No free speech for fascists? Is free speech negotiable? Who decides?

Ever since I reached an age where I could read newspapers or understand what was on the radio (which we had years before we had a TV) I heard about 1st Amendment issues and censorship. When I was in elementary school and later on, high school(in the 1950s), some politicians or government authority was always trying to make someone calling for equality shut up.

When I was 15 years old laws were on the books that made it illegal to be a member of the Communist Party. If someone was labeled (truthfully or not) a red (of any shade) they lost their job. While attending my Indianapolis high school we had to go to assemblies to hear the ravings of Dr.Fred Schwartz of the Christian Anti-Communist League, and watch the movie "Operation Abolition" about the diabolical plot of world Communism and the ACLU to eliminate the House Un-American Activities Committee. HUAC was loaded with southern segregationist members of the House whose main goal was to accuse Labor Unions, atheists, Martin Luther King and the whole civil rights movement of being directed by the USSR.

Censorship, denial of the right to express "contrary ideas," such as socialism, racial equality, homosexual rights: this was the norm. The radicalization of the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement and feminism pushed back against attempts to repress free speech and the right to protest and blew these restrictions away.

Back then it was the reactionaries and rightist, the theocratic nut cases, who wanted to censor ideas from the left they didn't like, to make them illegal. They were forced into retreat in the 1960s and 70s. But they regrouped and kept chipping away... at women's rights, voting rights, any kind of social equality. Under Reagan they began making a comeback with attacking voting rights and women's reproductive rights. With Trump there is an all out assault on all fronts.

Fortunately, most people still believe that free speech and the right to assemble and protest is a basic right for all of us.

Groups like the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) among others have been important in fighting for free speech for all.

When those who pose as radical leftists and champions of the oppressed call for denial of free speech for those they deem as "fascists" it is not a plus. It damages the left and abandons the moral hight ground.

Free speech isn't divisible, something that can be rationed out. Either everyone has it or no one has it. Antifa is the latest iteration of the Black Block, an organization that specialized in leaching off of mass protests and then leading splinter group attacks on property and the police. Like the Black Block it is certain to be infiltrated with police agents whose goal is to escalate violence to discredit the protesters. Their assertion that there is no free speech for fascists and inclination to wade into street fighting is a trap. The Antifa are suckers who give the cops and the fascists what they want. The cops and authorities want to paint the far left and the far right as the same thing: crazy violent people who deserve no rights. The actual fascists and white nationalist want to inspire their ranks and potential recruits that they are taking on the left and beating them up in the streets.

Those who want to deny free speech and assembly to the far right, fascists, KKK and their ilk give them a cause to use to rally support: "Hey we white people are being victimized by these leftist thugs."

In the wake of Charlotte, the Boston events showed the way to fight back against fascists. Tens of thousand of peaceful counter-protesters demoralized the handful of racists who showed up and they slinked away. Other racists rallies called for in the San Francisco Bay Area fizzled and were called off due to fear of a big counter mobilization from the left.

When you support free speech for all and the right to assemble to demand change for everyone there is no issue of enforcement. It's the law. It's in the Constitution. Case Closed! If one class of the population is to be denied these rights because of their ideology or intent how do you decide who is to be denied?

Can people on the left be stupid enough that they themselves have the right or, more importantly, the power to enforce a ban on the far right? Will the local police say to Antifa: "Yes sir, boss. If you say the Klan can't march here in our city then we will obey you?"

Only the state (last time I checked it's a capitalist state that doesn't care much for the left) can enforce a ban on fascists. Do you want to give them that authority? Who gets to define the term "fascist?" Will a campus administration, a city or state or the federal government ask Antifa to advise then on who is a fascist and what should be done with them?

It's time to get real. The mass protests in St. Louis against police getting away with the murder of young black men are real. There are many other struggle where we should take to the streets in protest. And build the protests where we are not playing childish games and dressing up in costumes. We need serious mass mobilizations over DACA, Trump's appalling in-your-face racism, travel bans, warmongering saber rattling and endless war in Afghanistan...to name a few issues.