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- Apr 11, 2018

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Why I Don't Trust the ACLU
I am an antifascist and community safety organizer. I do not trust the ACLU, and I don't think anyone else should either. The fundamental problem of being a free speech absolutist organization is that they end up defending overt racists and fascists. The history of the ACLU is stained with KKK klaverns and Nazis enlisting them to defend their free speech rights, and then they gormlessly go along with it.
The main thing in recent history is that the ACLU sued the city of Charlottesville Virginia to ensure that the Unite the Right Rally in 2017 got to happen. The ACLU stupidly believed that the Nazis were just trying to say unpopular speech. In fact the entire purpose behind the rally was to terrorize the city of Charlottesville and show how powerful the Nazi movement had become by that time. They didn't intend for this to happen, but you say the words "free speech" to the ACLU and they are immediately mystified and will go along with anything. The UTR rally was proceeded by a torch-light rally where Nazis ran around, terrorized and rioted across the collage area of Charlottesville. Anybody who was paying attention (which at the time unfortunately was only antifascists) knew this was going to happen, this is what all the free-speech warriors had been building to from 2015-2017. Of course, at the UTR rally James Alex Fields performed a car attack which killed Heather Heyer and left dozens grievously injured. You _have_ to have heard of the Unite the Right Rally.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/12/16138326/aclu-charlottesville-protests-racism
https://www.acluva.org/en/news/why-we-represented-alt-right-charlottesville
They've been a little bit more circumspect since then because of all the violence at the Unite the Right Rally, but that hasn't stopped them from defending the far right since then. Here's an article from the ACLU last year repping their bona fides defending the far right when the right wing rag Reason whined about how they don't support right wingers any more. Read the bullet points at the bottom.
https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/defending-speech-we-hate
Their history of defending Nazis and the KKK goes all the way back. In 2003 they got a Virginia law banning cross burnings overturned for the KKK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_v._Black
https://www.acluva.org/en/press-rel...sible-essential-liberty-worthy-our-protection
Back in 1977 they ensured the American Nazi Party could hold a rally in a heavily Jewish suburb of Chicago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie
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