ACLU Changes Policy

The ACLU has been under increased public pressure the last few days for defending Nazis. I'm of two minds about it.

The ACLU’s Virginia branch defended the right of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other groups under the banner “Unite the Right” to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a Charlottesville park.

And technically, that is their civil right. I don't think the ACLU should be defending them on any charges of violence, though, and I don't think they do. On the other hand, if they are protesting and carrying arms, both of those things are protected by at least some state laws.

The revised policy marries the 97-year-old civil-rights group’s First Amendment work with the organization’s stance on firearms, which aligns with many municipalities and states that bar protesters from carrying weapons.

“If a protest group insists, ‘No, we want to be able to carry loaded firearms,’ well, we don’t have to represent them. They can find someone else,” Mr. Romero said, adding that the decision was in keeping with a 2015 policy adopted by the ACLU’s national board in support of “reasonable” firearm regulation.

[...]

Top officials at ACLU branches in California echoed Mr. Romero’s comments in a statement posted online Wednesday. “If white supremacists march into our towns armed to the teeth and with the intent to harm people, they are not engaging in activity protected by the United States Constitution,” they said.

There's the rub. How do you prove intent to harm if they've just asked for permission to march? And why would they need guns if they intended to harm? James Fields just harmed, injured and killed with a car.

For decades, the ACLU has defended white supremacists and other hate groups against government efforts to curb their speech, driven by the belief that carve-outs to the First Amendment weaken its protections for everyone.

And I agree. But maybe we need to be specific about what is speech. Marching to intimidate is not spech. And, as I interpret it, the First Amendment is a guarantee to protect citizens against government.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Mr. Romero explained that the displays of force can suppress speech through intimidation.

And that's more to the point than intent to harm.

[A] new generation of ACLU members and donors, who surged to the group after the election of President Donald Trump, know the group primarily as a champion of causes typically aligned with the left, like pressing for greater immigrant and LGBT rights, and reducing criminal penalties.

[...]

About 30,000 members left the ACLU in the late 1970s, after the Illinois branch represented a neo-Nazi group that sought to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, home to thousands of survivors of the Holocaust.

I wouldn't have left the organization for that, but I would protest it.  That appears to me to be an obvious act of pure intimidation on the part of the Nazis.  And that's indefensible in my mind.  The assholes could have marched somewhere else.

I'd say the ACLU was up against a loss in members, thus revenue, over this Charlottesville incident, and that's why they're making this change. I myself am an ACLU member, and I'd be supporting the organization either way.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.