[UPDATE: The statement I criticize below has now been corrected by Alan Potash.]
That's the view of Alan Potash, the ADL's regional director for Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas. Pretty appalling, it seems to me — simply false as a statement of current free speech law (which it sounds like it is), and deeply misguided as a matter of what the law should be.
And in the wake of attempts to condemn Israeli policies as racist, it should be pretty clear to American Jews that such a position could easily be turned around them. After all, any university administration that takes the view that Israeli actions towards the Palestinians are racist could easily conclude that defenders of those actions are racist as well, and therefore suspended or driven off campus. Or how about Orthodox Jews (and perhaps quite a few other Jews as well) who believe that homosexuality is against God's will? Once "racist groups" lose their free speech rights, it's hard to see why "homophobic groups" wouldn't equally lose them.
What about groups that express deep religious hostility, as I've heard many Jews do with regard to the Jews for Jesus? Perhaps such hostility is justified, or perhaps not, but after "racist groups" lose their First Amendment rights, "religiously bigoted groups" might come close behind. I think free speech protection even for the "ideas we hate" is the right approach in general; but even if the ADL is narrowly focused on its own community's concerns (as some groups well might), it should still, I think, reach the same result.
Note that the director isn't even making the ostensibly narrow arguments in favor of banning speech that advocates violence, or that uses epithets, or some such. So long as you are a "racist group[]," "freedom of speech does not extend" to you. I hope the national ADL promptly condemns Mr. Potash's statements.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Anti-Defamation League Plains States Regional Director Corrects Statement on Free Speech:
- Anti-Defamation League Regional Director Asserts That "Freedom of Speech Does Not Extend to Racist Groups":
Turning Potash's statement around, I would argue, with my tongue firmly in cheek, that speech against Freedom of Speech is treasonous hate speech and should be suppressed. Go straight to jail, do not collect $200.
Assuming he is correctly characterizing the editorial, it is not just the ADL that has no understanding of the First Amendment. It is sad that organizations that should know better are perfectly willing to censor speech that they abhor. How difficult is it for them to understand that if we only allow speech that does not offend anyone’s sensibilities we no longer have free speech. Unfortunately with the Hate Crimes Prevent Act we are heading in that direction. We already have laws that punish people for actual crimes they commit. We do not need additional laws that punish people for thought crimes.
Potash seems to misunderstand the proposed hate crimes law expansion. There has to be an underlying CRIME, and mere speech that is not a clear threat is not a crime.
I tried to find the text of the editorial on omaha.com and had no luck. I probably am not skilled enough.
Potash needs to be removed from office.
The ADL has a chance here to show that it is not an un-American organization. I tend to think that the ADL is not un-American. But here is a chance to show that it believes in the same shared values as the vast majority of Americans, when it comes to a fundamental Constitutional right.
Is wryness at work here? Or is it sarcasm?
In any case, though, I took your advice, and submitted a message to Mr. Potash via the ADL site; I hope it gets to him, and I look forward to seeing his response.
However, I do think he is clearly at the very least guilty of not reading over his statement to see how it would be understood by those who don't have access to the editorial.
Perhaps someone who has access to the editorial could summarize its content. Does it, for example, argue that racist speech can be criminalized simply because it's offensive?
And keep in mind that where the ADL is concerned, 'racist' doesn't necessarily mean what anybody else would mean by it; It probably means something like, "people the ADL doesn't like". They're pretty free with that "hate group" designation of their's.
1. In response to "freedom of speech does not extend to racist groups", you could say that the freedom of speech is actually extended to the members of the group, and not the group itself. Still a very suspect position, but not as glaring wrong as the more obvious interpertation.
2. "nor give their supporters the right to threaten and intimidate others..." Could be read to apply when the threat or intimidation is already illegal.
3. "or commit acts of violence." Nothing really wrong with that part
4. "But when bigots step over the line, it is vital that law enforcement and the courts have the proper tools to respond effectively." Again could be read as recognizing a right to be bigoted, so long as you don't step over the line, and as long as the line is commiting criminal acts, no real problem.
Don't get me wrong, hate crimes laws are a very bad idea, but they are generally found constitutional (wrongly) and so his position may not be that unreasonable if read very favorably. If he doesn't clarify/retract, then sure, get the pitchforks.
Mcbain, the Armenian Genocide is by no means the only subject on which national ADL has demonstrated its hypocracy.
“Hypocracy” ?
Rule by the hypo?
That's for the three times it was used in this thread and the equal number of times it was misspelt. Three distinct ways, no less. One would think the law of averages...
My pedant meter has a limit.
Ps. "Rule by hypo?" Good one.
You may well be right, but the issue here is the coverage of the First Amendment, who is probably broader than any other country's free speech guarantee; there is no weasel wording (such as in Canada) that gives the ultimate power to decide what is allowed to the government. Are you suggesting that the legal views of other countries be imported into First Amendment jurisprudence?
Ugh. Normally I examine what I write before I post it. You can tell that I did not do so here.
Legally, I can make slurs about your mother and defend it on the grounds that freedom of speech permits it. However, morally, I have no such defense.
In any event, whether the belief that racist speech should not be legally protected is within the mainstream of Western moral or political thought, it is abhorrent and should be condemned wherever it pops up its ugly head.
1. FAIR -- its opposition to illegal immigration is racist according to the ADL, SPLC, NCLR
2. ADL -- racist against Palestinians (I totally disagree, but there are a lot of people who believe so.)
3. MEChA -- read the Plan Espiritual de Aztlan, which calls for a Bronze nation for a Bronze people.
4. MALDEF -- advocates for affirmative action for Latinos in college admissions, thus racially biased against Asians and whites.
4. SPLC -- biased against Russian immigrants which the organization views as homophobic.
5. NCLR -- racist on the basis of the name alone.
By the way, Googling +"Omaha World-Herald" +"dangers of hate" reveals what we should already have known -- in standing up for free speech, one will occasionally find oneself in extremely unsavory company. All the more reason to speak up about it, I suppose, so that the questioning of Mr. Potash can come from Prof. Volokh rather than from one of the several pages ranting about Jews and 'Judeofascism."
No, undergoverned, as in hypodermic or hypothermia. As opposed to our current hyperocracy.
a huge problem with this philosophy is that it cedes to the government the power to decide what is and isn't evil.
in a free society (iow the US), that power resides with the citizenry. we have the right to access "evil speech". we have the right to decide what is and isn't evil, and we have the right to advocate for our position even if the majority (or the government) thinks its evil.
The other huge problem with the European/Canadian philosophy is that it is simply foolish and un-historical to suppose that exceptions to free speech will not fall disproportionately on politically disfavored racial/ethnic/religious/social/political groups.
See, e.g., Canada's experience. Canada cravenly caved to the MacKinnonite/Dworkinite harm-to-women justification for banning pornography. The resulting raids and confiscations fell disproportionately heavily on gay porn and "feminist erotica." This was a shock to everyone. Except, of course, anyone who was not (a) a moron and/or (b) a MacKinnonite/Dworkinite.
I wonder whether Harold Koh disagrees.
Underpowered.
That seems to flow better from κράτος.
Of course, if you wanna cyber....
...That actually has a ring to it: “Cyber with the hypocrats, tonight.”
Don't expect a retraction. If they started retracting they would have to retract 90% of what they do.
See them for what they are, don't encourage them, and keep them away from our courts and law enfocement agencies.
Whatever he might have said, I assure you he was not unfamiliar with hypocrisy, regardless of how it was spelt.
(FYI, meaningless data category: I actually bought a gram of hash in Hannibal, MO in 1973 (Twain's birthplace sort of.) Red Lebanese. It had a refreshing bouquet. Paid 20 bucks. Damn thing lasted till Tiajuana, many weeks later.
Imagine the poetic denouement of the story could I now add that I read Huck Finn during that pseudo flight of fancy. Instead, there's no more to the story.)
The ADL was founded in 1913. How prescient of them.
They are about the victory of their vision of a Greater Israel extending from the Nile to the Euphrates, occupied only by Orthodox Jews.
Not only are they going to have to get rid of all of the Palestinians but most of the Jews in Israel. Now that you vented your spleen Jon, do us a favor and crawl back under your rock.
Giving him the benefit of doubt, I would interpret "freedom of speech does not extend to racist groups" to mean that the formation of criminal organizations (like the ones he seeks to shut down with the assistance of the FBI and other law enforcement) is not an activity protected by the First Amendment. The incidents that I have talked with him about usually involved acts of vandalism and/or trespass. He has never indicated that the speech content alone is illegal.
Let us keep in mind that the length of letters that will qualify for publication are often very short. Precise language is not always possible in that format.
The ADL wasn't always controlled by the group that controls it today. I used to be a supporter before that happened.
For the record, my materal ancestors were Jewish. I have the legal right to immigrate to Israel. But not to an Israel that pursues an imperialist agenda or subverts the U.S. Constitution, which I took an oath to preserve, protect and defend.
For the record, my materal ancestors were Jewish.
And the relevance of that is? [Some of my best friends are …?]
But not to an Israel that pursues an imperialist agenda or subverts the U.S. Constitution
Do you realize that accusing Israel of subverting the U.S. constitution make no sense at all? No foreign country supports the U.S. constitution. Every country support its own aims that may or may not be beneficial to the U.S., but it has nothing to do with the U.S. constitution. Once again you are letting your irrational hatred of Israel cloud your judgment.
Every ethnic group has its normal complement of scoundrels and a bunch of them are in control of the ADL, which has a long history of activities that can only be considered subversive of the Constitution, such as indoctrinating conferences of state chief justices to suppress pro se litigants and deny the rights of dissenters.
(http://volokh.com/posts/1246394966.shtml#609113)
Potash lied. In AG Holder’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he repeatedly emphasized that the law would NOT “add protection for all citizens from violent acts of intolerance.” You have to be a member of a protected class. Holder cited blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals and Jews. (If you think that the average Jew would be protected, I have a great deal for you on a slightly used bridge.)
BTW, I hadn’t heard that the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause had been repealed.
www.adl.org/20faq/20q.asp
Setting aside your previously-expressed nuttiness about pro se litigants, what on earth are you talking about? When the ADL ever do any such thing?
What happens is that once extremists get control of an organization like the ADL, they tend to keep and increase control because moderates who don't want to support an extremist organization leave.
In another thread and at another time, I would love to learn just what process the Nazis used. They did not catch every Jew, but they certainly had some procedure for classifying people. Whatever system they used, it was good enough.
If the ADL is advocating making holocaust denial a crime in the United States, so that the application of the label "hate speech" had some actual legal consequence, I would care.
If, on the other hand, the ADL is simply engaging in response speech by affixing a label to you or your speech, I don't see why I should care. The ADL is free to call your view "hate speech" or "silly speech" or "nonsense" or "impenetrable rutabaga" or anything it likes. Why should we care?
[P.S. -- the proposed federal hate crimes law, whatever its flaws, does not criminalize holocaust denial or minimalization, so harp not on that string.]
The ADL would just LOVE to have holocaust denial be made a crime in the US -- holocaust denial is a crime in several countries of Europe.
David Nieporent moaned,
Whether or not I am an "ill-informed crank" has absolutely nothing to do with the point I was making, bozo, and that point was presenting an example of the ADL's opposition to freedom of speech.
The introduction of the book "IBM and the Holocaust" by Edwin Black says the same thing I am saying, i.e., that Jew identification was a big problem for the Nazis, but when Black says it he is regarded as an expert historian but when I say it I am regarded as a crackpot. The book introduction says,
The book claims that the Nazis identified all of the Jews of Europe by using IBM Hollerith machines to process data stored on billions of IBM cards, but that claim is absurd -- all those primitive machines could do was just read, sort, and merge a few cards at a time. Even a former chief historian of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC said that the machines were never used to identify individuals for deportation.
Cite for the proposition that the ADL has advocated for the criminalization of denial of the holocaust in the U.S.?
(Or are they doing it only in secret? You know, like a cabal, or something?)
Repeated question: if they are only calling your tripe "hate speech," but that has no legal consequence, why should we care?
The faction is centered, in Israel, in the West Bank Settlers and the Likud Party, and it extends, in the United States, to a coalition that includes AIPAC, the ADL, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Their memberships, activities, publications, and rhetoric are overlapping and coordinated.
It and other members of its coalition are behind the efforts to try to unduly influence judges against political dissenters discussed in Revolting Judges: Continuing Education Credit Prejudices Judges, by June Wisniewski. I have a copy of the 1996 videotape mentioned in which an ADL agent indoctrinates state supreme court judges. To their credit, the final report of the conference did not seem to buy into that effort at indoctrination, but one has to wonder, given some behavior on the bench, how much it may have unduly prejudiced individual judges.
Now, it's true that most of these people are pro se, because it's hard to get admitted to the bar without (a) learning something about the law and (b) not being a paranoid schizophrenic. But the fact that they're pro se is incidental; courts need to know how to deal with them because they're nutjobs, not because they're pro se; nothing in that packet of materials has anything to do with pro se parties in general.
Teaching courts how to handle people who try to disrupt their functioning is simply good administrative practice. Judges are used to disruption from ordinary people who simply misbehave in court, but people who have elaborate delusions about the legal system can cause a quite different set of problems for those who are unprepared.
(But guess what? It doesn't. You have to read beyond a book's "introduction" sometimes, in order to learn what it has to say. It doesn't say that the Holocaust couldn't have happened without IBM.)
Also, you don't get to dismiss research as "absurd" just because it ruins your pet theories, or because some unnamed person may have disagreed with it. (Note that the actual debate among actual historians is whether IBM machines were used, not whether the Holocaust happened.)
If one examines the video one finds that that is not what the lecturers are doing. They are not advising on court administration. They are advocating the judges not only dismiss, but sanction, people with real grievances who have certain attributes or make certain kinds of arguments. Now, granted some of those people have latched onto unsound legal ideas. (So have many lawyers and judges.) But most of them have suffered real abuses that deserve the concern of those to claim to seek justice. The lecture in the video is that of a prosecutor in an ex parte meeting with the judges. Every judge who attended that lecture should recuse himself from any such cases. More to the point, the judges should not have lecturers that try to influence them on how to make legal decisions in cases that come before.
I suppose I need to put that video online. There is no good substitute for viewing it.
That document is only one thing presented to prejudice the judges against a class of litigants. The main thing is what was delivered orally. It is much like the other documents that have come out:
* Project Megiddo (1999)
* FBI domestic terrorist brochure (1999)
* MIAC Special Report: The Modern Militia Movement (2009)
* Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment (2009)
* Domestic Extremism Lexicon (March 26, 2009)
Behind all of these were oral "briefings" by the usual cast of characters. If you examine them carefully you may notice a pattern.
You are really getting absurd here. I don't have to agree with all of a book's claims just because I agree with one of a book's claims. And one of my main reasons for citing the book was to show that when Edwin Black says Jew identification was a big problem for the Nazis he is regarded as an expert historian but when I say the same thing I am regarded as a crackpot.
Wrong -- the book's introduction itself says that it couldn't have happened without IBM (see my comment of 7.2.2009 9:57am for the context of this quote) --
Also, a book review in the New York Times says that Black assumed that the holocaust could not have happened without the IBM machines:
Nieporent says,
I don't give a tinker's dam what the "actual" debate is -- I am introducing a new element into the debate. Edwin Black said that Jew identification was a big problem for the Nazis, which the Nazis supposedly solved by using the IBM machines. I assert that those primitive IBM machines, which could only read, sort, and merge a few cards at a time, were incapable of solving this problem, even if all of the necessary data had been available. The question then arises: if the IBM machines did not solve the problem of Jew identification, then how did the Nazis solve this problem?
Also, please note that I use the term "systematic holocaust," not just "holocaust." By "systematic holocaust," I mean a holocaust in which there was objective and reliable identification of all Jews and all non-Jews.
The problem with you dogmatists -- e.g., holocaust dogmatists and evolution dogmatists -- is that you assume that the skeptics can never be right on anything.
Their methods are reasonably well documented, and don't involve the use of computers:
1. Requiring everyone to register their ethno-religious identity, and having them foolishly do so accurately.
2. Obtaining copies (or originals) of membership rolls of synagogues and churches.
3. Using public records of citizens, which often provided clues to their ethno-religious identities.
4. Business records, and a presumption that Jews would tend to do business with other Jews.
5. Accusations by neighbors, who, in mainly small and stable communities, tended to know one another.
6. Presuming anyone who "looked Jewish" was unless proved otherwise.
Keep in mind that it wasn't just Jews who were rounded up. Also included were Gypsies, Slavs, Middle Easterners, homosexuals, communists, and anyone who was suspiciously successful or seemed too independent. Neighbors were encouraged to denounce their more successful competitors, so that afterward they could seize their stuff or their businesses. It was not a good time to stand apart from the herd.
If someone has suffered a real abuse -- for instance one of the homeowners in Kelo -- and rather than making arguments based on fact and law, relies instead on some theory involving a conspiracy among the Tri-Lateral Commission, the Queen of England and Talfamadorian emissaries, he should be sanctioned for wasting the court's time, unless it can be shown that he was acting out of mental illness for which he agrees to be treated.
That the Nazis may have missed some Jews here and there or operated at less than 100% efficiency does not mean the Holocaust was not systematic. Moreover, it was efficient enough that the Nazis succeeded in destroying not only most of the Jewish population of Europe, but also a thriving Jewish culture, with its own language (Yiddish), customs, manner of dress, names, community institutions and folkways.
Like I said, you have to read beyond the introduction to a book.
You forgot to mention that the Jews were identified by the big word "Jew" imprinted on their driver's licenses, passports, and Social Security cards.
Jon, you don't know what in the hell you are talking about. You are just pulling ideas out of the air. Anyone can do that. The issue of identification of Jews and non-Jews, which should be central to holocaust studies, has been almost completely ignored. As Edwin Black said, "few have asked."
It is commonly claimed that many of the Jewish victims of the holocaust did not even think of themselves as Jews.
David M. Nieporent said,
No, I don't say that the holocaust did not happen at all -- I say that a "systematic" Jewish holocaust didn't happen.
David M. Nieporent said,
I presume that the author of that NY Times book review read beyond the introduction to the book, and he said that Black assumed that the holocaust could not have happened without the IBM machines.
I would add that the Jew identification methods you mentioned are extremely unreliable.
yankev: Nicholas, I agree with your comments about the bill, including the 14th Amendment, but I think the law (if bill is passed) would be invoked on behalf of a Jewish victim if the defendant were from an acknowledged list of bad guys -- e.g. neo-Nazi or skinhead, KKK, Christian Identity. If the defendant were Muslim, experience suggests that any racial, ethnic or similar animus would be ignored.
7.1.2009 12:15pm
No doubt. "Obama" seeks to completely politicize America's legal and economic systems.
“….The introduction of the book ‘IBM and the Holocaust’ by Edwin Black says the same thing I am saying, i.e., that Jew identification was a big problem for the Nazis, but when Black says it he is regarded as an expert historian but when I say it I am regarded as a crackpot. The book introduction says… To Nazis, Jews were not just those who practiced Judaism, but those of Jewish blood, regardless of their assimilation, intermarriage, religious activity, or even conversion to Christianity. Only after Jews were identified could they be targeted for asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and ultimately extermination. To search generations of communal, church, and governmental records all across Germany--and later throughout Europe--was a cross-indexing task so monumental, it called for a computer. But in 1933, no computer existed . . . .
Fafarman: The book claims that the Nazis identified all of the Jews of Europe by using IBM Hollerith machines to process data stored on billions of IBM cards, but that claim is absurd… Even a former chief historian of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC said that the machines were never used to identify individuals for deportation.
Larry Fafarman 7.3.2009 1:08am:
Nieporent says,
Note that the actual debate among actual historians is whether IBM machines were used, not whether the Holocaust happened.
LF: I don't give a tinker's dam what the "actual" debate is -- I am introducing a new element into the debate. Edwin Black said that Jew identification was a big problem for the Nazis, which the Nazis supposedly solved by using the IBM machines. I assert that those primitive IBM machines… were incapable of solving this problem, even if all of the necessary data had been available….
Also, please note that I use the term "systematic holocaust," not just "holocaust." By "systematic holocaust," I mean a holocaust in which there was objective and reliable identification of all Jews and all non-Jews.
The problem with you dogmatists -- e.g., holocaust dogmatists and evolution dogmatists -- is that you assume that the skeptics can never be right on anything.
NS: Larry Fafarman, you claim that you are “introducing a new element into the debate,” and demand that you be taken seriously. What you are doing is making an extraordinary historical claim. The more extraordinary a claim, the stronger the evidence must be in support of it. However, you offer no evidence, but instead an argument from authority: An “expert historian,” whom you otherwise hold in contempt, agrees with you, regarding your one extraordinary assertion.
Guess what? That’s not how scholarly debate proceeds. Real scholars don’t say, “He’s an ‘expert historian,’ so you have to accept what he says.” Only ignoramuses talk like that.
Edwin Black’s publisher doesn’t even assert that Black is an “expert historian,” but rather a “Washington-based writer.” You couldn’t even be honest about his job title?!
The Nazis had no problem whatsoever identifying Jews: Every German newborn’s religion was registered at birth. The Nazis’ problem was in identifying gentiles who had Jewish ancestors.
You’re not a skeptic, Larry, you’re a liar.
Perhaps they believe this because Leviticus, Chapter 20, states that it's an "abomination", and that no man shall lie with another man. The source for this injunction is given as the word of the Lord.
--What you are doing is making an extraordinary historical claim.--
No, the ones who are claiming that there was a "systematic" Jewish holocaust when the Nazis had no objective and reliable ways of identifying Jews and non-Jews are the ones who are making the extraordinary historical claims. My claims are no more extraordinary than the claims of the boy who said that the emperor has no clothes.
--Edwin Black’s publisher doesn’t even assert that Black is an “expert historian,” but rather a “Washington-based writer.”--
He has studied the issue of Jew identification more than most holocaust historians -- that is why I called him an "expert." Also, my point was that he is regarded as an expert for saying the same thing that makes me regarded as a crackpot.
--The Nazis had no problem whatsoever identifying Jews: Every German newborn’s religion was registered at birth.--
Do you have a reliable reference for that? And what about all of the Jews in other European countries? Also, the Nazis just rounded up people en masse -- there wasn't time for individual identification.
--The Nazis’ problem was in identifying gentiles who had Jewish ancestors.--
So how did the Nazis do that? You gave no answer.
If the Nazis had attempted a "systematic" Jewish holocaust, we would have heard more complaints from people who thought that they were mistakenly identified as Jews.
--You’re not a skeptic, Larry, you’re a liar.--
You are so full of living crap that it is coming out your ears, dunghill.
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