Daily Archives: 7 March 2019

A Few Impertinent Questions about Hate Speech

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One of the things French President Emmanuel Macron has proposed for strengthening of the European Union’s governance—the EU’s Government—is

enhanced protection against hate speech

In particular, in his op-ed For European renewal [emphasis Macron’s]

creating a European Agency for the Protection of Democracies, which will provide each Member State with European experts…European rules banish all incitements to hate and violence from the Internet

This is to be done under the guise of

respect for the individual is the bedrock of our civilisation of dignity.

My questions aren’t specific to Macron, though, or to the EU—they’re general in their application.

How is it respect for the individual that Government tells him he’s too mind-numblingly stupid to decide for himself to what speech he should attend and what speech he should ignore, to what speech he should provide answer—and how? To tell him he’s too cowardly to respond coherently and that Government must…protect…him?

How long will it be, do you think, before Government decides that speech that counters hate speech—Louis Brandeis’ instruction—is itself hate speech, thereby allowing the original to stand unchallenged?

When will we recognize that Government’s enforced silence is not, cannot be, the answer to “hate speech?”

When will we recognize that the enforced silence of Macron’s proposal is itself hate speech?

The Problem with this Kind of Law Suit

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The State of Michigan, through its Attorney General and Department of Civil Rights, has decided to use the Southern Poverty Law Center’s claimed identifications of “hate groups” to spearhead those two agencies’ pretended protection of Michigan citizens from the ravages of hatred.

One of the targets of the State’s AG and MDCR, selected from the SPLC’s smear lists, is the American Freedom Law Center, an Evil Judeo-Christian law firm.  Far from being cowed, the law firm is pushing back, in spades: they’ve filed suit against Dana Nessel, the AG, and Agustin Arbulu, the MSCR’s Executive Director.  Robert Muise, AFLC’s Co-Founder and Senior Counsel:

It’s one thing for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is a private organization, to engage in political propaganda and political hyperbole.  [It’s a violation of the Constitution] when you have the Attorney General who’s relying on that political propaganda to investigate and target us with the power of the state.
You now have the government giving its endorsement to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s nonsense—that now triggers our constitutional protections[.]

The AFLC is bringing three charges to their suit:

violation of free speech rights under the First Amendment; violation of expressive association rights under the First Amendment; and violation of equal protection as guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Here’s a bit of the central evidence against Nessel and Arbulu according to the AFLC’s suit:

According to the SPLC report relied upon by Defendants, Plaintiff [AFLC] is identified as a “hate” group because it is allegedly “anti-Muslim,” and according to SPLC’s “Hate Map,” Plaintiff is located in the Ann Arbor area. Consequently, Plaintiff is one of the very groups that Defendants referred to in their public announcement as an “extremist and hate organization in Michigan.”

The AFLC also alleges in its suit that Nessel’s and Arbulu’s goal is to legitimize the SPLC’s own hatred of those disagreeing with them, to

create in the collective mind of the public that organizations designated by SPLC as “hate” groups are criminal organizations rather than legitimate charitable organizations.

And so on.  RTWT.

Trouble is, though, even if the AFLC wins its suit—which ultimately it should, based on published information—nothing serious will change.  Nessel and Arbulu still will be in place, and they’ll still pursue their anti-freedom policies.  They’ll just be doing it sub rosa.  These two persons and their senior staffs have to go.  That’s the only way there can be any hope that the policies they’ve put in place overtly can be believed to be beginning to be prevented from continuing covertly.