Rich boys like Richard Spencer have had their speech heard way too much. How much more do white men need to be protected? Overwhelmingly, they are the ones writing our news, controlling our government, hoarding all of our wealth, judging us in court proceedings, shaping our academic thought, determining who we should fight in wars, controlling our places of work, and more. They don\u2019t do these things because they\u2019re any better than anyone else at these things. They do them because they\u2019ve created a self-perpetuating system that keeps them in power and crushes the rest of us \u2013 people of color, women, indigenous people, the poor, and the all \u2013 into the raw labor that keeps the world going. Hundreds of subtle and unsubtle cues fool many of us into thinking white men are better than the rest of us.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s time to turn our ear to the people whose voices have been suppressed. Instead of worrying so much about whether these spoiled men have their special little podium from which they are allowed to organize for genocide, we should be focusing our concern on increasing the amount of airtime for voices that have historically been marginalized.<\/p>\n
2) Free Speech Has Not Led Us to Continuous Progress for People of Color.<\/strong><\/p>\n The proof is in the pudding, right? If free and open debate on important ideas worked to simply allow the best ideas to rise in popularity, then become law, we would have seen that working in our history, yes? Let\u2019s look at an example that all of our liberal friends will agree is important: Ending the oppression of black people in the United States, and moving in the direction of racial equality.<\/p>\n More than 180,000 black people fought<\/a> in the Civil War for their freedom from slavery. Afterwards, they were technically free, but a massive white backlash led to the formation of the KKK, the segregation of black people from all walks of white life, and white people torching homes and lynching black people. (This, by the way, was a topic of investigative reporting by Ida B. Wells, the legendary journalist from which Idavox<\/em> draws its name.)<\/p>\n Free speech was used not to allow erudite debate in the pearly halls of truth, but to further debase and incriminate black people in white minds. Minstrel songs implied that black people wanted to go back to slavery out of a sense of nostalgia, and early silent films showed \u201csilly, lying, chicken-stealing black idiots.\u201d (From \u201cLies My Teacher Told Me,\u201d 2007, Loewen, p164). Newspapers floated racist attacks and false notions that were used to drive black people out of skilled and unskilled professions.<\/p>\n This movement of racism following the Civil War<\/a>, a period known as \u201cReconstruction,\u201d happened in a context of free speech. And it had the impact of reconstructing racism, after an initial glimmer of hope once slavery was made illegal. No, there was not a nice, happy, uninterrupted trend toward emancipation for black people.<\/p>\n But free speech was alive and well, so shouldn\u2019t it have contributed to openness and celebration of diversity? Shouldn\u2019t it have led to our formation of a more just, equal, better society? No, it didn\u2019t. The only thing that did change the situation of people of color in the United States was the Civil Rights Movement, when black people rose up and took their power back, mounting popular resistance. Only then did circumstances began to get a little better for people of color \u2013 a struggle that is obviously still ongoing, frustratingly slow in fits and starts, with questionable progress in this racist country.<\/p>\n It is worth noting that right wing factions are attempting to once again use their speech to degrade people of color, and generate false notions about them. We must stop them from acting upon their toxic words.<\/p>\n 3) The United States was Founded on Popular Protest, not Free Speech.<\/strong><\/p>\n For anyone who believes that this country was founded upon the free exchange of ideas, I\u2019d suggest a simple glance into the hotbed that actually did lead to the American Revolution,<\/a> which pulled us out from under the rule of the British government (but not the bankers, merchants, and early capitalists).<\/p>\n Early colonists in Boston, Rhode Island, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and more did not merely trust to discussion among rich, landed men in the British Parliament, or the circulation of early newspapers such as those of Benjamin Franklin, or other venues of speech. They were being oppressed and it was time to get physical. Taking action, they ransacked the homes of government officials and merchants<\/a> who they had grievance with, leaving a wake of broken furniture, shattered mirrors and windows, destroyed china and crystal, and burned effigies. (They\u2019d had practice in brutality, perhaps, from regular violent acts in stealing the land of indigenous people already here.) Eventually, the Boston Tea Party<\/a> set off a wave of people in early port cities who dumped tea into harbors and sunk the ships that carried it.<\/p>\n Popular protest led to the American Revolution, which gave our country some small measure of freedom from the British. Yes, it was based upon ideas and rhetoric, but the time came for action.<\/p>\n 4) Not All Ideas Are Created Equal. Sorry. I Know That is a Hard Thing to Hear, But It is True for Me, and It Should Be True for Everyone With a Heart.<\/strong><\/p>\n When someone tells me that they want to deny my rights, including, yes, my own right to free speech, I am not friendly to that idea. After all, the Nazis, the KKK, white supremacists and their ilk want to deny people of color the right to exist, but many also want to deny women the right to engage in public life, vote, exercise reproductive rights, and live as we wish.<\/p>\n So as much as we all support freedom of speech and expression, they lose the logical flow of their argument when they try to rely on their own free speech in order to have a venue to deny me rights that are even more fundamental than free speech. In order to have freedom of speech, you much first have the freedom and right to exist. We all have the basic right to exist, but the Richard Spencers of the world seek to violate this fundamental of humanity. They seek genocide.<\/p>\n 5) Their Speeches Aren\u2019t Just Speeches, They Are Organizing Opportunities.<\/strong><\/p>\n When someone tells me that they want to deny me my rights? When they say, \u201cwomen and black people are inferior because I want to hold onto my white privilege and therefore I must ignore the overwhelming body of scientific evidence in order to cling to my belief and the past.\u201d Of course, they have every right to say that. They\u2019ve been saying that for years, and we\u2019ve not cared.<\/p>\n When I\u2019ve heard that in the past, I\u2019ve been happy to laugh it off, issue some invective if I like, and walk away \u2013 because I have viewed the person as harmless.<\/p>\n What makes this political moment different is that these people aren\u2019t just saying these things, they are expressing them through policies in the halls of government. The Trump Administration and right-wing lawmakers are already making policy that makes life hard \u2013 or impossible \u2013 for Muslims, immigrants, women, transgender people, and the poor. Creepy lap dog Jeff Sessions has supported strict punishment for small crimes like drug possession, usually used to oppress communities of color. Trump won\u2019t let his Muslim travel ban go, and they\u2019ve stepped up ICE raids in immigrant communities. Progress on women\u2019s rights has come to a halt and it\u2019s clear that the White House is now packed with misogynist snakes. Transgender people have lost their protections, leaving them subject to attack. Now Trump\u2019s tax cut plan would put even more money into the pockets of the rich, while forcing some of us to pay more.<\/p>\n This is not fiction, and it is not hypothetical. Real people are subject to attack from our government. It is already happening.<\/p>\n So some bigot, racist, or misogynist just talking about an idea is one thing. It\u2019s quite another thing once this unsavory person demonstrates that they are part of a movement with a direct line to the White House, where policy is being made that impacts me? Once that person drums up massive marches in the street, with white guys in polo shirts marching around with tiki torches, helmets, and shields, tear-gassing and beating my friends? Once they begin pulling the last of their white privilege strings in order to get judges to issue us warrants, to rule against us, to investigate us? Once their movement is in the White House? That\u2019s when we fight them.<\/p>\n They have a direct line to those who are making policy, and that policy looks increasingly hateful and fascist. Again, it is our duty to oppose them.<\/p>\n 6) May I Present the Evidence? Free Speech and Nazi Germany.<\/strong><\/p>\n The rise of the Nazi Party in Germany was accompanied by free speech. The Weimar Republic\u2019s constitution<\/a> had specifically declared that no censorship would be exercised.<\/p>\n People talking to fascists did not have the effect of stopping the Nazi Party. It is worth noting, however, that troops with guns were effective at stopping the party when they had their first attempt to grab power, the so-called Beer Hall Putsch of 1923<\/a>, in which Hitler and the Nazis kidnapped local officials and shot up a beer hall. It took years for their horrific movement to recover.<\/p>\n 7) Their Movement is Calling for Literal Genocide. Will You Do Nothing?<\/strong><\/p>\n When all other logic fails with your liberal friends, remind them that this is ultimately about preventing genocide.<\/p>\n White supremacists and Nazis like Richard Spencer have called for genocide from the start \u2013 without using the word, of course. I wrote about the legal definition of genocide in a piece earlier this year<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cLegal experts have defined what genocide actually means. The United Nations has defined genocide<\/a> as acts perpetrated against a group, such as a racial group. This was codified in the Genocide Convention of 1948<\/a>. These acts include: \u201cKilling members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.\u201d That treaty, by the way, also makes illegal \u201cdirect and public incitement to commit genocide.\u201d Just saying.<\/p>\n Spencer supports government programs of forced sterilization, or at least forced contraception, to prevent births among people of color. Here is what he said to Salon<\/em> reporter Lauren M. Fox in 2013<\/a> on the topic of genetics:<\/p>\n \u201cWe are undergoing a sad process of degeneration\u2026 We will need to reverse it using the state and the government. You incentivize people with higher intelligence, you incentivize people who are healthy to have children. And it sounds terrible and nasty, but there would be a great use of contraception.\u201d<\/p>\n So, he believes that \u201cthe state and the government\u201d should reverse genetic \u201cdegeneration.\u201d Spencer believes in the same tired eugenics of Nazi Germany. He believes in the genetic \u201cinferiority\u201d of certain people. Followers of the \u201cAlt Right\u201d movement believe in the debunked science of IQ tests as predictors of intelligence. (IQ tests tend to more accurately measure how uncreatively young minds have assimilated into the capitalist system.) So when Spencer says that he wants to preserve people with \u201chigher intelligence,\u201d he means he wants people of color to use \u201ccontraception\u201d as part of a government program. That\u2019s forced sterilization based on race, which is a form of genocide.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/idavox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Malcolm-X-Speech-in-Harlem.jpg?resize=300%2C225&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"