The brazen appearance of white supremacist groups in Nashville left the city grappling with how to confront hateful speech without violating First Amendment protections.
They first arrived at the beginning of July: dozens of masked white supremacists, shuffling out of U-Hauls, to march through Nashville carrying upside-down American flags.
A week later, members of a separate neo-Nazi group, waving giant black flags with red swastikas, paraded along the city’s famed strip of honky-tonks and celebrity-owned bars. The neo-Nazis poured into the historic Metro courthouse to disrupt a City Council meeting, harassed descendants of Holocaust survivors and yelled racist slurs at young Black children performing on a downtown street.
The appearance of white nationalists on the streets of a major American city laid bare the growing brazenness of the two groups, the Patriot Front and the Goyim Defense League. Their provocations enraged and alarmed civic leaders and residents in Nashville, causing the city to grapple with how to confront the groups without violating free speech protections.
Arrest them for what exactly? Is disrupting a city council meeting anything but a civil infraction?
I don’t want this sort of thing going on, but what law would justify jail time?
I mean maybe they did do something to justify it, but I don’t know that disrupting a city council meeting should land people in jail. People also disrupt city council meetings when they try to pass anti-queer ordinances. And they should.
Criminal trespass, easy. Fuck, that’s levied all the time as a club against left-wing protesters. Yet when actual neonazis show up, they get nothing? Fuck that.
Most city council meetings are legally open to the public. It is in fact their main purpose.
I’m used to normal city council meetings being private, and public ones being the exception.
They’re open to the public unless certain members are asked to leave.
A public building can still kick someone out, and if they don’t leave, then that’s trespassing.
I think the answer to that is not ‘also arrest the Nazis,’ it’s ‘don’t arrest the left-wing protesters either.’
Balancing the scales doesn’t solve the problem.
And neither does playing by the gentleman’s rules of boxing when your opponent is using brass knuckles. Fucking “They go low, we go high”? Did we not learn our lesson? If a weapon is used, the correct answer is to make the opposition see why that weapon was banned in the first place - it’s the same reason why many signatories of the Geneva Protocol allow for retaliation if chemical weapons are used against them.
So left-wing protesters should continue to be arrested as long as Nazis are also arrested? Really?
… what? Not arresting Nazis isn’t going to magically un-arrest left-wing protesters.
It’s also not going to arrest Nazis that have already done these things. So how about we don’t arrest anyone for protesting and just make it legal from now on?
You’re fucking kidding me, right? You don’t pre-arrest people. You arrest people after they’ve done shit.
God, why didn’t we think of that brilliant solution before? How many left-wing lawyers and political organizations have simply overlooked that we can just make it legal to protest?
I see, this is one of these “never try” situations. We could never stop left-wing protesters from being arrested so we should never try to stop it and advocate for that to end and instead just call for other people to be arrested too.
Because we shouldn’t want people to have rights, we should want other people’s rights taken away.
I’m sure police chiefs will get right on that
I’m sure police chiefs will get right on arresting Nazis too. What’s your point? We shouldn’t advocate for not arresting people for protesting?
Left-wing protestors not getting arrested isn’t even on the table here, so I don’t see why the argument should be couched based on that.
Why isn’t it on the table? Shouldn’t it be on the table?
Because allowing these nazis to continue marching in the street will have zero impact on what happens to left-wing protestors, and denying these nazis the right to march on the streets will also have zero impact on what happens to left-wing protestors.
Okay, but you said left-wing protesters not getting arrested isn’t on the table. Why not? Why shouldn’t we do what we can to change that?
Left-wing protestors respect the social contract. NAZIs don’t, and therefore do not deserve to be protected by it.
People don’t deserve equal rights under the law? Are you sure that’s the position you want to take up? Because it sounds like a very Republican position.
Punching NAZIs is always self-defense, even if they haven’t punched you yet. 'Cause they’re going to, 'cause that’s what NAZIs do.
So you are saying that yes, the law should be applied unequally.
As I said, Republicans agree with that position. You and they are just at odds with who the same laws should help and who the same laws should oppress.
Free speech for me and not for thee has been one of their modus operandi for a long time now.
Good point: the correct answer is, don’t treat them equally, because they don’t act equally. What we should be doing is exactly the opposite of what we are doing: fucking-up the NAZIs while leaving the left-wing protestors alone.
This is not hypocrisy, by the way. This is a simple application of consequences: those who do not respect the social contract do not deserve to be protected by it.
It may not be hypocrisy, but it is suggesting that the law continue to be applied unequally (just the opposite way around), which is definitely not a progressive position.
Arrest any and all groups that storm in and disrupt government functions, simple as that
Which means that people in the government can argue that virtually anything the government does is a “government function.” Mayor’s press conference? Government function. Better arrest those protesters. Governor’s mansion? It has public tours. That’s a government function. Better arrest those protestors.
Look what happened without that law when a president wanted a photo op with a Bible in front of a church. And you want to make that even easier?
You can protest outside the building perfectly fine, storming into the chambers and stopping the agenda is blatant disruption and I won’t argue it.
But how do you make it clear that is the government function that can’t be disrupted but the press conference afterward can because it does not count as a government function?
Don’t enter government grounds for your protests… do it outside the building.
Outside the building is often government grounds too. Those buildings can be in plazas which are entirely government-owned.
So, again, you’re saying you can’t protest the press conference (except from a great distance).
After seeing federal agents literally kidnapping people off the streets of Portland for “looking like protesters,” yes absolutely they can arrest them even if the charges are bullshit or won’t stick.
Not if they don’t get paid for it.
Civil disobedience can get you arrested, and while you might beat the rap, you can’t beat the ride.