![]() ![]() ![]() In fact, in practice free speech for Nazis is often itself a threat to free speech for everyone else, because Nazis use their freedom to violently suppress their opponents. Racism is built on inequality and disproportion you can’t confront it by pretending that we’re all in this together when we manifestly are not. Defending the speech of white kids doesn’t necessarily protect the speech of marginalized people, just as All Lives Matter in a racist society does not in fact mean that Black Lives Matter. Speech by white people is often seen as unobjectionable, no matter what its content who you are is more important than what you say. But the school reaction to the Baraboo photo suggests this is not true. ![]() The Wisconsin school board recently ruled that they could not discipline the students involved because their salute was speech protected by the First Amendment.įree speech purists claim that Nazi speech must be defended because it is especially controversial, and protecting it therefore also protects less controversial expression. A photo surfaced in mid-November of Baraboo High School boys giving an apparent Nazi salute before their junior prom on the Sauk County Courthouse steps. A recent incident in Wisconsin, though, is an unsettling reminder that free speech for white supremacy doesn’t necessarily have the intended effect: protecting other kinds of expression. ![]()
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