I'll Say It Again, The ACLU Line Is That Trump Has The Right To Yell Fire In A Crowded Theater - Perhaps a last response on this, for now

THE COMPLAINT that I have repeatedly called America's evil tradition of white supremacy our indigenous form of fascism is, I think, a complaint of those who are largely white and, especially, privileged by wealth, whiteness, maleness, straightness, etc.  complaining that flows from never having to have thought about the consequences of the political power and legal power of white supremacy under and through the Constitution, the laws, the habits of the white majority in the United States. A power that rules far more states in 2023 than it did before 1964 when the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act were adopted.   I'll expand on that because white supremacy is not alone, though it is the most central locus of corruption, anti-equality and anti-democratic success in the United States.  It is the contemporary version of what the abolitionists called "slave power" which never really ended, only briefly eclipsed in two periods, the Reconstruction after the Civil War and the brief period in which the 1960s civil rights laws were in full effect, something which the "free press" rulings of the Warren Court started to end with the election of Nixon in 1968.  

It was one of the most important insights of my lifetime of thinking about the history, the politics, the legal apparatus, institutions, etc. that really govern us when I realized that for most of our history in most places in the United States Native Americans, Black People, other Peoples of Color, Women, especially those who were not white, various other minority groups, the poor have lived under a degree of fascism.  At times and in some places as deadly as any European fascism, in few times and in few places has that not been, the case to some extent.  In every time in our history being a person in those groups has been the equivalent of wearing a sign that person was Jewish in Nazi Germany or in medieval Europe, the parallels are so obvious that the same word, ghetto, was used for places where Black People were relegated to living in in cities under de facto as well as de jure segregation.

They directly experienced that even as the privileged population didn't much and pretended that was democracy and freedom.  The genocidal policy of the colonies and then states, the land stealing that was as much a part of that genocide as outright murder is not only identical to the policies of Nazis and other fascists, it was cited in fascist and Nazi literature as an example of the possibilities of their own intended genocides.  The enslavement, terrorism, murder, economic exploitation and oppression of Black People is another indisputable experience of life under fascism.  The terror campaign against Women is so embedded into all of those things, especially into the culture of, not only the United States but the world that Women largely don't notice the dangers and restrictions they live under constantly.  I could as easily note that male supremacy is another indigenous form of fascism.  Though the progress for white Women, especially those with money and wealthy families was far faster and more extensive than for than Women without money from poor families.  In the decades of white supremacist complaints about affirmative action, I never once recall hearing one of its opponents mention the foremost beneficiaries of affirmative action, white women, especially white women with wealth.  That fascism on a sliding scale is also true for LGBTQ+ People.  Rich white gay men, on a whole have far safer lives than Gay Men of Color. As I mentioned the other day Trans Women of Color are among those under the strongest terror campaign right now resulting in them having among the highest murder rates of any identifiable group.  The privileges available to those who are privileged, of course, goes up as wealth goes up, poor whites may have it better than even middle class or even some affluent People of Color but they are still nothing like equal to wealthy white People, especially the filthy rich.  A lot of that can depend on how bad your job is, as well.  The second part of the story of the fascist genocide against Native Americans and the domination of People of Color and other minorities is that poor whites got largely suckered by that scheme.  The Republican-fascist hearings on gas stoves and ceiling fans is the modern day version of how those who really rule us suckered them with distractions from how the system really didn't work for them.   The overwhelming majority of the "free press" was part of the peddling of that suckering job, the part that didn't was always a small fraction of the "free press".  And I'm not talking only about the tabloid and cabloid level of media, most of the most august organs of the media have been part of it too.  The entertainment division, getting the most eyes and ears, the biggest part of that.  

In those lists I've posted this week of the stars of "civil liberties,"- lists not chosen by me but either chosen by authors of articles or the self-chosen lawyers who wrote legal papers -  the whiteness, the maleness, the straightness, the Ivy Leagueness and the affluence of them could not be more obvious.  I could go through articles written by white members of the scribbling class panicked over lawyers of Color and Women in the ACLU who express deep skepticism over the traditional "free speech-press" ideology of that group and of the putrid "civil liberties" industry.  It's something that you can also find it in university and college faculties in which it is largely white male faculty, generally those with tenure and full positions (and their faculty wives) who whine the hardest when students won't put up with their casual racism, their sexism, their many habits and expressions which make the lives of students of Color, Women, and members of other minority groups more difficult, not to mention any tendencies they have to favor those they might consciously or unconsciously perceive as people like themselves, the male, the straight, the white, the affluent, the already advantaged.*

I will point out that in many academic fields, that is entirely relevant to the quality of what they put out as scholarship.  For example, the difference between an historian who writes a hagiographic and seriously covered up account of, say a Justice John Marshall and someone such as Paul Finkleman who finds out how deeply he was enriched by slavery and by the rulings he made while on the Court, the difference is  extremely important.  White supremacy by slave owners and their judicial allies has certainly had and has a direct effect on Peoples lives.  The historians who could write biographies of a Christopher Columbus while ignoring his, the first genocide against Natives of the Americas, the continuation of that by the "founding fathers" and the entire history of American government UNDER THE CONSTITUTION AND THE BILL OF RIGHTS, are the opposite of innocuous in their effect.  The mainstream of academic writing and on up in malignant influence in that short list above, to the most malignant of that in entertainment tells a serious lie about history as serious and dangerous as Holocaust denial.  Yet such academic work and the belief of it plays a vital role in constructing our indigenous fascism which has had throughout our history and has enormous power today - the House of Representatives and Supreme Court are dominated by it right now - white supremacy.  The flip side of that is the racist, sexist, hetero-sexist romance of the founding of the country, the development of it, the antebellum South, "the noble lost cause," "the west" and even such absurd variations as the "rugged independence of New England Yankees," (is there any region of the country that doesn't claim they're the home of "rugged independence"?  Those are all unrealistic, and damaging non-realities that inform our imaginations of the country and the place of those we stupidly consider unlike ourselves.  The role that regionalism and ginned up regional resentment plays in our endangerment is a related issue.  The scribbling classes have caused more harm in that than helped, if they hadn't, it would have greatly diminished instead of become more exacerbated, just like all of those other things.  And on towards the most powerful expressions of that, such as the hagiographic bull-shit "biography" of Alexander Hamilton that got turned into that rap and boogie musical that so seriously lied about him, turning one of the foremost enemies of equality and democracy into a heroic figure for the mid-brow and lower.  

And I do insist that you add to academic stuff, popular and entertainment writing and productions to that and add the damage those do to Women, People of Color, LGBTQ People and so many others. So many Americans get what they imagine they know about such things from fictitious TV and movie writing, song and dance musical comedy, garbage "historical" novels and such crap gets People elected to offices and, from there, appointed to courts.  I'd bet that fewer than one in a thousand Americans who consume such garbage on TV and in other garbage media would have ever read an academic non-fiction work of any kind.

If "free speech" absolutism, if "free press" absolutism were going to produce a more perfect union, economic justice, equal justice under law, domestic tranquility, . . . that would have happened by now.  Instead we are all seriously in danger of an overtly fascist government under Trumpian  Republican-fascism as the "civil liberties" lawyers preen in their purity and rake in the donations and the corporations and billionaires have far more "speech" and virtually all of the "press" to themselves.  Don't forget the role of the "civil liberties" industry in the Buckley v Valeo decision which declared money to be "speech" and, so, created the most incredible reallocation of "speech" and the most potent of that, in the media, to those with the most money.  I have no doubt that donations of thanks came their way from those so obscenely endowed.  The media has been constantly sandbagging the only President we have between us and that for the past two and a half years, after they witnessed the most nearly successful insurrection against the United States since the Civil War.

Given what the history of the ACLU and the "civil liberties" industry has resulted in, the ability of the media to lie about Democratic politicians and liberals and civil rights activists, minority groups, Women, etc.  The declaration that "money is speech" in Buckley v Valeo, Citizens United opening up dark money and, so the direct interference with American democracy by billionaires foreign and domestic as seen in 2016 and all subsequent election cycles, has resulted in a myriad of other such dangers, probably the most serious dangers to American democracy in our history,  I don't think the friggin' "civil libertarians" care what they bring as long as the donations keep going in and they can present themselves as ersatz heroes, just as that monumental liar and truth suppressor Lillian Hellman did with the help of one of those ersatz heroes.  

I have seen through the slogans of "civil liberties" and see that, by and large, AND IN THE TOTAL RESULTS OF THE "CIVIL LIBERTIES" INDUSTRY that they have been most effectively a force for furthering our most dangerous form of fascism, that which has been embedded in the United States since before its founding, all of those various indigenous fascisms.  

Their insistence of striving for from some daffy notion of "even handed" "objective" "fair" letting all opinions flourish and seeing which side wins, instead of the only legitimate goal for egalitarian democratic governance, equality FOR PEOPLE, of the ability of us to be governed by a government BASED ON A REALISTICALLY INFORMED VOTING POPULATION, and to the establishment and perpetuation of egalitarian democracy, economic justice, a decent, safe life for everyone couldn't possibly be more of a habit of those with privilege.  It's such a stupidly legitimate thing, "even handedness" a "level playing field" "impartiality" but only if you're dishonest enough to deny that there is no such even condition, no level field, and the nature of the legal apparatus could not be more partial to those with the wealth and privilege

Let me ask, who would have been the worse if the ideas of Nazism had successfully been suppressed in Germany in the 1920s and 30s?  Who would have been worse off if the calls for genocide had been entirely suppressed in the 1990s?   I can tell you who would have been better off if the Bill Clinton administration had ignored the doctrine of "free speech-press" absolutism and destroyed the radio tower of Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines as they were broadcasting encouragement to commit genocide and announcing the hiding places of those who were being murdered, those who were being murdered.   I have every confidence that if Bill Clinton had taken that opportunity to do the right thing, the ACLU style "civil libertarians" would have been besides themselves as they sat on their asses on North American in perfect, privileged white-collar safety.

I mentioned those prerequisites of egalitarain democracy that appear nowhere in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights and hardly matter to our "justice system,"  adequate food, drinkable water, shelter, clothing, healthcare, the right to a good education, . . . That those are left out is not only a glaring inadequacy of our Constitutional notions and, also, our law, they are symptomatic of the kind of privilege that those who wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights, those who were permitted to vote for it - the small minority of even those who were legally eligible to vote in a ratification process that was as rigged as anything the Republican-fascists do to our elections today.  That they neglected to specify that there is a right to tell the truth but there is no right to lie, that People who are slandered and libeled and the subject of whipped up mob action and attack have a right to their reputation and safety is due, no doubt, to their own knowledge that they and those they cared about were not in serious danger of the sort that People of Color, Women, LGBTQ+ and members of other minority groups live under their entire conscious lives.  Of course it wouldn't have occurred to the rich, white, almost exclusively Protestant men who gave us the inadequate 18th century Constitution and Bill of Rights, the 19th century men who put most of the amendments to it in that those things were far more important than their abbreviated slogans of "free speech" and "free press" which has been used to destroy the lives and rights of scores of millions if not hundreds of millions of Americans throughout our history.

I really do mean it when I say that I despise the ACLU and the "civil liberties" industry.  I am entirely sincere and I've repeatedly said why I went from a dolt who donated money to them to, after the Skokie case, opposing them.  I've done a lot of reading about them and the consequences of their activities, their seedier alliances with some of the most dangerous industries and individuals and corporations in our country, their advocacy for those who, being part of that long and successful tradition of indigenous American fascism, unsurprisingly succeed where the long and hard struggle for equality and Civil Rights is continually thwarted under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  That struggle and temporary success, only to be struck down by the Supreme Court, other courts, often with "civil liberties" briefs on behalf of wealth, power and white supremacy,  through elections in which those for whom the loudest, most frequent lies told and peddled through the "free press," again with ACLU style advocacy on their sice, win and install Republican-fascists, Quisling Democrats.  That pattern is long enough in the United States to tell us some important things about what's wrong with our system.  The "civil liberties" advocacy of the ALCU is a glaring example of how those impediments will always produce that result, under the Constitution, under the Bill of Rights, under "the rule of law" under the mythology that the "civil liberties" industry was set up as a bulwark to American liberty while it does the bidding of corporations and fascists and Nazis to flourish and expand till now, when they tell us that a Trump has the right to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater and to escape consequences for himself when the intended and entirely predictable results happen.   

How stupid could those Ivy League lawyers be?  Or how insouciantly enabling of those results that crush equality?   How much stupider are liberals to continue to support it?   
 
* Reading this over it reminded me of the time I read about a judge who said the hardest thing he had ever had to do on the bench was to give a prison sentence to "a young man from a good family,"  by which he meant someone like him, like his family.  It makes you wonder how many kids unlike him and his social class he'd sent to prison without a second thought or even with great edification and job satisfaction. 

Update:  Simple Simps Says: 

"And on towards the most powerful expressions of that, such as the hagiographic bull-shit "biography" of Alexander Hamilton that got turned into that rap and boogie musical that so seriously lied about him, turning one of the foremost enemies of equality and democracy into a heroic figure for the mid-brow and lower. "

SHORTER SPARKY: "LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RISE OF FASCISM IN THE UNITED STATES!!!"

I don't know what's sadder, that you actually believe this shit or that you're so predictable about peddling it at the drop of a hat.

Well, I did stipulate "and lower."   No, he's responsible for a seriously wrong piece of seriously misleading B-Way musical tripe.  Ron Chernow wrote the inadequate biography he used.   A novel about real figures in history is bound to be dishonest, a movie even more so, probably a musical is about the most probable to entirely distort history, and I am including opera.  Theatrical treatment of history is probably far more dangerous than an inadequate book treatment,  it was one of the things I learned to my horror at Eschaton that even people with PhD's were likely to stupidly assume that plays written about actual history was, you know, actual history.  Derbes and Gromit shocked me when they said that Inherit the Wind was based on history when it totally distorted the history of the Scopes trial.   And they're miles and miles ahead of a pop music, uh, . . . "scholar" such as yourself.

Update 2:   Simple Simps Says, Again. 

You're so right, Sparky. It only Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice hadn't written EVITA, Argentina would be an idyllic liberal democracy today.

 I post these just so some newcomer who hasn't seen him in inaction will believe me if I mention him.

Simps gets upset when I diss the commercial entertainment industry.   Even resorting to an idiotic defense of Donald and Vankie's favoritest musical of all times, I don't remember how many times Trump claimed they went on daddy daughter dates to see it together.   I think it gave both of them ideas, well stupid "ideas" are ideas of a sort, that they might not have had if they hadn't seen it.