Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 00:49:39 +0100 From: rkmoore-AT-iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: M-TH: Re: fascism & free speech 6/22/97, Karl Carlile wrote: >Just a while ago I had a discussion with some people from the >radical left concerning fascism. They were of the view that the Left >should fight for the denial of free speech to fascists. and Dennis Grammenos wrote: >Freedom of speech is for those who can afford it, not for the masses that >are tossed the leftovers and are regaled with tales of freedoms they can >barely sniff let alone taste... >The line they feed us with is that "there are always two sides to a >story," or "one must be fair," or "one should be balanced," blah, blah, >blah... This topic can be related to world-sytems in terms of "methods of population control" or perhaps "principles of democratic states", but I presume the relevance for discussion has more to do with our shared role as citizens than it does to the list's official agenda. In any case, it's the citizen angle from which I'll respond. I'll speak to the American situation, for simplicity, but the principles apply more or less to other democracies. The right to free speech, as originally intended by the Bill of Rights, is a protection granted to citizens from government suppression. It was primarily intended to protect political speech, although it has been applied judicially to protect artistic expression as well. In an institutional sense, the purpose of free speech is to facilitate the democratic process: to prevent government from restricting the bounds of public political discussion. Free speech has little if anything to do with the concept of "fairness in reporting". The fairness doctrine is meant to partially remedy the fact that government has licensed the public airwaves to private operators: fairness supposedly introduces a "public interest" element into private programming - but this has been an abysmal failure in the US. In effect, "fairness" is a sop to the public - a cheap and inadequate substitute for the kind of responsible journalism the BBC has been famous for. (The BBC has its own faults, but that's another story.) Fairness is _in lieu of_ a democratically responsive press, and hence at root is counter-productive to democracy. Civil libertarians - by which I mean those who understand and support the original intent of the Bill of Rights - must support the inviolability of freedom of speech for _all_ political points of view. Any support for selective censorship - even against fascists - has only one lasting institutional consequence: it serves to grant to the government the right to decide what speech is permissable. Once the government has that right, then that right will obviously be used by the government to suppress speech the government finds objectionable. That _may_ include fascist rhetoric, but it is _certain_ to include the speech of political dissidents on the left, especially when such speech becomes politically threatening to ruling elites (ie- useful to the left). Leftists who support government suppression of fascist speech are poisoning the well of democracy for everyone, as a means of denying water to those they fear - a most suicidal strategy. The fact is that the US government is eager to destroy freedom of speech along with the entire Bill of Rights, and has been actively pursuing that agenda with considerable success for many years. The evidence for this is very plain, and I'm currently working on an article for a magazine on that subject. For now, let me simply refer to the so-called Anti-Terrorism Act, the arbitrary property seizures brought in by the so-called War on Drugs, and the ominously broad interpretation of conspiracy laws established by the World Trade Center case. The US government, it turns out, has covertly encouraged the activism of groups such as fascists, the Ku-Klux-Klan, and the militias - not only with funding, but also with agent provocateurs who push the envelope of extreme behavior. The intent of such support is to create a public reaction and ultimately justify repressive legislation, as part of the campaign to eliminate the Bill of Rights. Leftists who fall prey to this agenda are playing directly into the hands of their real enemies. As far as suppressing fascism goes, one might remember the analysis of David Hume, who pointed out that unpopular ideas don't need to be suppressed - their very unpopularity already disproportionately disfavors them in the public mind (since most people tend to give and withhold credence based on the opinions of those around them). If you happen to believe that fascism is in fact popular, and you believe in democracy, then suppression of speech can hardly be the appropriate defensive tactic. Suppression of popular ideas by an activist minority (in this case the left) is a formula for undermining democracy, not preserving it. Allow me to point out that the US (and many other Western) governments are more likely to be the instigators of a fascist takeover than they are to be the suppressors of same. Fascism was invented by capitalists in the 20's as a means to suppress popular democratic socialist movements in Germany, Italy, Spain, and elsewhere. Hitler was an operative of German military intelligence, Rhoem was his handler, and funding was provided by Krupp, Henry Ford, and many other Western industrialists. This is a matter of public record, not a conspiracy theory. Free speech helps defend us against totalitarianism, and totalitarian interests are behind anti-free-speech propaganda. Don't be duped or confused, rkm --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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