
The Misguided Attacks on ACLU - kushti
https://theintercept.com/2017/08/13/the-misguided-attacks-on-aclu-for-defending-neo-nazis-free-speech-rights-in-charlottesville/
======
scarmig
I had almost entirely forgotten about shanley, who's been on a one-sided jihad
against HN since time immemorial. But apparently she chimed in with the
thoughtful tweet:

>FUCK THE ACLU

>ACLU CELEBRATES CAUSING DEATH TO ANTI-FASCISTS AT THE HANDS OF NAZI AND KKK

>"FREE SPEECH" IS FASCISM

~~~
microcolonel
> _> "FREE SPEECH" IS FASCISM_

 _War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength_

The thing about this assembly is that if Antifa hadn't shown up, and it was
just the southern nationalists, National Socialists, white ethnonationalists,
Alt-Righters, Proud Boys, and Oathkeepers[0] who planned the assembly, and the
members of the peaceful counter-assembly, no fights would have broken out, and
some people would walk away just looking very misguided.

Instead somebody, unclear who ( _Edit: now clear who, see replies_ ), rammed a
car into a woman who is now dead; and there was enough ruckus to activate the
National Guard.

The clear problem here is precisely that speech is being equated to violence,
and folks take that to imply that unsavoury speech warrants a violent
response.

[0]:
[https://twitter.com/UR_Ninja/status/896146435850108928](https://twitter.com/UR_Ninja/status/896146435850108928)

~~~
willstrafach
> Instead somebody, unclear who, rammed a car into a woman who is now dead

"A man accused of plowing a car into a crowd of activists here — killing one
person and injuring 19 — long sympathized with Nazi views and had stood with a
group of white supremacists hours before Saturday’s bloody crash." (Source:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/one-dead-as-car-
strikes...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/one-dead-as-car-strikes-
crowds-amid-protests-of-white-nationalist-gathering-in-charlottesville-two-
police-die-in-helicopter-
crash/2017/08/13/3590b3ce-8021-11e7-902a-2a9f2d808496_story.html))

~~~
microcolonel
New information to me, thanks for adding instead of insinuating.

------
moxious
The ACLU always gets attacked when they defend reprehensible free speech. The
trouble with free speech of course is that it doesn't need defending when it's
popular and accepted. So naturally they're going to take some heat for this.

Charlottesville was a bloody mess and mix-up of different factors though. Some
were nut jobs who were exercising their right to free speech. Some were
violent and inciting riots. The exact same applies to the counter-protestors.
Groups of people in public are always messy amalgams that usually don't have
one clear goal and message, so you'll always be able to paint the best of them
with the actions of the worst of them. It works that way on both sides.

~~~
tomjakubowski
No, sorry, there is really no equivalence between the two groups. The right
wing marchers weren't rammed repeatedly by a speeding muscle car. They didn't
suffer death or critical injury at the hands of their opposition. The counter-
protestors did.

The counter-protestors didn't surround anyone and beat them with flaming
torches. The counter-protestors didn't gang up on a bystander to beat hil with
metal poles, presumably for no reason other than that he was black. A few
punches were thrown and a few white supremacists got pepper sprayed.

~~~
briandear
The counter protestors did start fights and threw a rock at the car – which
provoked the ramming. No excuse for the reaction, but let’s not pretend the
counter protestors were peaceful. They were inciting with equal fervor.

Protestors on either side have zero right to violence, regardless of
provocation.

Freedom of speech isn’t just freedom of speech with which we agree and
violence is violence regardless of the perpetrators.

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
The video of the start of the incident does not show any rocks being thrown.
That happened after he'd driven into a crowd of people. As the car in question
isn't a DeLorean I don't think he had a time machine, so your version of the
story is wrong.

~~~
zo1
There's now video from behind showing someone hitting the car with a baseball
bat _before_ the ramming occurred. No idea how authentic it is.

[http://www.departmentofmemes.com/article/protesters-
attacked...](http://www.departmentofmemes.com/article/protesters-attacked-
charlottesville-drivers-car-baseball-bat/)

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
That video is as he's driving by, doing the ramming.

------
hprotagonist
When Greenwald is right, he's dead-on. The ACLU is one of things about my
country that I'm very proud of, and happy to support.

------
kartD
It might be just me, but after a point it looks like most movements become a
mirror image of what they oppose, so anything in the middle ground like the
ACLU gets flak from both sides...

~~~
taneq
He who fights monsters, etc.

------
shalmanese
Is anyone prominent attacking the ACLU on this? All the article cites is a
bunch of twitter users. I tried to Google and I couldn't find anything except
neutral reporting and this article, no major left wing sources who are arguing
that what the ACLU is doing is wrong.

------
geofft
This is a bad article. A general principle in debate is to attack the
strongest arguments from the opposing side, not the weakest ones. Yes,
dragging Shanley for her low-context low-nuance tweets is easy. (I suspect she
enjoys seeing people fall into that trap.) The article completely dismisses a
well-reasoned critique of the ACLU by a former-as-of-yesterday ACLU of
Virginia board member who was directly involved in the Charlottesville legal
proceedings until the ACLU showed up to oppose him:

[https://twitter.com/waldojaquith/status/896512190563454977](https://twitter.com/waldojaquith/status/896512190563454977)
(thread)

[https://twitter.com/waldojaquith/status/896566113974317058](https://twitter.com/waldojaquith/status/896566113974317058)
(thread)

All they say about this is _" 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 ACLU’s 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-Nazis and other white supremacist
groups (along with Communists, Muslims, war protesters and the full spectrum
of marginalized minorities and leftists) for many decades."_

Of course he knows that and knew that. Greenwald would do well to debate his
actual points.

In particular, the ACLU was not defending the right of the neo-Nazis to
assemble, but the right of the neo-Nazis to assemble _in a crowded park that
was too small for effective logistics_. (Greenwald half-mentions this in a
parenthetical, without context.) Jason Kessler and Emily Gorcenski agree on
approximately nothing, but they both have criticized the inability of the city
to keep order during yesterday's events, which appears to be the direct cause
of the life lost yesterday: the road that James Alan Fields drove his car down
was not a protest location but was between two of the parks, and the counter-
protesters believed that it was supposed to be closed to vehicular traffic.

The city was not trying to prevent the neo-Nazis from speaking. They were
merely trying to move them to a larger, easier-to-secure area to prevent
exactly the thing that happened yesterday. The ACLU defended the right of the
neo-Nazis to protest in the smaller park simply because they claimed it was
their free speech right to assemble next to the statue of Robert E. Lee,
instead of somewhere that the city could ensure a safe event.

It also gives no serious response to this critique of the ACLU by a current
ACLU lawyer:

[https://twitter.com/chasestrangio/status/895351745693585419](https://twitter.com/chasestrangio/status/895351745693585419)

and completely ignores this information, which utterly wipes out Greenwald's
non-serious response to Strangio, from an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus:

[https://twitter.com/anoop_alc/status/896468870764011522](https://twitter.com/anoop_alc/status/896468870764011522)

 _" I asked the ACLU for help defending a Muslim immigrant being deported for
protected speech. They declined. They CHOOSE to protect the KKK."_

~~~
valuearb
Your objections are weak and poorly thought out.

1) An ACLU member who spent thousands of dollars and their free time trying to
suppress free speech rights shouldn't have been in the ACLU to begin with.

Free speech didn't cause this violence, a terrorist and assorted thugs and
instigators did. Banning free speech doesn't heal those people's brains of the
ill they carry.

2) If Strangio can't support free speech for everyone, including people he
finds despicable, he doesn't support free speech at all. Who decides which
opinions and people are "despicable"? Sooner or later we all risk being viewed
as despicable by someone in power, free societies have always degenerated into
tyranny over time. Let's not hurry the process in the U.S.

Again, Strangio should resign from the ACLU.

3) And what is the point of the last tweet? The ACLU doesn't have the
resources to take every case and fight every battle. Are you arguing they
should pick the ones that are less contentious? Or involve less despicable
people?

How about they pick the ones that have the most importance in our society?

~~~
geofft
You rebut your own points.

> _An ACLU member who spent thousands of dollars and their free time trying to
> suppress free speech rights_ ... _Free speech didn 't cause this violence_

That's exactly the point: he was _not_ trying to suppress free speech rights,
and conversely, the ACLU was _not_ defending free speech. They thought they
were. For good reasons. Nobody, including Jaquith, is questioning their good
intentions. But they were wrong.

He was an ACLU member because he valued free speech, and he took an action
that he believed was likely to prevent violence without risking free speech.
The ACLU disagreed. He decided to _continue being a member of the board of the
ACLU of Virginia_ because he respected that he could have been wrong and the
ACLU could have been right.

It turned out the ACLU was wrong.

Are we now to believe that the ACLU is infallible, that anything they call
free speech is in fact free speech, and that even anyone involved with the
ACLU who disagrees with the organization's decisions is to be excommunicated?

> _If Strangio can 't support free speech for everyone, including people he
> finds despicable_

Again, he's supporting free speech for everyone, as far as that goal is
possible. He believes that the ACLU's case is not in fact advancing the cause
of free speech for everyone.

And, in any case, let us suppose that Strangio should resign from the ACLU and
that Jaquith should never have joined. _Even so, they have points worth
debating honestly._ Greenwald isn't doing that. Perhaps "free speech for
everyone" is a self-contradictory goal, or a goal that simply serves as cover
for "continued free speech for the powerful", and they can't honestly support
that goal. That just means the ACLU is worth criticizing, and they're the
people who would know the most about what the ACLU is doing wrong!

> _How about they pick the ones that have the most importance in our society?_

That is exactly what I'm proposing.

Milo Yiannopoulos is in no danger of not having his ideas heard by society, of
people not knowing that he exists, of people not knowing what he believes.
Neither were any of the folks at yesterday's rally. Their message was clear
months in advance: they believe we should keep the statue of Robert E. Lee
because it symbolizes a history worth remembering.

Milo is no minority viewpoint, nor is the alt-right. (Greenwald gets this
wrong too, by pretending that the "mainstream" and the majority are the same,
and everything opinion outside the mainstream/majority is equally
marginalized.) His right to speak is important. But it is not significantly at
risk, and as a result, defending his right is far from the most important
thing in our society. The neo-Nazis were going to march in Charlottesville
anyway; the ACLU picked a case that gave them the right to march in the park
they wanted instead of the park they didn't want. I really do not understand
the argument that anyone (neo-Nazis, antifa, the Papal Guard, whoever) being
able to march in the _right park_ is the most important issue in our society.

We don't even know who the person the ACLU didn't represent was going to say.
We don't know who they were. And not only were they silenced, they are now
gone from America.

~~~
tptacek
I don't really agree with the thrust of this comment but I will readily admit
it's comprised of strong, thoughtful arguments.

In particular: it is not the ACLU's role to determine the reasonable time,
place, and manner for the march. They're the legal advocates for the "speech"
side of the controversy. Like all lawyers, their first loyalty is with their
own clients.

It's the job of the city and state governments to argue the other side, that
the specific parks selected for the march are inappropriate.

It's the job of the courts to sort through those arguments.

In a similar sense, virtually every pro-bono lawyer appealing death sentences
must know that their clients are guilty for horrible crimes. But it is
absolutely not their job to submit measured, fair briefs. Rather, it's to
throw every procedural and factual doubt at the wall in the hopes that
something, anything will save their clients from being killed by the state.

Hopefully, we see these people as heroes, despite the fact that they're
arguing on behalf of heinous criminals and in many cases against the victims
of those crimes.

------
krisdol
Who is attacking the ACLU?

~~~
wheaties
There is a segment of America that wants to prohibit speech that is "bad." In
this case, the rhetoric of the alt-right and other racist fear mongers. This
is speech that incites riots.

I'm glad the ACLU is there fighting this fight. Lest we forget that at one
time unpopular speech was women's rights.

~~~
Navarr
Should there perhaps be some limits, though?

For some reason, I can't imagine that advocating genocide should ever be
considered legitimate free speech. I can understand political ideologies, even
authoritarianism being protected - but advocation of genocide?

Why do we refuse to draw lines?

~~~
pjscott
Forgive me if I'm being dense here, but how is genocide a form of speech?
Genocide is a form of killing.

~~~
scarmig
In Rwanda, there was a radio station literally advocating genocide and
organizing slaughters. It played a major role in inflaming tensions that were
already really high. You can reasonably see it as an exercise in free speech,
but it was also very much an active participant of the genocide.

Needless to say, the USA is not 90's Rwanda.

------
mtanski
I understand the mission of the ACLU, including their representation of people
I agree with / don't agree with.

But, I'm not quite sure why they are representing Milo... mostly because he
can afford and their resources are better spent on cases where people can't.
If they just filled a Amicus brief in his defense, i'd be perfectly fine.

~~~
the8472
They are not specifically representing milo.

 _> The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are ideologically diverse: the ACLU itself,
an abortion provider, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and alt-
right-Internet-troll-to-the-point-Twitter-actually-banned-him Milo
Yiannopoulos._

It's a parade showing that the whole spectrum objects to this policy.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/dcs-transit-
agen...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/dcs-transit-agency-
rejected-ads-touting-the-first-amendment-really/)

~~~
norea-armozel
He's like the worse kind of person to stick on your campaign. The fact he's
fleeced his followers on the Privilege Grant shows the kind of person he is
(as in he's a con artist). The other people in the case are better picks for
your "controversial but right" poster child whereas Milo is the "I'm a jerk
that wants attention, money, and cocaine so I'm going to defraud you to get
it" poster child.

