this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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The brazen appearance of white supremacist groups in Nashville left the city grappling with how to confront hateful speech without violating First Amendment protections.

They first arrived at the beginning of July: dozens of masked white supremacists, shuffling out of U-Hauls, to march through Nashville carrying upside-down American flags.

A week later, members of a separate neo-Nazi group, waving giant black flags with red swastikas, paraded along the city’s famed strip of honky-tonks and celebrity-owned bars. The neo-Nazis poured into the historic Metro courthouse to disrupt a City Council meeting, harassed descendants of Holocaust survivors and yelled racist slurs at young Black children performing on a downtown street.

The appearance of white nationalists on the streets of a major American city laid bare the growing brazenness of the two groups, the Patriot Front and the Goyim Defense League. Their provocations enraged and alarmed civic leaders and residents in Nashville, causing the city to grapple with how to confront the groups without violating free speech protections.

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[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 17 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Arrest them for what exactly? Is disrupting a city council meeting anything but a civil infraction?

I don't want this sort of thing going on, but what law would justify jail time?

I mean maybe they did do something to justify it, but I don't know that disrupting a city council meeting should land people in jail. People also disrupt city council meetings when they try to pass anti-queer ordinances. And they should.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 69 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Arrest them for what exactly? Is disrupting a city council meeting anything but a civil infraction?

Criminal trespass, easy. Fuck, that's levied all the time as a club against left-wing protesters. Yet when actual neonazis show up, they get nothing? Fuck that.

[–] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 17 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Criminal trespass...

Most city council meetings are legally open to the public. It is in fact their main purpose.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

Most city council meetings are legally open to the public. It is in fact their main purpose.

I'm used to normal city council meetings being private, and public ones being the exception.

[–] Monument@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 3 months ago

They’re open to the public unless certain members are asked to leave.

A public building can still kick someone out, and if they don’t leave, then that’s trespassing.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I think the answer to that is not 'also arrest the Nazis,' it's 'don't arrest the left-wing protesters either.'

Balancing the scales doesn't solve the problem.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 37 points 3 months ago (37 children)

Balancing the scales doesn’t solve the problem.

And neither does playing by the gentleman's rules of boxing when your opponent is using brass knuckles. Fucking "They go low, we go high"? Did we not learn our lesson? If a weapon is used, the correct answer is to make the opposition see why that weapon was banned in the first place - it's the same reason why many signatories of the Geneva Protocol allow for retaliation if chemical weapons are used against them.

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[–] grue@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Balancing the scales doesn’t solve the problem.

Good point: the correct answer is, don't treat them equally, because they don't act equally. What we should be doing is exactly the opposite of what we are doing: fucking-up the NAZIs while leaving the left-wing protestors alone.

This is not hypocrisy, by the way. This is a simple application of consequences: those who do not respect the social contract do not deserve to be protected by it.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago

It may not be hypocrisy, but it is suggesting that the law continue to be applied unequally (just the opposite way around), which is definitely not a progressive position.

[–] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Arrest any and all groups that storm in and disrupt government functions, simple as that

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Which means that people in the government can argue that virtually anything the government does is a "government function." Mayor's press conference? Government function. Better arrest those protesters. Governor's mansion? It has public tours. That's a government function. Better arrest those protestors.

Look what happened without that law when a president wanted a photo op with a Bible in front of a church. And you want to make that even easier?

[–] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You can protest outside the building perfectly fine, storming into the chambers and stopping the agenda is blatant disruption and I won’t argue it.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

But how do you make it clear that is the government function that can't be disrupted but the press conference afterward can because it does not count as a government function?

[–] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Don’t enter government grounds for your protests.. do it outside the building.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Outside the building is often government grounds too. Those buildings can be in plazas which are entirely government-owned.

So, again, you're saying you can't protest the press conference (except from a great distance).

[–] ShepherdPie@midwest.social 19 points 3 months ago (1 children)

After seeing federal agents literally kidnapping people off the streets of Portland for "looking like protesters," yes absolutely they can arrest them even if the charges are bullshit or won't stick.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

Not if they don't get paid for it.

[–] Nougat@fedia.io 11 points 3 months ago

Civil disobedience can get you arrested, and while you might beat the rap, you can't beat the ride.