

Novokant was in effect trying to make discussion non-legitimate

Even if somebody commenting here went so far as to write ‘This discussion is not legitimate’ or ‘I want this discussion to stop’ — well, I suppose that could be described as ‘trying to shut down discussion’, but it would be fatuously ineffectual, so why should anybody care?

and Jeremy Corbyn has effectively done the same in the Labour Party

Well, you tell me that he has, but you haven’t shown me, so how much credit should I give that?

“So, do you have any suggestions for changes to institutions and/or rules that will improve the response of those in power to the problem of child sexual abuse?” well to reads across from banking, a government authority which had the power to intervene and mandate remedial action

It would be a much more worthwhile contribution to discussion if you could spell out more specifically what kind of powers to intervene in what kinds of situation and mandate what kinds of remedial action; and it’s hard to figure out the connection between this proposal and discussion of the ethnicity/heritage of perpetrators.

and a whistleblowing compliance culture in which people are required to attest that they will raise issues they come across and are free to anonymously report any breaches they find. That way social workers or police will be able to raise allegations as they see fit without having to worry about whether the status of the accused gives them some kind of protection, whether that status be due to ethnicity, religion, connections, job, or being in the Freemasons.

Perhaps some kind of change in culture would be a good thing; but you haven’t suggested any changes to laws or institutions that (you think) will conduce to that change in culture. But perhaps you would agree that there one thing that might help in a small way to contribute to the kind of change in culture you’re looking for is when the Jay report puts it on the public record that some people thought they might be discouraged from reporting crimes by people of Pakistani heritage but that there was in fact no foundation for this belief? Of course, that does raise the question of why people might have believed that when it wasn’t true; is it possible that part of the reason is lots of people making and repeating the kind of remarks that you’ve been making here?

“I haven’t seen anybody here doing that” well this is, in the grand scheme, a trivial and inconsequential place, but there are a couple of authors who moderate the discussion of their posts in a way which effectively shuts off criticism. When it occurs in a more significant arena I will be bringing it to your attention.

Because you and I are such important people?
And, again, you tell me how some authors behave, but you haven’t shown me, so how much credit should I give that?

Raven. Food libel law was mentioned, see 83 to 107.

Matt Labash’s eye-witness account of beatings in Berkeley.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/a-beating-in-berkeley/article/2009498

Nauseating, but a must read. Lots of revolting images of heroic violence.

I’ll use this occasion to wish all well and say thanks and so long for a bit.
Cheers!

kidneystones @ 224: The label “alt-right” was self-applied and therefore clearly applied and accepted. Contrarily, this label “alt-left” has been applied, apparently mostly by the “alt-right”, to targets of its own choosing — which offers no such clarity of application or acceptance.

As to the identity and true political allegiance of these violent attackers… I’ve noted earlier the recent tendency of “black bloc” protesters to turn out to be agents provocateurs, but let me turn the page back half a century to 1968 and the disorderly Chicago Democratic Convention protests; some of those protest leaders turned up, years later, in staff lists at Republican White Houses, having turned out to be loyal Young Republicans all along, part of yet another one of Tricky Dick’s dirty tricks to make the Democrats look worse leading up to the election (along with his sabotage of the Paris Peace Talks).

Your Weekly Standard reporter goes into great detail about the identity of the particular “sh*t-stirrer” he follows into the fray… but are the violent foes they face truly political “leftists” or “liberals”, or just more false-flag-flying “black bloc” agents of either police or the opposition party, free to attack this guy precisely because he isn’t an official member of anything?

To get back to Corey’s main post, it is difficult to make a coherent account of Bannon’s view of what is going on, by examining his actions. He’s got more than a whiff of the “true believer” about him. It sounds like he is, or he was, very interested in “traditionalism” via the writings of Guenon and the fascist mystic Evola. It is possible that Bannon believes that a war of the civilizations is inevitable, and that there will be an automatic rightwing uprising in advance of the conflict, to instill cultural purity, the only thing that will survive the coming apocalypse. The nearest analogue may be the Germanenorden in pre-Nazi Germany. It may seem outlandish to ascribe to a grown man these beliefs, but it does happen occasionally, as the result of a religious path gone horribly wrong. It is difficult otherwise to explain Bannon’s present actions, which appear self-defeating to the rest of us, except to suppose that these actions are predicated upon a belief that a world-wide uprising of rightists is inevitable, and that it has now only begun. President Trump may have gone along with this malarky because it seemed expedient, but Trump expects to gain necessary voter turnout by dog-whistling the racists, and Trump is just out for Trump. Bannon had stated before the presidential campaign that Trump was clueless, an empty vessel. They are two very different species of nut. Trump may be beyond repair, but Bannon should get himself out of public life forever and into the contemplative quiet of a monastery, or else he will give himself a heart attack.

It is certainly obvious that the extreme right is undoubtedly a little bigger, world wide. (We have to sort out the cause of this news, because part of it may merely be due to everything’s greater salience in social media, and part of it is due to the fact that social media allows groups to recruit more easily.) But Bannon acts as if he thinks that the right is going to get a LOT bigger. If this is not due to some crazy belief, then what is the cause of his delusion? Perhaps he thinks it will happen because of something not so crazy, such as continued economic distress and/or worsened terrorism. But that is probably a miscalculation: both of those circumstances are just as likely to be ameliorated, and to provide little-to-no support for continued growth of the extreme right. How so? Because, on the problem of economics, the downturns after big financial crashes are always deep and long, (even ten years long,) but after that, the times get a little better, and then there is not so much personal distress. In the U.S., new jobs have been on a straight graph line upwards since 2010 (Trump is now taking credit for it) and you should expect this to continue for a while. This makes it harder to maintain an angry populist movement to restructure the whole economy. On the problem of global terrorism, most people already realize that a big part of the solution is “soft power” engagement — OK yes it’s a sticky wicket, but retracting from global diplomacy is far worse; so here too, most people will not be joining the extreme right. Thus, if Bannon is not a crazy believer, then at the very least he is a standard-issue knucklehead, and he has made a bad political bet on the continued growth of the right, due to his own lack of geopolitical & economic comprehension.

And either way, Bannon has also made a tactical mistake, because now he is doubling down on his bet: he is continuing to attack the mainstream GOP with the implied intention of helping Trump to expand his base, & to pick up Congressional Trump devotees in the next election. But wait a minute — the present Congress will still be in charge for another year and it enjoys a likelihood of looking successful if the economy continues to improve (even without tax cuts) and if terrorism does not become more frequent. So whether Bannon is crazy or just a dope, it looks like he is tactically inept.

KS, I must say your insistence that “alt-left” Black Blocs are a threat which must be vigorously and loudly addressed lest free speech becomes a thing of the past. Black Bloc is nothing new, even if you only deigned to notice them when they became the new bête noire of the Anglophonic right (because BLM was no longer menacing enough, by all appearances). If failure to repudiate Black Bloc and treat it like an existential threat results in societal collapse and tyranny, that ship has long since sailed…

Collin Street @ 232: The hell of it is, apparently kidneystones does trust… sources like Rupert Murdoch’s neoconservative Weekly Standard, which pretty much guarantees a steady supply of disinformation, what you might call newsfeed generated in bad faith, fed to you.

Orange Watch:

here’s the original video. The context is some protest against some alt-right meeting. But frankly, I don’t care: harassing this man in this way cannot be justified, and it shows a repulsive lack of humanity.

I like the picture because it sums up the qualitative asymmetry of the interaction.

Collin Street:

I think that what is new is (1) that the black block is assaulting peaceful civilian targets for having pretty the wrong opinions, and (2) that the moderate left (mainstream liberals in the US, social democrats and greens in Germany, etc) does not really look like having any problem with this. If I understand kidneystones correctly, what he is saying (and that may explain his choice of sources) is that this is at least a PR disaster. The left is perceived as a scary movement of insane hecklers and thugs, and it doesn’t seem to bother too many people. It’s pretty sad, really. And it’s worse, because there is no way to overlook that to some extent, it is true.

You write:

Kidneystones’ posts here could be replaced with a blank gif and we’d learn just as much from them.

You know, I really, really fear that this is true…

Mario @ 235: “the black block is assaulting peaceful civilian targets”

Yes, indeed. But who actually ARE “the black bloc(k)”? What is their actual political alignment?

Traditionally black (vs. red) is the right-wing color; cf. that song from Les Misérables: “Red – the blood of angry men! / Black – the dark of ages past! / Red – a world about to dawn! / Black – the night that ends at last!”

And in the present day? See this guy’s group here.

Collin Street @ 238: It might be clearer to remove the party label (“Nazi” or “Klan” or “alt-right” or whatever) and go directly to the sort of incitement at issue (as linked above @114), ‘Let’s kill Jews and/or Blacks!’ — is that protected speech, safe to put on signs and megaphones and radio/TV ads? No, that’s ‘incitement to imminent lawless action’, and like inciting to riot, it is criminal in itself.

Mario@235:

Thanks for providing context. I’ve seen that shot before but never any hint of context.

But frankly, I don’t care: harassing this man in this way cannot be justified, and it shows a repulsive lack of humanity.

I can’t say it’s tactically smart, but the main reason I’d say that is because it’s giving him exactly what he’s seeking in performing his protest. His goal is a camera on him and his political opponents antagonized to the point where they’ll lash out at someone who is non-confrontational. It’s not a “repulsive lack of humanity”, however. Until the end, it’s bog-standard protestor/counter-protestor interaction and heckling. The counter-counter protestors have every right to picket him, and if you consider the image out of context to capture “a repulsive lack of humanity”, you are vehemently disagreeing with the message the heckled (and eventually assaulted, albeit not terribly violently) counter-protestor ostensibly stands for.

Collin Street @ 238: It might be clearer to remove the party label (“Nazi” or “Klan” or “alt-right” or whatever) and go directly to the sort of incitement at issue (as linked above @114)

Here’s the thing: the US constitutional requirement that the threat be “immanent” means that we have to distinguish between “let’s kill all the jews right now!” — forbidden — and “let’s kill all the jews later, when nobody is looking”, which is apparently protected.

I don’t think that that’s sustainable. It’s certainly not a distinction I’m going to try to draw anywhere outside a US courtroom.

Orange Watch @ 240: As you say, anarcho-syndicalism leaves socialism behind, in this sense being at least as much a “Third Way” type path between socialism and anarchism as “neoliberalism” is between classic liberalism and free-market economics.

Have (any of) the violent black-bloc protesters been marked with the diagonally-divided red-and-black anarcho-syndicalist flag?

@ J-D, Faustusnotes

I thought we’d just about run our course on this one until the next episode appeared. I hadn’t expected it would appear so soon.

Andrew Norfolk writes an article in The Times about a child fostered by muslim foster parents in Tower Hamlets, and now people are calling for him to sacked.. Needless to say the facts are a matter of debate, but the point is that the response here is not to call for further enquiry, or debate whether the article should be printed, it is to call for the journalist to be sacked.

Next up is a legislator calling for a journalist to be fired. from the link you can see lots of Remainers disagree, so we aren’t in settled territory, but nevertheless it is a fairly astonishing thing to happen. Andrew Neil has never to the best of my knowledge openly expressed a view on Brexit, all he has done is to do the job of a political journalist, asking tough questions of people in the political arena.

The thing that ties both these cases is a drive from people to shut down voices they disagree with for no other reason than they they disagree with them. These voices are getting louder and more influential. I know Tom Pride is a deliberately provocative voice and not a person of power, but the way his article is getting approved and circulated round the political twittersphere indicates a lot of people who should know better agree with him. This is the kind of thing we expect to see in totalitarian regimes, not in liberal democracies. If you aren’t worried by this, you should be.

There is a thoughtful and clear articulation of what might be called the “ACLU position” on free speech here:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/09/28/why-we-must-still-defend-free-speech/

By David Cole, Georgetown University law professor and legal director for the ACLU.

Raven@245: I’d also look askance upon your framing that anarcho-syndicalism is some sort of “third way”. It’s more of a “how do we get there from here”, where there is anarchism and here is liberal capitalism or democratic socialism. The key taxonomical difference making the neoliberalism analogy invalid is that third-way liberalism is more concerned with creating an economic state that doesn’t fit cleanly into a well-defined box labeled either capitalist or socialist. Anarcho-syndicalism is advocating the creation of something very much within the traditional space of collectivist anarchism. It’s not third-way in any non-tenuous sense.

Orange Watch @ 250: “Third Way” as in neither previous side of the left-vs-right divide, having (as you said) left socialism behind.

J-D: “What is the larger conclusion that you are trying to establish here?”

I think if you read the comment to which I responded – and which I quoted! -the point of my comment is quite clear.

J-D: “that the judgements of the Supreme Court are true and righteous altogether?”

No, that’s not it.

Orange Watch @ 249: Your first link gives good pics for “anarchist” symbolism, including the circled-A; the “Black Bloc” entry says “Black bloc participants are often associated with anarchism” — note, not “exclusively” (League of the South wears black and is right-wing), and doesn’t specify just left-anarchism.

As to “modern heraldry”, irrelevant to neo-Confederates: “The Black Flag was flown by certain irregular Confederate Army units in the American Civil War of 1861-1865 to symbolize that they would neither give, nor accept quarter; symbolizing the opposite of the white flag of surrender.” Also: “The color black was famous as the flag of Italy’s National Fascist Party, designed after the party’s paramilitary Blackshirts.” (Among other famous black flags.)

Layman

J-D: “What is the larger conclusion that you are trying to establish here?”

I think if you read the comment to which I responded – and which I quoted! -the point of my comment is quite clear.

Obviously your point is clear to you because, after all, it’s your point! but that doesn’t make it clear to me. It isn’t clear to me what larger conclusion you are arguing for (that’s why I asked you). Your telling me that you think it’s clear doesn’t make it any clearer.

J-D: “I suggest further conclusions: that ‘we must uphold the First Amendment’ is not, by itself, a sufficient response to a question like ‘what should be done about a situation like the one in Charlottesville?”

Yet, strangely, we’re 250+ comments in, and you’ve yet to suggest any concrete response to questions like ‘what should be done about a situation like the one in Charlottesville?’

It’s almost as if you’re commenting for some other purpose…

Layman

J-D: “I suggest further conclusions: that ‘we must uphold the First Amendment’ is not, by itself, a sufficient response to a question like ‘what should be done about a situation like the one in Charlottesville?”

Yet, strangely, we’re 250+ comments in, and you’ve yet to suggest any concrete response to questions like ‘what should be done about a situation like the one in Charlottesville?’

It’s almost as if you’re commenting for some other purpose…

Yes, we’re 250+ comments in, but comments on what? If some commenters think that the question raised by the original post was ‘What should be done about a situation like Charlottesville?’, they’re mistaken. Do you think that pointing out people’s mistakes is not a worthwhile purpose? If you make mistakes, do you not want them pointed out?

In this case, the original mistake was made by anonymousse, eight comments in. It was my mistake not to notice and point this out at the time.

Orange Watch @ 260: > “See e.g. every WTO conference that occurred in a state that allows public protest.”

Since, once again, my topic was the minority that actually became violent, and whose true identity and political affiliation were in question, thank you for bringing up the WTO protests as an example — because police agents provocateurs were notably involved in violent behavior, their true identity exposed in such details as boot sole markings, or by running to the shelter of their fellow officers, or casual comments at Seattle 1999, or finally outright admissions in Quebec 2007.

This is not at all a new tactic, see the former COINTELPRO (which has successors).

See also Robert Benjamin’s commentary “Want to Start a Riot? Hire the Police”

(J-D, do note that involuntary manslaughter is prosecuted specifically without requiring proof of intention on the part of the defendant. If there were proof of intention, a different and more severe crime could and might be prosecuted instead.)

Among the sane, well, there’s the difference between voluntary and INvoluntary manslaughter as an example of what’s entirely in the head, the intention of the act.

Maybe there is where you are, but not where I am.

(J-D, do note that involuntary manslaughter is prosecuted specifically without requiring proof of intention on the part of the defendant. If there were proof of intention, a different and more severe crime could and might be prosecuted instead.)

I wrote about a routine requirement, not a universal requirement.

Let me put it simply: if white supremacists and fascists are going on and on about the impending race war and how they’re going to string everybody else up, then they hardly have any room to get angry–and gutless liberals and socdems even less, unless they have some interest in keeping the fascists around in perpetuity (wink wink)–when someone makes the pre-emptive strike, so to speak.

@247, Dipper

“Needless to say the facts are a matter of debate”

Needless to say facts are *not* a matter of debate. That’s what distinguishes them from opinions.

Dipper, I really think you’d be happier just commenting on ConservativeHome articles. You’d easily pass for an intellectual in a world where the bar is set as low as Daniel Hannan.

casmilus @ 273: I believe Dipper’s phrasing referred to “the facts [being] a matter of debate” in the specific, particular case of the challenged report about the child removed from her mother’s care and placed in the foster care of a Muslim family — in other words, a debate whether the report had gotten the “facts” right or wrong, what with images shown to be photoshopped, and statements contradicted by the court record.

Your “Needless to say facts are *not* a matter of debate.” changes the topic to facts in general, which is a category of straw-man argument, contending with a claim your opponent never made.

@ J-D, after you’ve made 34 comments in the thread that have nothing to do with the OP, you say your purpose is to correct people who are incorrectly making comments unrelated to the OP. Got it, thanks.

@S_Ou_B, that’s a very strong argument, to arrest people before they commit the crime. What could go wrong?

275 comments without me? Oh dear. When did we slip into a discussion of antifa? Oh well

Charnel House Left wing criticism of anti-fascism

“As far as the problem of antifascism is concerned, its numerous supporters are guided not only by a contempt for theoretical work, but by the stupid mania for creating and spreading the confusion necessary to build a broad front of resistance. There must be no demarcation that might put off a single ally, or lose any opportunity for struggle: this is the slogan of antifascism. Here we can see that for them confusion is idealized and considered as an element of victory. We should remember what Marx said to Weitling more than half a century ago, however. Ignorance has never done any service to the workers’ movement.” Bilan 1934

Also Dauve, Bordiga, Trotsky, etc

Dipper

The thing that ties both these cases is a drive from people to shut down voices they disagree with for no other reason than they they disagree with them.

I have actually had the experience of being made redundant; I was subsequently redeployed to another position with the same employer, but some of my colleagues who were made redundant at the same time were not. Being sacked does not shut down a person’s voice.

What ties together both the cases you cite is that in both cases some people (or at least one person) said that another person should be removed from a job. If you are objecting to this, I do not understand why. Are you suggesting that ‘This person should be removed from this job’ is the kind of thing that people should not say? You assert that the only reason (in the cases cited) for saying the person should be removed from the job is disagreement with what the person was saying; but it’s not clear in either case that the people who were calling for the removal would have described their reasons in that way, and it’s not clear that your interpretation is fair.

@Layman, 277
Arrest? Crime? Who said anything about either of these things? That’s the problem with you liberal types, you can only ever imagine the state as the actor in anything, but then by some alchemy “the state” in your moral decrees somehow transforms into “anybody and everybody”. Therefore, since we can’t trust the state and their all-too-eager cops to not bust our heads afterwards (because, no lie, we obviously can’t), nobody can do anything whatsoever and you have to let Nazis with guns and torches march through black and Jewish and whatever other neighborhoods. No, I’m not at the level of asking the state to do anything about the fash, because I’m actually along with you up to the point where you can’t trust the state any farther than you can spit. But that’s not some milksop objection to violence. Right now I’m strictly at the level where, if a group of fascists show up where they aren’t wanted and ask for a fight, then I’m down with the people who are going to give it to them and give it to them good. But let’s just skip ahead to what your next reply night be: do I really trust the unaccountable, unrestrained crowds to pick the right kind of fash to beat up? Uh, yeah, I totally do, because I’m way more okay with a moral excess that goes something like “we were too overzealous in confronting the fash so we happened to pick on some people who are merely sympathetic fellow-travelers of fascists” than “we were too damn afraid of doing anything lest we–god forbid–happen to punch someone who doesn’t actually want genocide and just wants to deport everyone non-white instead or something, so we let a bunch of white supremacists terrorize a town and beat up on anyone who looked at them wrong or looked wrong“, and that’s at the low level of engagement.

@bob, 279

I’m actually mostly going along with that Charnel House article, and it’s better than the Internationalist Perspectives article it quotes from by far because it at least it doesn’t make the absurd claim that you can’t do communist politics at the same time you do antifascism. Obviously, being in bed with liberals and socdems in defense of bourgeois democracy is a losing strategy for communists, but it’s a losing strategy with or without antifascism. And yes, sometimes a fascist makes some people who call themselves communists get cold feet and run to the nearest Macron or something, but this seems to suggest to me that, rather than abandon antifascism, it makes bringing an explicitly communist politics to antifascism all the more necessary. If someone is going to say that we shouldn’t do antifascism because what we really want is communism, then they’ve got to back that up with an argument that actually says antifascism itself is detrimental to communist organizing. To that, I can only say that it seems like there should be fertile ground among people who are already taking the fight against fascism to the man to argue that they should then to then take that fight to the root–that is, against capitalism. At the very least, there’s more fertile ground there than in stepping back and ceding the ground to fascists, to allow situations in which fascists attack and intimidate working-class PoC neighborhoods while so-called communists were nowhere to be seen, indeed were even actively calling for people to not do a damn thing about it.

@Orange, 280
Frankly, I think it’s typical liberal handwringing over violence and the desire to allow the radical section of the left to be isolated, because good leftists couldn’t possibly want to hurt those poor little fash. If your left arm causes you to punch a Nazi, cut it off, they say (probably because they’re worried it will decide to punch a capitalist next). I fly the red and black, and Raven’s absurd maneuvers to try and paint anarcho-syndicalism as some third way position or worse aren’t worth the time. Put simply, the “syndicalism” part refers to a general strategic orientation towards using anarchist unions and working-class organizations. The goal, let’s be clear, is communism. It’s socialism or barbarism.

@Dipper, 247
What, so if a journo straight-up lies to get the racists all riled-up and frothing at the mouth because that fills his pockets, it’s all just an honest mistake no harm done? I won’t have a cry if the bastard is sacked or not. Frankly, your working-clarse politics makes me gag because it’s the same old cover for racist dog whistles. Guess what, buddy, the working class ain’t lily white, and a politics that throws sections of the working class under the bus because they’re not of pure Anglo-Saxon stock or whatever it is you want ain’t a working class politics at all.

Layman

@ J-D, after you’ve made 34 comments in the thread that have nothing to do with the OP, you say your purpose is to correct people who are incorrectly making comments unrelated to the OP. Got it, thanks.

Nnnnnnooo, not quite; most of the comments here, including mine, have been part of a massive derail, but I noticed that way too late; so, setting aside the fact that it’s a derail, there’s been a good deal of faulty reasoning in it, worth drawing attention to.

@ J-D, pointing out the faulty reasoning of others is a hard task, which perhaps explains the paucity of people committed to scanning the vast internet in order to do it. I thank you for your generous service, and wonder what we would do without you.

@Raven, 284
States and their armed wings carry out false flag attacks, that’s undeniable. What doesn’t follow is then that you need to then swear off any kind of possible tactic because it might have a police infiltrator or something; if you circumscribe your tactical and then strategic latitude because of these fears, you’ve done most of the state’s work for it. Badjacketing or snitchjacketing those who do carry out more militant actions as “agent provocateurs” does the rest; you’ve successfully neutered the very thing about the movement that the state wanted to suppress and now you yourself are policing the movement. No, the possible presence of infiltrators means only that groups need to practice vigilant security culture and consciously, thoughtfully pick only the fights that they can win.

S_Ou_B,

out of curiosity: do you think beating up someone, but not killing him, will change his opinions? Relatedly, do you want to kill all fashs (your diction)? And if not, why not?

Do you think beating up such a fash on national television before he can actually say anything bad helps your cause or hurts it? Do you care, incidentally?

Personally, I feel that you and your ilk are more interested in personally having been on the right side (no pun intended) according to some moral algebra than you are interested in solving any real world problem. You don’t even seem to care if you are making things worse for other people, including PoCs, this way. This is the conclusion I draw from observing you deploy unrealistic and self-defeating tactics to achieve unrealistic goals. Like “communism”.

Additionally, I note that you care a lot about form (“I fly the red and black […]”).

Sorry, but that all looks deeply narcissistic to me.

This is good: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbVe48T2kGc&w=560&h=315%5D

I can’t imagine what, except perhaps an addled mind, could cause you to think that the point of a militant confrontation is to convince the other side that they have wrong ideas.

You know, I’ve noticed that. But what is the point, then? It is a serious question. What are you trying to achieve? My hypothesis is that you just want to feel good about yourself (in the worst sense, actually, by beating up people and feeling powerful in the process), and don’t really give a damn about anyone else (hence narcissism). But I am willing to consider an alternative explanation.

@J-D: it’s actually better than that. Remember, the job of journalists is, fundamentally, the writing of stories: viewed from that perspective, “fired for the stories they wrote” is, well, about the best thing they could possibly be fired for.

I mean,
+ problematic workplace relationship stuff [sexual harrasment, never refilling the biscuit tin, too much posting on crooked timber]
+ pissing off suppliers or clients by [insert shitty thing here]
+ not being able to deliver the good-or-service you’re contracted for.
For a journalist, that last is “deliver a readable story that isn’t a tissue of lies”; if you can’t or won’t do that, then not only can you be fired “for the stories you wrote” but you bloody well ought to be.

I mean, if someone said, “they’re only firing the architect because of the buildings they designed”, you’d say, “but of course; what else could they be fired for?” But for some reason, sub in “journalist” for “architect” and it doesn’t trigger the, “what are you, a moron?” reflex.

[there’s this strange… well, not strange at all, I have a Thesis! that explains it… there is a noticeable tendency for problematic discourse on the internet to revolve around labels that are… atomic and unanalysible. Have no properties, convey nothing beyond themselves. A nazi or a journalist is a nazi or a journalist only; only the bare fact of their X-ism can be invoked, not the properties that their being an X-ist necessitates that they have. So the label “journalist” becomes disassociated from the property “writes stories for money”, and the label “nazi” becomes dissassociated from the property “wants to kill jews”.]

From David Cole’s piece (@249). This nugget on the ACLU pre-Kristallnacht:

What about speech and weapons? The ACLU’s executive director, Anthony Romero, explained that, in light of Charlottesville and the risk of violence at future protests, the ACLU will not represent marchers who seek to brandish weapons while protesting. (This is not a new position. In a pamphlet signed by Roger Baldwin, Arthur Garfield Hays, Morris Ernst, and others, the ACLU took a similar stance in 1934, explaining that we defended the Nazis’ right to speak, but not to march while armed.)

Orange Watch @ 300: While buzzwording your reply to the max, you’ve managed to completely miss a point repeatedly put in simple English. Isn’t that odd?