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I’ve been bone tired since Friday and, to be honest, I’m not doing all that much better now, but I’ve at least had a chance to let my head settle on Saturday and I’m at my computer (which I wasn’t, before), so I can take some time to give the nazi riot some thought.
Pretty primary to my thoughts has been the ACLU’s degree of culpability for the riot taking place at all, and the traditional stance the ACLU tends to take. My thoughts on them are a lot more complicated than “burn them down,” or “liberals get a bullet, too.” (Which I've seen, and seems deeply worrying.)
The same attitude I tend to have towards riots which is that you wouldn’t expect a riot ever to be sanctioned by the state for almost any reason because the state, as a system, will have a hard time taking into account the reason for an action, and tends only to respond to the action itself. The riot might be justified, and one might be ethically and morally in the right to participate, but moral doesn’t equal legal. In the same way, legally, the nazis might have the right to assemble, but it’s not really moral to allow them to - they’ve exploited an edge case in the freedom to assemble. In this case, the law seems to act immorally, though it’s acting amorally. Or, actually actually, it’s not acting at all - people are.
Here we get to the crux of the matter. I think, for example, that the law being what it is, probably should have (as it did) allow the nazis to assemble, because that’s technically how the law works and, again, technically, as soon as they started chanting pretty much any of the stuff they chanted or doing pretty much anything that they did, they should have been immediately removed from the premises, because they were engaging in clear hate speech. At pretty much any point, the counter-protestors would have been morally and ethically in the clear to engage them directly, in order to remove them from public space, but their actions may not have necessarily been legal.
The ACLU is not the law, which I think is important. Their pretence is to hold up a certain ideal for free speech which I think they think is a neutral and apolitical stance - that is, to uphold the right of the nazis to assemble. But as a private organization who understands the right to assemble, they also get to determine where their money goes in the pursuit of advocacy.
As we know, the ACLU is not actually a neutral party. First, because even the pretence of neutrality does tend to take a side with whatever the status quo is - and directing funds removes the pretence. They can say that they will direct their funds to any case, but that’s not really correct - they’re forced to pick and choose all the time, if only because they can only advocate for cases they know about. Second, because there are periods of time within the history of the organization that they have explicitly come out against left-wing figures or refused advocacy to them. As an organization spanning many years, it’s understandable to see the way the organization itself acts as something that will change, but the history is nevertheless apart of the organization as long as it is, in itself, continuous. It cannot rely on the weight of its history as a validation of its integrity and also ignore its previous actions in support of white supremacy and against, say, communism. It must at least acknowledge these things as being a lapse in the character of the organization - and it doesn’t do that.
And so we see the ACLU take a position that tends to favor white supremacy, whether it intends to be that way or not. That is the character of its actions.
This is what I perceive as being one of the great liberal failings in the pursuit of free association and speech. I am strongly in support of these things, but I am also aware that one cannot allow principle to exist without a strict attention to individual situations, using one’s knowledge of how the system that one has built or exists withing against it. In this case, the fascist is deeply aware of the flaws in the liberal ideology of the debate or else, “the talking social cure” - the idea that every problem can be solved through discussion (as if the liberal society does not make heavy use of coercive police or military actions!). In this case, the ACLU, if its principles do indeed set it against the actions of white supremacy, fascism, and nationalism, should refuse its services on behalf of the nazis.
Consider, especially, that as soon as they would take power, the ACLU would be - at best! - disbanded. At worst, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
I think it might be fair to say that their ideology does bear out in some ways. Even if the nazis didn’t succeed in hurting anyone - and many were beaten, including Deandre Harris, while Heather Hayer was murdered and 19 others hospitalized - the event would have been a terrible failure for the nazis. However, the threat of death and injury at the hands of white supremacist nationalists is clearly real and the way the police acted in this situation compared to how they react to BLM (for example) demonstrates their institutional bias. When it comes to the ACLU, they should weigh the real, physical violence that occurs in regards to human lives against the principle of providing material support to groups we know are actually nazi fronts.
I strongly hope that this causes them to reconsider their position. I feel like they were in the wrong, here, and uncritical support for them is flawed. If you disagree with this position, I do understand. I'm not sure this is where I'm going to stand indefinitely, since my feelings change. I know that the principle of free speech is a very powerful one and my criticism of the ACLU isn't a full throated denunciation - I just think that it's problematic. Though, in the same way, so is my position.
Pretty primary to my thoughts has been the ACLU’s degree of culpability for the riot taking place at all, and the traditional stance the ACLU tends to take. My thoughts on them are a lot more complicated than “burn them down,” or “liberals get a bullet, too.” (Which I've seen, and seems deeply worrying.)
The same attitude I tend to have towards riots which is that you wouldn’t expect a riot ever to be sanctioned by the state for almost any reason because the state, as a system, will have a hard time taking into account the reason for an action, and tends only to respond to the action itself. The riot might be justified, and one might be ethically and morally in the right to participate, but moral doesn’t equal legal. In the same way, legally, the nazis might have the right to assemble, but it’s not really moral to allow them to - they’ve exploited an edge case in the freedom to assemble. In this case, the law seems to act immorally, though it’s acting amorally. Or, actually actually, it’s not acting at all - people are.
Here we get to the crux of the matter. I think, for example, that the law being what it is, probably should have (as it did) allow the nazis to assemble, because that’s technically how the law works and, again, technically, as soon as they started chanting pretty much any of the stuff they chanted or doing pretty much anything that they did, they should have been immediately removed from the premises, because they were engaging in clear hate speech. At pretty much any point, the counter-protestors would have been morally and ethically in the clear to engage them directly, in order to remove them from public space, but their actions may not have necessarily been legal.
The ACLU is not the law, which I think is important. Their pretence is to hold up a certain ideal for free speech which I think they think is a neutral and apolitical stance - that is, to uphold the right of the nazis to assemble. But as a private organization who understands the right to assemble, they also get to determine where their money goes in the pursuit of advocacy.
As we know, the ACLU is not actually a neutral party. First, because even the pretence of neutrality does tend to take a side with whatever the status quo is - and directing funds removes the pretence. They can say that they will direct their funds to any case, but that’s not really correct - they’re forced to pick and choose all the time, if only because they can only advocate for cases they know about. Second, because there are periods of time within the history of the organization that they have explicitly come out against left-wing figures or refused advocacy to them. As an organization spanning many years, it’s understandable to see the way the organization itself acts as something that will change, but the history is nevertheless apart of the organization as long as it is, in itself, continuous. It cannot rely on the weight of its history as a validation of its integrity and also ignore its previous actions in support of white supremacy and against, say, communism. It must at least acknowledge these things as being a lapse in the character of the organization - and it doesn’t do that.
And so we see the ACLU take a position that tends to favor white supremacy, whether it intends to be that way or not. That is the character of its actions.
This is what I perceive as being one of the great liberal failings in the pursuit of free association and speech. I am strongly in support of these things, but I am also aware that one cannot allow principle to exist without a strict attention to individual situations, using one’s knowledge of how the system that one has built or exists withing against it. In this case, the fascist is deeply aware of the flaws in the liberal ideology of the debate or else, “the talking social cure” - the idea that every problem can be solved through discussion (as if the liberal society does not make heavy use of coercive police or military actions!). In this case, the ACLU, if its principles do indeed set it against the actions of white supremacy, fascism, and nationalism, should refuse its services on behalf of the nazis.
Consider, especially, that as soon as they would take power, the ACLU would be - at best! - disbanded. At worst, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
I think it might be fair to say that their ideology does bear out in some ways. Even if the nazis didn’t succeed in hurting anyone - and many were beaten, including Deandre Harris, while Heather Hayer was murdered and 19 others hospitalized - the event would have been a terrible failure for the nazis. However, the threat of death and injury at the hands of white supremacist nationalists is clearly real and the way the police acted in this situation compared to how they react to BLM (for example) demonstrates their institutional bias. When it comes to the ACLU, they should weigh the real, physical violence that occurs in regards to human lives against the principle of providing material support to groups we know are actually nazi fronts.
I strongly hope that this causes them to reconsider their position. I feel like they were in the wrong, here, and uncritical support for them is flawed. If you disagree with this position, I do understand. I'm not sure this is where I'm going to stand indefinitely, since my feelings change. I know that the principle of free speech is a very powerful one and my criticism of the ACLU isn't a full throated denunciation - I just think that it's problematic. Though, in the same way, so is my position.