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by josephcsible 1333 days ago
> which highlights a point i like to make: if you wish to defend KF, first you have to justify the concrete speech being carried out on it

That's not true, though. Remember this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am... David Goldberger, a Jewish lawyer, defended actual Nazis' rights to free speech. Do you think that he thought Nazism was justified?

2 comments

i'm European, but i am familiar with the work of the ACLU at Skokie, including that detail

keywords: i'm European

meaning your appeal to an absolute right to freely speech washes right off

it's on you to defend the harassment incited and guided by KF

that includes, i'll remind you, a juvenile attempt at calling in a threat in Belfast; didn't work, they didn't know the old code-words

one example of what you'll need to defend; or you can stop digging

Thankfully, American websites are not, and never will be, subject to the jurisdiction of the E.U. or the U.K.

A lot of blood was spilled for that right.

there's a reason i explicitly chose the example of that threat phoned in re: Belfast

if you think USA-style free-speech ideas will somehow shield you if you engage in that sort of behaviour, or if you frequent the online spaces where that sort of behaviour is coordinated

you should go and have another think

besides, the eejit briefly hosted from a Netherlands DC so good luck with that whole approach ;)

No, but he happened to be wrong for it.

The NSPA's goal was never to actually hold a march. They never did hold a march in Skokie, after that defense. Their goal was to harass Jewish communities through the process of applying for the march, which Goldberger, for all his good intention, assisted them with.

As the article notes, they sent letters to a whole bunch of suburbs asking for a permit to hold a march. They never followed up with the suburbs that ignored them, nor did they march in those suburbs either.

The whole thing was a bad-faith tactic which today we'd call trolling. They weren't fighting for their right to speak freely in Skokie, they were fighting for their right to use the legal process to harass the city of Skokie.

In case anyone is curious, the article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am... linked above suggests that the NSPA's goal was in fact to hold a march in Chicago and following the Skokie decision, they apparently did in fact hold a rally in Chicago.