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