The title of this post is meant to stir up bad feelings in your gut. It’s meant to make you angry at the ACLU. How dare they defend Nazis? Don’t they know how evil they are? They were responsible for killing six million Jews! (The other five million murdered undesirables are often overlooked.)
The title showed up in my Google Alert the other day and comes from Stop the ACLU. If the American National Socialist Workers Party of Roanoke, VA had any kind of larger presence, I’m sure there’d be similar articles all over the place. When I read that kind of sensationalist headline, it makes me want to pull out my wallet and donate every penny I have to the ACLU.
It’s not that I support neo-Nazis, but I support their rights of free speech and peaceful demonstration. Don’t like what they represent? Counter-demonstrate. That’s what makes this country great. Repressing speech is never the answer and doesn’t change anyone’s minds. If anything, it makes them more angry.
Whenever I see pressure to silence a group of people, no matter who they are, it makes me cheer them on. I love watching people stand up and voice their opinions, no matter how twisted or outside of the norm they may be. It blows my mind how many Western countries have hate speech laws, and that it’s illegal to display a swastika in most of Europe. Are they really that afraid of words or symbols that people must be jailed over them?
The ACLU takes a lot of heat for the clients they take on. The aforementioned article specifically notes Nazis, NAMBLA, terrorists, felons, drug dealers, and murderers. These just so happen to be the groups that no one else wants to defend, and in my opinion the ones that need it the most. If the ACLU didn’t defend them, I don’t think anyone else would. That’s the scariest part of all.