A pretty amazing thing got published in the Friday edition of the University of Oklahoma’s student newspaper, the OU Daily (@OUDaily).
By amazing, I mean terrible.
It’s terrible for a lot of reasons: the fact that I now have to defend an incredibly racist, Nazi group on free speech grounds; the fact that it got published in a student newspaper, when student newspapers are pretty much all about speech rights; the fact that some of the current editorial board of the OU Daily will become actual journalists who actually work in the industry in only a few months’ time.
Here’s the headline in the paper edition:
First Amendment shouldn’t protect the Klan
And here’s the headline on their website:
KKK rallies shouldn’t be allowed
So… yeah.
sigh
The news hook here is that a KKK rally was stopped from happening because of the government shutdown. But, according to the Daily, it should have been prevented by the government anyway.
The right of a group to express their views in public without fear of consequence from the State — even when their views are repugnant in literally every fashion — was established under the First Amendment of the Constitution, but it was solidified with the outcome of the Supreme Court case “National Socialist Party of America (literal Nazis) vs. Village of Skokie,” in 1977.
This doesn’t matter to the OU Daily Editorial Board, apparently. According to them, “it shouldn’t take a government shutdown to hinder KKK groups from publicly congregating and rallying — the event itself should be banned, no matter what amendment protects it.”
Not even a paragraph later, they write: “(…) we always will stand up for freedom and equality for everyone.”
The irony is too thick.
Let’s be perfectly clear: the Ku Klux Klan is a vile organization that deserves to be fought bitterly at every turn by everyone who cares about liberty and equality, just as Nazis deserve the same. Their actions, both historically and presently, are disgusting. There is no dispute there. But we have progressed as people in this country not because of state action against people we don’t like, but in spite of it. We have seen — multiple times as history has marched on — that the state has no problem silencing voices that perhaps the Editorial Board at the OU Daily might like, but give protections to groups like the KKK. We cannot use those same tools of oppression for any reason.
“The bottom line is, KKK groups should not be allowed to rally. The majority of our country would say it’s not OK. And just the way our government works — it’s the majority that rules the minority so to speak.”
- constitutional republic.
- First Amendment protection from governmental abridgement of speech.
- literally what are you even saying.
The Editorial Board of the OU Daily — which consists of the top student editors in charge of the paper, btw — might have heard this story before: back in August, a neo-Nazi named Craig Cobb bought several lots in a tiny town in North Dakota called Leith. His plan was to either sell or give the lots to his neo-Nazi buddies, until the white supremacist population crowded out the original townspeople and he would be able to create the perfect town — which would be called Cobbsville — where “like-minded volk” could congregate and chat.
A PolicyMic article from August quotes Cobb as saying: “Imagine the international publicity and usefulness to our cause! For starters, we could declare a Mexican illegal invaders and Israeli Mossad/IDF spies no-go zone. If leftist journalists or antis come and try to make trouble, they just might break one of our local ordinances and would have to be arrested by our town constable. See?”
In late September, without the help of police or the National Guard, hundreds of anti-fascists, Native Americans and townspeople forced Cobb and his pals out of Leith. They did so without having to resort to violence — state-sponsored or otherwise. I would much rather have that happen — and more! — at every single Klan rally until they no longer exist, than let the State start wiping people they don’t like out.