Must We Defend Nazis?

Adult nonfiction 

     "Should Nazis, white supremacists, and Ku Klux Klan members spewing hatred be allowed to march in a peaceful college town like Charlottesville, Virginia?  Should city officials give them a permit, and should the local police provide them with protection from indignant protesters?"

     If I remember correctly an incident happened during the last year of the Great Before.  A sunny spring day.  The last grey remnants of snow had melted away.  At UMaine people were out enjoying the warm weather.

     I do know it was Pride Week.  A religious fundamentalist set up shop on the Mall with his graphic posters and was spewing venom that basically amounted to anyone not practicing strict CIS heterosexuality was going to burn in Hell for all eternity.  He was attracting a crowd of people who were yelling back at him, standing up for selves and friends.  The volume of the discourse rose all the way up to the Dean's Suite on the third floor of the Union.  We were told that if we ignored him he'd go away.

     He wasn't the only one stirring up trouble.  A lot of problematic--racist, sexist, homophobic--speakers whose words would cause incredible harm to significant numbers of students were demanding their right to speak on campuses and dialing their lawyers if admin didn't cave.  

     All because of that damn first amendment.

     If you've read this blog any length you know that I find the entire Constitution problematic for reasons that go beyond the fact that its writers, a significant number of whom were slave owners, put all the votes and power in the hands of rich white men.  Its writers were men of their time no more able to anticipate the 21st century than we can the 24th.  Drafters of the second amendment couldn't foresee AK47s.  And penners of the first never saw the Internet coming.

     The last time I was a fan of the first amendment was my long ago teens when I saw it as protecting my right to protest the war in Vietnam.  So I was delighted when I learned about Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic's Must We Defend Nazis?  Why the First Amendment Should Not Protect Hate Speech and White Supremacy.  And when I was able to obtain it by inter library loan I was over the moon.

     Delgado and Stefancic basically shred the arguments of those who would keep the first amendment's interpretation and enforcement inviolable, looking back to its legalistic past rather than its problematic present and future.

     "A prime obstacle to reforming hate-speech law is the insistence by some that these forms of speech are harmless or that tolerating them is 'the price we pay' for living in a free society."  Chapter one chronicles the substantial harms they inflict.

     "Over the past several years, hundreds of university and college campuses have experienced racial unrest that is serious or graphic enough to be reported in the press."  Chapter two examines the conflict between calls for bans on hate speech and claims that they violate not only the First Amendment, but academic freedom playing out at institutions of higher education.

     "The Internet is the site of some of the worst forms of racial and sexual vituperation."  Chapter three examines the vitriol served up regularly on social media.

     Chapters four and five analyze arguments for maintaining the status quo put forth by both neoliberals and neoconservatives.  Chapter six looks at how other nations handle the issue.  Chapter seven provides guidance for progressive activists.  Chapter eight returns readers to the original question:  Are we obligated to defend Nazis?  I won't spoil the ending by revealing the answer.

     I think this is a good book for anyone like me who has problems with the ways that current interpretations of the first amendment allow hate speech and white supremacy to go on inflicting harm.  It is a step above most books I review in terms of reading comprehension.  But for New York University Press it's a light weight.

On a purrrsonal note, I wonder if it's also protecting those people who put out "facts" that totally contradict established science.  They certainly cause harm by leading to tragic, needless illness, suffering, and death.  

Oh, yeah, I'm continuing to get better.  Today I'm even up to dishes and laundry.  (Jules)

But still in need of a lot of cat snuggling.  (Dr. Tobago)

A great big shout out goes out to all who see the dangers of unbridled free speech.

Tobago and Jules Hathaway 

     

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