Each time horrific political violence is perpetrated that is deemed to be terrorism, a search is immediately conducted for culprits to blame other than those who actually perpetrated the violence or endorsed the group responsible for it. Its usually only a matter of hours before the attack is exploited to declare onesown political views vindicated, and to depictonespolitical adversaries as responsible for, if notcomplicit in, the violence. Often accompanying this search for villains is a list of core civil liberties that were told ought to be curtailed in the name of preventing similar acts of violence in the future.
All of this typically happens before much of anything is known about the killer, his actual inspirations, hismental health, or hisassociations. In the aftermath of the widespread horror such violence naturally produces, the easiest targetfor these guilt-by-association tacticsare those who have advocated for the legal rights of the group of which the individual attacker is a memberand/orthose who have defended the legal right to express the opinionsin the name of which the attack was carried out.
These tactics aremost familiar when a Muslim perpetrates violence withina western city, aimed at westerners. Before anything is known about the attacker other than his religious identity, the violenceis instantly declared to be terrorism. Then the search is quickly launched to find anyone who can be said to be responsible for the violence by virtue of having encouraged or enabled Islamic extremism, often by doing nothing more than having defended the legal rights of the group that is being blamed for the attack.
At the top of the blame list one always findsa wide range of imams who preach Islam even those who never in their lives advocated violence of any kind as well asactivists who defend Muslims from bigotry and persecution. But also prominently featured in this vilification gameare legal groups, such as the Council on American-Islam Relations (CAIR) and the ACLU, that defend the free speech rights and other civil libertiesof Muslims to be free of state persecution and suppression. Recently, even social platforms that allow Muslims to express themselves without state censorship are said to becomplicit.
Linking CAIR to terrorist attacksbecause of their civil liberties work is commonplace among the Islamophobic right. The ACLU which has defended accused Al Qaeda terrorists, tried to prevent the Obama administrationfrom killing Anwar al-Awlaki without due process, and opposed the criminal prosecution of Muslim extremists on free speech grounds is constantly vilifiedas terrorist enablersby the anti-Muslim right as a result of that civil liberties advocacy. And now, each time theres a new attack, the UK Government routinely accuses Facebook and other social media companies of aiding and abetting ISIS and Al Qaeda because of its refusal to obey UK Government orders about which views should be censored from the site.
That anyone who defends the legal rights of terrorists or gives them a platform is culpable for the violence they commit has been standard neoconservative and far right cant for decades. One of the most odious examples came from 2009 when a new group started by Bill Kristol and Lynne Cheney calling itself Keep America Safe produced ads strongly implying that Obama DOJ lawyers who defended accused Al Qaeda suspects were supporters ofjihadist violence against the U.S.:
Demonizinglawyers and civil liberties advocates by depicting them as complicit in the heinous acts of their clients is a long-standing scam that is not confined to the U.S. The Belgian lawyer who represented one of the Muslim attackers in Paris, Sven Mary, saidhe had suffered physical and verbal attacks and his daughters had even needed a police escort to school.
Needless to say, none of these legal organizations or individual lawyers condone violence. They all vehemently oppose the ideology and worldview in the name of which this violence is committed. Yet they are all blamed for the violence and accused of complicity in it because they defend the free speechrights and civil liberties of people who express views in the name of which violence iscommited.
This same warped mentality blaming civil liberties advocatesfor the bad actsof their clients was on full display yesterday in the wake of the heinous car attack in Charlottesville, Virginia by a whitenationalist on a group of anti-fascist protesters. That attack killed one woman, a 32-year-old paralegal, Heather Heyer, and injured multiple anti-racistprotesters, many of whom were members of groups such as Democratic Socialists of America and Industrial Workers of the World now regularly castigated as the alt-left (as though they bear any resemblance to the alt-right groups they bravely protest).
The accused attacker, 20-year-old James Alex Fields Jr., is in custody. He seems to have been photographed participating before the attack in the white nationalist march. And Fieldslocal Ohio paper citedhis mother as saying that her son texted her Friday to say he had dropped his cat off at her Monclova Township apartment so he could go to an alt-right rally in Virginia.
Photo: Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Some of the attempts to assignculpability for this violence on others besides the perpetrator were reasonable and rational. In particular, a legitimate causal connection can be drawn between this violence and the two-year flirtation byDonald Trump and several of his closest advisers with the rhetoric and even the activism of white nationalism, as even many of the white supremacists themselves recognized. As I argued last August, it seemed only a matter of time before Trumps worldview sparked violence of this kind:
The rhetoric that [Trump has]been embracing over the past 18 months is extraordinarily frightening, because, even if he loses, he is emboldening extremist nationalism, racism, all kinds of bigotry. Hes giving license for its expression. He is serving as a galvanizing force for these very dangerous elements, not just in the American political culture, but in Europe and elsewhere throughout the right.
But other blame attemptswere not just baseless but themselves deeply pernicious, a mirror image of the ugly Kristol/Cheney campaign against the Obama Justice Department lawyers who had defended the due process rights of Al Qaeda members.
Last week, the ACLU sparked controversy when it announcedthat it was defending the free speech rights of alt-right activistMilo Yiannopoulos after the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority refused to allow ads for his book to be displayed on public transit. Lost in the debate was that other groups the ACLU was defending along with Yiannopoulos were also censored under the same rule: Carafem, which helps women access birth control and medication abortion; the animal rights group PETA; and the ACLU itself.
For representingYiannopoulos, the civil liberties group was widely accused of defending and enabling fascism. But the ACLU wasnt defendingYiannopoulos as much as it was opposing a rule that allows state censorship of any controversial political messages the state wishes to suppress: a rule that is often applied to groups which are supported by many who attacked theACLU here.
The sameformula was applied yesterday when people learned that the ACLU of Virginiahad represented the white supremacist protesters in Charlottesvilleafter city officials tried to ban the group from gathering in Emancipation Park where a statue of Robert E. Leewas to be removed (city officials tried to move the march to an isolated location one mile away). One board member of the ACLU of Virginia, Waldo Jaquith, waited until the violence erupted to announce on Twitter that he was resigning in protest of the ACLUs representation of the protesters as though he was unaware when he joined the Board that the ACLU has been representing the free speech rights of neo-Nazisand other white supremacist groups(along with Communists, Muslims, war protesters and the full spectrum ofmarginalized minorities and leftists) for many decades.
Many attackedthe ACLUs decision to representYiannopoulos and these Charlottesville protests as though they were allies of the marchers, while others literally accused them of enabling fascism or evenblamed them for the violence:
(Ironically, just last month, the ACLU was the target of a similar de-funding campaign by the anti-Islam, pro-Israel right for the groups defense of Muslim-American activist Linda Sarsour; such is life as a principled civil liberties proponent).
The flaws and dangers in this anti-free-speech mindset are manifest, but nonetheless always worth highlighting, especially when horrific violence causes people to want to abridge civil liberties in the name of stopping it. In sum, purporting to oppose fascism by allowing the state to banviews it opposesis like purporting to oppose human rights abusesby mandating the torture of all prisoners.
One of the defining attributes of fascism is forcible suppression of views (For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason, wrote Umberto Eco); recall that one of Trumps first proposals after winning the 2016 election was to criminalize flag desecration. You cant fight that ideology by employing and championing one of its defining traits: viewpoint-based state censorship.
Even if this position could be morally justified, those who favor free speech suppression, or who oppose the ACLUs universal defense of speech rights, will create results that are the exact opposite of those they claim to want. Its an indescribably misguided strategy that will inevitably victimize themselves and their own views.
Lets begin with one critical fact: the ACLU has always defended, and still does defend,the free speech rights of the most marginalized left-wing activists, from Communists and atheists, to hard-core war opponents and pacifists, and has taken up numerous free speech causes supported by many on the left and loathed by the right, including defending the rights of Muslim extremists and even NAMBLA. Thats true of any consistent civil liberties advocate: we defend the rights of those with views we hate in order to strengthen our defense of the rights of thosewho are most marginalized and vulnerable in society.
The ACLU is primarily a legal organization. That means they defend peoples rights in court, under principles of law. One of the governing tools of courts is precedent: the application of prior rulings to current cases. If the ACLU allows the state to suppress the free speech rights of white nationalists or neo-Nazi groups by refusing to defend such groups when the state tries to censor them or by allowing them to have inadequate representation then the ACLUs ability to defend the free speech rights of groups and people that you like will be severely compromised.
Its easy to be dismissive of this serious aspect of the debateif youre some white American or non-Muslim American whose free speech is very unlikely to be depicted as material support for Terrorism or otherwise criminalized. But if youre someone who cares about the free speech attackson radical leftists, Muslims, and other marginalized groups, and tries to defend those rights in court, then youre going to be genuinely afraid of allowing anti-free-speech precedents to become entrenched that will then be used against youwhen its time to defend free speech rights. The ACLU is not defending white supremacist groups but instead is defending a principle one that it must defend if it is going to be successful in defending free speechrights for people you support.
Beyond that, the contradiction embedded in thisanti-free-speech advocacy is so glaring. For many of those attacking the ACLU here, it is a staple of their worldview that the U.S. is a racist and fascist country and that those who control the government are right-wing authoritarians. There is substantial validity to that view.
Why, then, would people who believe that simultaneously want to vest in these same fascism-supporting authorities the power to ban and outlaw ideas they dislike? Why would you possibly think that the List of Prohibited Ideas will end up including the views you hate rather than the views you support? Most levers of state power are now controlled by the Republican Party, while many Democrats have also advocated the criminalization of left-wing views. Why would you trustthose officials to suppress free speech in ways that you find just and noble, rather than oppressive?
As I wrote in my comprehensive 2013 defense of free speechat the Guardian, this overflowing navet is what Ive always found most confounding about the left-wing case against universal free speech: this belief that state authorities will exercise this power of censorship magnanimously and responsibly: At any given point, any speech that subverts state authority can be deemed legitimately so to be hateful and even tending to incite violence.
Then theres the back-up attack on the ACLU: OK, fine, Im for free speech, even of Milo and Nazis, but why dont they spend their resources defending free speech rights for good people rather than White Supremacists?Nobody is forcing them to take these cases. Asa recent Vox article on the ACLU debate put it:some question whether the organization should be using its resources to defend such awful groups of people. Its one thing in theory to support universal free speech rights, but its another to actually spend time and money defending neo-Nazis. This was one of the arguments made by ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio in objecting to the groups decision to defend Yiannapoulous.
Notably, this was the same argument made by right-wing neocon activists to attack the Obama DOJ lawyers for defending Al Qaeda members:yes, fine, everyone deserves a defense, but why did they choose to represent Al Qaeda? As National Reviews Andrew McCarthy put it in attacking those lawyers:The salient issue in the controversy over Justice Department attorneys who formerly represented our terrorist enemies detained at Guantanamo Bay is this:They were volunteers.
Leave aside the fact that the ACLU does expend vast resourcesto defend the rights of immigrants, minorities against abusive policing and a racist justice system, and Muslims. Beyond all that, the reason its vital to expend resources to defend free speech rights of awful people, even white nationalists, is because thats where free speech battles are always and by definitionfought.
Its always those whose views are deemed mostodious by the mainstreamthat are the initial targets of censorshipefforts; its very rare that the state tries to censor the views held by the mainstream. If you allow those initial censorship efforts to succeed because of your distaste for those being targeted, then you lose the ability to defend the rights of those you like because the censorship principle has been enshrined. Thats why the ACLU, for instance, defended the free speech rights of the revolting Fred Phelps, and one of its leading LGBT lawyers justified that position this way:
We do it because we believe in the principle, and because we realize that once you chip away at one persons rights, everyone elses are at risk. . . . Free speech doesnt belong only to those we agree with, and the First Amendment doesnt only protect speech that is tasteful and inoffensive. In fact, it is in the hard cases that our commitment to the First Amendment is most tested and most important. As one federal judge has put it, tolerating hateful speech is the best protection we have against any Nazi-type regime in this country.
Then, finally, theres the argument about efficacy. How can anyone believe that neo-Nazism or white supremacy will disappear in the U.S., or even be weakened, if its forcibly suppressed by the state? Is it not glaringly apparent that the exact opposite will happen: by turning them into free speech martyrs, you will do nothing but strengthen them and make them more sympathetic? Literally nothing has helped Yiannopoulos become a national cult figure more than the well-intentioned (but failed) efforts to deny him a platform. Nothing could be better designed to aid their cause than converting a fringe, tiny group of overt neo-Nazis into some sort of poster child for free speech rights.
The need to fight neo-Nazism and white supremacy wherever it appears is compelling. The least effective tactic is to try to empower the state to suppress the expression of their views. That will backfire in all sorts of ways: strengthening that movement and ensuring that those who advocate state censorship today are its defenseless targets tomorrow. And whatever else is true, the impulse to react to terrorist attacks by demanding the curtailment of core civil liberties is always irrational, dangerous, andself-destructive, no matter how tempting that impulsemight be.
Clarification: One sentence was lightly edited to clarify that it was the ACLUs defense of the free speech rights of Muslim extremists and NAMBLA that found support on the left not that those groups are themselves part of the left.
Top photo: Demonstrators hold shields and flags during the Unite the Right free speech rally at Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Va., on August 12, 2017..
See more here:
The Misguided Attacks on ACLU for Defending Neo-Nazis' Free Speech Rights in Charlottesville - The Intercept
