From Skokie to Charlottesville

2019 ◽  
pp. 54-71
Author(s):  
Ulrich Baer
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Legal Decision ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
Legal Precedent ◽  
White Supremacists ◽  
The Right

This chapter argues that the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in summer 2017, present a watershed moment when the general public realized that free speech can become weaponized to undercut discourse and destroy the social order. At a widely publicized event in 1977, a small group of neo-Nazis won the right, in a court decision, to march in a small town in Illinois. That legal decision set the cultural and legal precedent for the mainstream attitude toward hate speech for several decades. Critically, that legal decision was matched by public condemnations of anti-Semitism and racism by political figures all the way up to the US president. When a group of white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville in the summer of 2017 and murdered or come to demonstrate a, the US president failed to unequivocally condemn these events. The chapter examines the assumption that tolerating hate speech does not mean condoning it in light of these two events.

scholarly journals Antisemitism in the Urban Dictionary and the Responsibilities of Online Publishers

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3.1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Daniel Allington
Keyword(s):  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
Free Expression ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Doing Business ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Right ◽  
Internet Companies

This article focuses on antisemitic and racist content in the Urban Dictionary: a global top-1000 website built upon user-generated content. It argues that the Urban Dictionary’s founding principles have directly facilitated the site’s exploitation as a platform for the dissemination of antisemitic hate speech and white supremacist ideology. These principles can be seen as typifying the free speech absolutism that became dominant within the US tech industry during the 1990s. However, the right to free expression cannot reasonably be taken to exempt internet companies from responsibility for content whose publication they facilitate. The article concludes by arguing that websites such as the Urban Dictionary are essentially publishers, and that the solution to the problem of their indulgence of big-ots may be for those who do not wish to be associated with bigotry to refrain from doing business with institutions that publish content that they consider abhorrent. Keywords: alt-right, antizionism, brand contamination, definitions, dictionaries, free speech, Urban Dictionary, user-generated content, Web 2.0

Freedom of Speech

2018 ◽  
pp. 305-354
Author(s):  
Sandra Fredman
Keyword(s):  
First Amendment ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
Section Viii ◽  
The Right

This chapter assesses the theories justifying freedom of speech (Section II). Section III considers how free speech is protected by human rights instruments. The absence of an express limitation clause in the US First Amendment contrasts with other jurisdictions, which permit justifiable limitations. Sections IV–VII consider how courts have dealt with the most burning issues confronted in all of these jurisdictions: whether freedom of speech protects subversive speech, pornography, and hate speech. Where the limits of liberal tolerance lie remains a challenge for courts. While the harm principle provides a starting point, much depends on how speech is seen to cause harm. Section VIII asks whether the right-bearer includes not just the speaker, but also the recipient of speech and assesses the role of freedom of information. The chapter concludes that freedom of speech should go further than curbing State power to censor speech, creating conditions of genuine equality.

Legal Weapons for the Weak? Democratizing the Force of Words in an Uncivil Society

2001 ◽  
Vol 26 (04) ◽  
pp. 847-890 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orville Lee
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Symbolic Power ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Right

First Amendment absolutists and proponents of speech regulation are locked in a normative stalemate over the best way to diminish racial “hate speech.” I argue that this stalemate can be overcome by considering a more expansive theory of the “force of words” and the risks the right of free speech entails for individuals. Drawing on a cultural theory of symbolic power, I discuss the merits and limitations of two recent texts which redefine hate speech as discriminatory conduct. As an alternative to this strategy, I develop an analytical framework for describing the social risks the right of free speech entails, and propose juridical and deliberative-democratic remedies that might redistribute and attenuate these risks. Cultural and legal theory can find common ground in the analysis of the undemocratic effects of symbolic power. Such common ground can be achieved if legal theorists consider the force of words as a problem for democracy and if cultural theorists consider the resources provided by democratic institutions and practices for the redistribution of the social risks of speech.

Confessions of a Free Speech Lawyer

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney A. Smolla
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Task Force ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gang Rape ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

This personal and frank book offers an insider's view on the violent confrontations in Charlottesville during the “summer of hate.” Blending memoir, courtroom drama, and a consideration of the unhealed wound of racism in our society, the book shines a light on the conflict between the value of free speech and the protection of civil rights. The author has spent his career in the thick of these tempestuous and fraught issues, from acting as lead counsel in a famous Supreme Court decision challenging Virginia's law against burning crosses, to serving as co-counsel in a libel suit brought by a fraternity against Rolling Stone magazine for publishing an article alleging that one of the fraternity's initiation rituals included gang rape. The author has also been active as a university leader, serving as dean of three law schools and president of one and railing against hate speech and sexual assault on US campuses. Well before the tiki torches cast their ominous shadows across the nation, the city of Charlottesville sought to relocate the Unite the Right rally; the author was approached to represent the alt-right groups. Though the author declined, he came to wonder what his history of advocacy had wrought. Feeling unsettlingly complicit, the author joined the Charlottesville Task Force, and realized that the events that transpired there had meaning and resonance far beyond a singular time and place. Why, he wonders, has one of our foundational rights created a land in which such tragic clashes happen all too frequently?

Where to limit the freedom of speech? Analysis in the context of the First Amendment to the US Constitution and the fighting words doctrine

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-256
Author(s):  
Karolina Palka
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
Socialist Party Of America ◽  
The Right

This article is about the limits of the right to free speech. The first section provides a brief introduction to this topic, primarily in the context of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The second section describes the case of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, which was fundamental to the topic of this paper because the United States Supreme Court created the so-called "fighting words" doctrine based on it. In the next two sections, two court cases are presented that perfectly demonstrate the limits of the right to free speech in the United States: Snyder v. Phelps and Village of Skokie v. National Socialist Party of America. The fifth part shows the right to freedom of speech in the context of Polish civil, criminal, and constitutional law, as well as acts of international law binding on Poland. The last part is a short summary.

The Lives That Matter

2020 ◽  
pp. 135-156
Author(s):  
Anna L. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Racial Equality ◽  
Competing Values ◽  
Life Challenges ◽  
Moral Problems ◽  
White Supremacists

This chapter examines the moral problems raised by the “campus tour” of white nationalist Richard Spencer. This provides a way to reflect on some of the issues raised in and by moral dilemmas as a strategy within ethical theory, including their helpfulness for addressing real-life challenges. It also shows the power of practice to put familiar moral dilemmas in a new light. In the case of Spencer, and hate speech generally, a practice-focused approach enables us to see beyond the tension between two competing values of racial equality and free speech. That familiar framing leaves out the lived experience of people who are concretely threatened by white supremacists, the actual practices of those supremacists, and the relationships and structures of the society in which both racists and their victims live.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Anushka Singh
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
University Of California ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Mob Violence ◽  
A Chain ◽  
The Right ◽  
The University ◽  
Public Lecture

On 1 February 2017 at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, mob violence erupted on campus with 1,500 protesters demanding the cancellation of a public lecture by Milo Yiannopoulos, a British author notorious for his alleged racist and anti-Islamic views.1 Consequently, the event was cancelled triggering a chain of reactions on the desirability and limits of freedom of expression within American democracy. The Left-leaning intellectuals and politicians were accused of allowing the mob violence to become a riot on campus defending it in the name of protest against racism, fascism, and social injustice. In defending the rights of the protesters to not allow ‘illiberal’ or hate speech on campus, however, many claimed that the message conveyed was that only liberals had the right to free speech....

A Call from the Task Force

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Rodney A. Smolla
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Task Force ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Virginia Beach ◽  
The Right ◽  
Constitutional Protections ◽  
The City

This chapter introduces the task force created by Governor Terry McAuliffe in Richmond, Virginia that are tasked to study the racial violence in the city of Charlottesville during the summer of 2017. It mentions the violence in Richmond that claimed the life of Heather Heyer when a white supremacist, James Alex Fields Jr., slammed his speeding car into a crowd of counter-protesters confronting a “Unite the Right” rally. This chapter explains the work of the task force, which requires them to deeply investigate the constitutional protections of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and the rules of engagement governing what society could or could not do when confronted with racial supremacist groups rallying in a city. It also describes the famous free speech case called Virginia vs. Black involving vicious racist hate speech. The case involved a cross-burning rally of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in rural western Virginia in 1998 and a second cross-burning incident in Virginia Beach in the yard of an African American, James Jubilee.

US Social Welfare Policy: The Reagan Record and Legacy

1998 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN O'CONNOR
Keyword(s):  
Family Support ◽  
Bill Clinton ◽  
Social Welfare Policy ◽  
George Bush ◽  
Social Provision ◽  
The Social ◽  
Family Support Act ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Right

This paper reviews the Reagan administration's attack on the US welfare system during the 1980s. The paper considers the origins, provisions and impact of Reagan's three major pieces of retrenchment legislation: the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, the Social Security Amendments of 1983, and the Family Support Act of 1988. It is argued that Reagan's record in retrenching welfare was limited in budgetary terms, but was successful in making welfare programmes more restrictive. Reagan's welfare legacy is assessed in terms of his attempts at restructuring social provision and shifting the welfare debate to the right. The paper concludes by asserting that Reagan's critique of, and attack on, social provision was accepted by his presidential successors, George Bush and Bill Clinton.

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