The ACLU is not what it once was. I will not donate to them. Even the EFF is growing questionable. I would definitely be curious what recommendations people have.
For supporting "this" very specifically, ACLU (in the form of their 501(c)(3) foundation) is directly involved as legal counsel to Signal, so donating to EFF would be less relevant to "this" than donating to either Signal (also a non-profit) or to the ACLU Foundation. But, sure, the EFF is also a good organization.
If your concern is specifically the ACLU's disagreement with recent Supreme Courts on the intended scope of Second Amendment rights, the EFF isn't going to address that either since it's out of scope for their mission. But that's in no way relevant to what Signal had to deal with here, an area in which I think ACLU and EFF are pretty well aligned.
> If your concern is specifically the ACLU's disagreement with recent Supreme Courts on the intended scope of Second Amendment rights, the EFF isn't going to address that either since it's out of scope for their mission. But that's in no way relevant to what Signal had to deal with here, an area in which I think ACLU and EFF are pretty well aligned.
The comments about the ACLU probably aren't about the second amendment. That's never been the ACLU's thing. It's probably about the recent backing away from the 1st amendment which has historically been the ACLU's domain.
They have limited resources and so they cannot fight every single fight. Some people object to their current method of filtering. Apparently, groups tied to neo-nazi/white-supremacy are some of the ones they filter out of consideration, but they have done so in the past.
Some people think the ACLU should fight specifically for such organizations to make a point that everyone, even hateful bigots, have the same rights.
Personally? I'm on the fence. On the one hand, given limited resources & all else being equal in two cases, why not choose the group of people who are nicer? On the other hand, if you choose the hateful group & set a precedent that even the most hateful people have the same set of rights as others, it's close to irrefutable in future cases with nicer people that they get those rights too.
As soon as you identify a label that can be used to deny free speech, that label will be applied to everything and everybody in an effort to deny free speech. It is extremely important to defend free speech. Some people get confused and think that a defense of free speech is a defense of the label.
Historically, the ACLU is one of the most well known organizations to defend free speech regardless of label. They should not create such a gaping vulnerability in their strategy.
Don't announce to the world that any case involving the word "crypto" will not be defended. Or the words "carpentry", "space", or "elephant". The issue should be free speech, not miscellaneous labels.
I think "failing to support" in the grandparent comment is too weak for some. This is Glenn Greenwald on a recent ACLU amicus brief[1]:
>> This is the first time, at least to my knowledge, that ACLU is explicitly arguing in court that the First Amendment's free speech clause has been interpreted *too broadly* by courts, and are advocating *a more restrictive view* of what free speech means.
I'm not sure about that case in particular, but on your question of
> why not choose the group of people who are nicer?
I'd say the grim batman ACLU of my alternate-history fanfic cares more about precedent than it does about defendants.
If Greenwald's high school teacher found out he was gay and started referring to him with feminine pronouns, because the teacher felt being gay feminizes you, would Greenwald just chalk that up to free speech? Or would he consider it bullying that ought to stop?
What if a white teacher spoke to the only black student in the room using his own version of AVE, and used his usual English for the rest of the class?
I don't know the answer, but I can understand the ACLU seeing a case where rights come into conflict and choosing a result that seems more just.
There appear to be two different rights in conflict there, so there's some complexity to the situation.
On the one hand there's the teachers' free speech rights, freedom from compelled speech. On the other hand are the students' civil rights protecting against discrimination.
The ACLU in that situation has decided the later should prevail over the former when it pertains to government workers & their speech while on-the-job.
Does that type of speech, refusing to respect a person's identity, have any additional legal implications being that they seem to be public employees in a public school system? Discrimination as they argue in private businesses versus government ones? IANAL, just curious
The brief summary here[1] implies that's the basis of the ACLU's reasoning:
>> Mr. Cross spoke in opposition to Policy 8040 at a school board meeting, and refused to comply with the provision...
>> While the teachers may disagree with the policy, they do not have the right to violate it in their capacity as K-12 teachers in the Loudoun County school system.
The brief was unclear about whether the teacher refused to comply in the meeting or in another circumstance, and I don't care enough to check sorry.
FWIW, I'm mostly in favour of at-will employment, and think that they should be able to suspend or get rid of him for any reason. And I'm in favour of school choice, and think that if the views of parents and teachers would be better reflected if the government weren't involved. And I'm a cynic, and believe that the only reason anyone's talking about a Virginia school is the governor's race, and it's all just entertainment for people living elsewhere.
Since several people are asking why the ACLU isn't what it once was, let me answer that.
In 1978, the ACLU successfully defended the right of neo-Nazis to march in the predominantly Jewish town of Skokie, Illinois. This action reflected their commitment to free speech, regardless of how offensive the speech might be. The movie "Skokie" and documentary "Mighty Ira" are based on this event-- I highly recommend them because this is an important piece of U.S. history.
In contrast, the modern ACLU has backed away from this stance. A leaked ACLU memo[1] says that before they take a free speech case, they will consider the "context of the proposed speech; the potential effect on marginalized communities; the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values; and the structural and power inequalities in the community in which the speech will occur."
I understand citizens need the right to voice their opinion without fear of government repression; but citizens shouldn't believe they have the right to insult and behave antisocially to other citizens.
Any kind of white supremacist behavior is not something to be treasured as freedom, because that enables their harmful behavior against other citizens.
It's only freedom of speech if it protects speech which is actually controversial. This isn't high school. People should have the right to give offense and behave antisocially, if for no other reason than because there is no one who can be trusted with the power to determine what falls into these extremely arbitrary and subjective categories.
Yes we should tolerate the speech of white supremacists and other hateful characters, because the alternative is to see reasonable statements lumped in with them. Where we should draw a clear and sharp line is at violence.
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."
- William Blackstone
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall
You prevent them from gaining power by winning debates against them and demonstrating to everyone why they're wrong.
I mean have you actually seen the "science" used to claim even the existence of different races? It's all misleading statistics and pseudoscience. You group a bunch of people together based on geographical origin and then observe some differences in the averages between the two groups, ignoring that the differences within each "race" are larger than the differences between "races," and that the lines are being drawn arbitrarily, and that even the measured averages could be different as a result of environment or culture rather than genetics.
There is no way for a Nazi to win that on the facts because the facts are against them. Which is why they have so little actual support. There are probably more trolls pretending to be Nazis than there are actual Nazis.
They're used as the boogeyman specifically because there is such widespread agreement that they're wrong.
Individuals who dared to make anthropological, social and genetic studies on ethnic groups were retaliating upon with great anger and were banished from academic life even if the scientific methodology was sound.
No one dares to do such studies anymore so we can conclude that the "good" has won.
> You prevent them from gaining power by winning debates against them and demonstrating to everyone why they're wrong.
"A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots."
It doesn't matter how solid your facts are if people are listening to vox pops of people who back their own internal beliefs.
> There is no way for a Nazi to win that on the facts because the facts are against them. Which is why they have so little actual support.
They don't need support, they just need an echo chamber to be encouraged. Pop onto stormfront and try convince a handful of posters there and see how far you get.
> There are probably more trolls pretending to be Nazis than there are actual Nazis.
If x% (where x is some suitably small number) of a group are the only ones who truly believe it, and the rest are just trolls, then increasing the population size leads to both more trolls and more Nazis. It also doesn't matter to anyone whether the person spewing vitriol is actually a Nazi or a troll when the abuse is directed at them.
I don't think any quotes are required around the research performed by Rushton & Jensen (2010)[1] and others that they build on. Doesn't it seem perfectly plausible that, much like other physical characteristics (height, body composition, heat tolerance, etc.) the meat in our skulls also varies between ethnic groups? Shouldn't this be researched and investigated like every other observation?
Once you start studying groups by linguistic origin (not "race") things become much clearer since people historically didn't really move around that much, and genetic markers are quite visible (a la 23andMe). I don't think you need to be a Nazi or a troll to be interested in any of this.
The core problem here is that our technology for discourse is basically twitter and "voting with likes". The algorithms are optimized for attention and likes, so the mob wins - not the best argument.
IF we fixed THAT problem (with new technology, an early one is https://www.kialo.com/tour, but it's not good enough), we can have what you want.
Right now, we're effectively the same tech level as the 1900s (perhaps in a more dangerous way) w.r.t finding truth or the "right" arguments
As a Black American who has fought against white supremacists in the street I would say the government has no right to prevent their free speech.
At the same time, I’m under no obligation as a private citizen to tolerate their odious speech. This even includes in business settings… At an old company I once asked our CEO to take down “sponsored content” from our home feed that was promoted by a group on the SPLC hate group list (for comparison we also regularly took down ISIS material.)
Maybe try thinking about it for a moment instead of resorting to the boring heuristic of assuming Americans are dumb zealots treasuring rights because they are brainwashed.
People like you need to stop saying things like "I understand citizens need the right to voice their opinion without fear of government repression" because this is exactly the opposite of what you want. You want views that you consider objectionable to be subject to government repression. You don't have to qualify it, just admit it.
The reason people oppose restrictions on freedom of speech are fairly obvious to anyone who has thought about the question for more than 5 minutes. The moment you start deciding which speech is and isn't legal, you have now established a mechanism to censor. Ban 'hate speech', those who define the term now control the boundaries of allowable speech, and you can guarantee bad actors will seek those powers and abuse them.
You misunderstood me. The government should not censor speech because governments tend to authoritarianism, but civil organizations also shouldn't support neonazis when they exert their freedom of speech against other citizens.
TL;DR: The government must not censor freedom, and citizens should not support acts of oppressions disguised as civil rights.
"Shouldn't behave antisocially", as in e.g. that whole asbo thing that the Brits had until very recently? I'm very glad US doesn't have anything like this:
Civil order that it is a crime to breach. So you could get slapped with one on "balance of probabilities" while becoming criminalised for something fairly arbitrary like entering an area or being drunk. I seem to recall somebody was given an ASBO forbidding them from having noisy sex - which they subsequently did and then faced criminal sanction.
>Any kind of white supremacist behavior is not something to be treasured as freedom, because that enables their harmful behavior against other citizens.
But inciting on harmful behavior against white people is somehow the right thing to do?
I believe all people should be treated against the same set of rules.
The EFF takes weird policy positions. They're against speed cameras, but in favor of the status quo (police with guns manually pulling people over for speeding in cities).
That isn't a weird policy position. The speed cameras do ALPR and can store all the results, so they build a location history of all the vehicles that weren't even breaking the law. That's bad.
It's also bad that cops pull people over arbitrarily, but that's not the part in the EFF's bailiwick, and there are other solutions than putting ALPR cameras everywhere.
It’s even worse. The police don’t pull people over for speeding anymore (that’s good, at least from the “guys with guns” perspective). But the bad part is drivers are now emboldened to drive recklessly. These people now kill and injure more than the police — looking at the latest numbers police violence is down while traffic violence is up. IMO speed and red light cameras would do a lot to reduce the use of police while still seeing traffic safety enforced.
Well said. But you could also state your final sentence as “… would do the job that police are supposed to do but aren’t…” I see what you’re getting at, though. Another related area where we could reduce their use is ticketing for vehicle window tint violations. In California, vehicles can’t have tint on the front windows because it’s quite dangerous when other people can’t see drivers. Tons violate it, and it’s historically been “enforced” as a broken tailight-esque reason to pull over POC and search them for drugs, etc. In areas where parking violations are enforced, the parking enforcement officers could easily check this and issue tickets.
Sorry what's weird about this? I assume they're against the creation of automated government databases of cars, licenses and persons (say with ML) and not tech per se
From my understanding the ACLU used to stand for the civil rights of everybody and even defended KKK members. But now they have taken sides on various social justice movements and targeted groups that oppose these sides. Instead of fighting for civil rights like they used to, they pick and choose which rights they think are okay to violate if it's for the "right cause". It goes completely against their old motto.
General trend has been that they've become more lopsided due to their donor demographics and having to serve them. Providing one counter example doesn't disprove it.
Is there something I can read that establishes the general trend? I know there was a recent leaked memo, but it seems like a weak way to establish general trend.
For the ACLU, they have lost the institutional interest in fighting for free speech. Fighting for the rights of digital Nazis to march, so to speak, is not something the ACLU defends today.
Yep... once noone defends the nazis, anyone can be branded a nazi, and you lose one more right (free speech).
And sadly, the word 'nazi' has lost all of it's meaning in the last years, and has gone from swastika carrying Hitler supporters to someone who doesn't want illegals working below minimum wage to take his job.
If people come to a different country to make a better life for themselves than they would in the countries they were originally from, what's wrong with that? If you're regarding them as sub-humans who don't deserve to work to make a decent life for themselves, rather than directing your anger at the employers who exploit those unable to rise up against the poor pay/working standards/..., we could argue over whether "Nazi" is the best word to describe those views, but it's irrelevant, we should be talking about those views. Do you think you're entitled to a better life than someone else solely based on the fact that you're born in one place and they're born in another? Do you perhaps think the responsibility lies with them to get themselves fired so that that poor employer who always wanted to employ you and pay you a decent wage but was somehow tricked by them can now do so?
There is always someone from some shithole country who's willing to do the work cheaper than you.
I live in a small european country, and literally every foreign worker is lowering the wages of all the local workers - because why offer higher pay to get a local, if you can get some cheap foreigner to do it at minimum wage? And i'm talking about legal workers... if you take in account illegals, that are willing to work below minimum wage, the situation gets even shittier for locals.
You weren't talking about legal workers, you were specifically talking about, this is an exact quote, "illegals working below minimum wage". That's what I was responding to. If you also have issues with people "from some shithole country" employed, working, and paid fully in accordance with your own country's laws and regulations, that's a different discussion, in that case the employers and employees are all doing what's expected and encouraged by your country; this is your country giving them and you a signal that your own expectations are unrealistic.
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