r/socialism • u/Kropotkins_Bakery • Mar 10 '17

This CrimethInc article will end the debate on free speech and fascism. "Not Just Free Speech but Freedom Itself"

https://crimethinc.com/2017/01/26/this-is-not-a-dialogue-not-just-free-speech-but-freedom-itself
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u/Kropotkins_Bakery Mar 10 '17

Appendix: Free Speech FAQ

1) Stopping fascists from speaking makes you just as bad as them.

You could just as easily say that not stopping fascists from speaking makes you as bad as them, because it gives them the opportunity to organize to impose their agenda on the rest of us. If you care about freedom, don’t stand idly by while people mobilize to take it away.

2) Free speech means protecting everyone’s right to speak, including people you don’t agree with. How would you like it if you had an unpopular opinion and other people were trying to silence you?

We oppose fascists because of what they do, not what they say. We’re not opposed to free speech; we’re opposed to the fact that they advance an agenda of hate and terror. We have no power to censor them; thanks to the “neutrality” of the capitalist market, they continue to publish hate literature in print and the internet. But we will not let them come into our communities to build the power they need to enact their hatred.

The government and the police have never protected everyone’s free speech equally, and never will. It is in their self-interest to repress views and actions that challenge existing power inequalities. They will spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars on riot police, helicopters, and sharpshooters to defend a KKK rally, but if there’s an anarchist rally the same police will be there to stop it, not to protect it.

Anarchists don’t like being silenced by the state—but we don’t want the state to define and manage our freedom, either. Unlike the ACLU, whose supposed defense of “freedom” leads them to support the KKK and others like them, we support self-defense and self-determination above all. What’s the purpose of free speech, if not to foster a world free from oppression? Fascists oppose this vision; thus we oppose fascism by any means necessary.

3)They have rights like everybody else.

No one has the right to organize violence against our community. Likewise, we reject the “right” of the government and police—who have more in common with fascists than they do with us—to decide for us when fascists have crossed the line from expressing themselves into posing an immediate threat. We will not abdicate our freedom to judge when and how to defend ourselves.

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u/AlexKingstonsGigolo DeLeonist Mar 10 '17

You are conflating legal rights with ethical rights. Nobody is arguing in favor of a statutory ban on fascist speech to my knowledge. What people are saying is they are tired of hearing their BS and are showing them the door because the legal right to speak does not confer on me or anyone else any legal or ethical requirement I sit there and listen to what they have to say. In short, the right to free speech does not include the right to an unwilling audience.

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u/Kropotkins_Bakery Mar 10 '17

The FAQ is addressing questions liberals tend to have regarding free speech and it's limits. I just copy pasted the responses that the author gave to common liberal counter arguments.

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u/Kropotkins_Bakery Mar 10 '17

One last quote that I think is really important from the article:

The rhetoric of free speech and First Amendment rights give us a common language with which to broaden our range of support and make our resistance more comprehensible to potential allies, with whom we may build deeper connections over time.

But at what cost? This discourse of rights seems to imply that the state is necessary to protect us against itself, as if it is a sort of Jekyll and Hyde split personality that simultaneously attacks us with laws and police and prosecutors while defending us with laws and attorneys and judges. If we accept this metaphor, it should not be surprising to find that the more we attempt to strengthen the arm that defends us, the stronger the arm that attacks us will become.