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.
Why isn’t it on the table? Shouldn’t it be on the table?
Because allowing these nazis to continue marching in the street will have zero impact on what happens to left-wing protestors, and denying these nazis the right to march on the streets will also have zero impact on what happens to left-wing protestors.
Okay, but you said left-wing protesters not getting arrested isn’t on the table. Why not? Why shouldn’t we do what we can to change that?
Yes, but I don’t see how that applies to this situation. The jack boots who arrest people for expressing their First Amendment rights aren’t going to stop just because some neo nazis were allowed to harass people on the streets via some left-wing action. They don’t care about fairness or our rights and many of them are probably sympathetic to extreme right-wing groups.
I can’t believe I have to keep explaining this… Cops do not do things if they are not paid. If you pass a law saying that cops will be fined for arresting protesters, they won’t arrest protesters. They may be right-wing, they may be thugs, but they don’t do things for free most of the time.
Is that really beyond the pale for a local municipality to pass such a law?