Posted on 07/11/2015 7:42:35 PM PDT by markomalley
“Let’s make the Confederate flag a hate crime: It is the American swastika and we should recoil from it in horror.”
So opines Nick Bromell, a professor of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In the wake of a purge that has seen the Confederate battle flag vanish from stores and disappear from the grounds of South Carolina’s capitol building, Bromell says in Salon that America should be going much, much further.
“Americans who refuse to acknowledge the connection between the Confederate flag and the horrors of slavery and white supremacy are still in the grip of a ‘malignant spirit’ handed down from generation to generation from 1865 to this day,” writes Bromell. “It is a fine thing that the Confederate flag will no longer fly above the South Carolina state capitol. But displaying the Confederate flag anywhere is, at bottom, an act of hate. It should be recognized as such, and punished as a hate crime.”
Bromell defends his call by citing the words of escaped slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who lamented in 1871 that “covert, insidious, [and] secret” hatred continued to exist in the United States and was far harder to defeat than the military rebellion of the South in the Civil War. This lamentation on hatred, Bromell says, makes him feel “confident” that Douglass would agree with him on banning the flag.
Historical context offers some reason to doubt Bromell, though, because in addition to opposing slavery Douglass was also a fierce defender of free speech as one of America’s premier rights.
“No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech,” Douglass wrote in 1860. “Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason of righteousness, temperance, and of a judgment to come in their presence.”
Nevertheless, Bromell says the Confederate flag is too horrible to enjoy the free speech protection Douglass was so fond of.
“Given the millions who suffered under the whip of slave masters, and all the families separated as slave traders sold sons and daughters away from their parents, and wives away from their husbands, All Americans should recoil from the Confederate flag with the same horror we feel for the Nazi swastika.”
The comparison is an interesting one, because it is completely legal to display the Nazi swastika in the United States, even for hateful purposes. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that free speech of an ideological nature may only be suppressed when it deliberately and imminently incites violence. Even burning the American flag, burning a cross on a person’s lawn, and having a Nazi march past the homes of Holocaust survivors are all legal and protected by the Constitution.
Despite being a professor of American studies, Bromell does not address the First Amendment concerns that may be raised against his proposal to criminalize speech.
Read Bromell’s full article here.
Let’s make calls to ban the confederate flag a hate crime.
Ok professor, let’s start by outlawing the “party of slavery” and the Vichy Republicans who compromise with them.
Facts are your friend, so let me introduce you. In WW1, Mexico DECLINED the Kaiser’s invite to join the Central Powers (Zimmerman letter) and remained neutral mostly because of the 1914 occupation of Veracruz by the US. They would likely have joined the Allied Powers. In WW2, Mexico joined the Allies in May 1942, only six months after the US, which itself was only sixteen months late in entering the war against the Nazis. They joined because of the sinking of several oil tankers in the Gulf of Mexico by U-boats.
Nutty professor screed of the day.
Do it! Alinsky the Alinskyites!
These people are nothing but wannabe Stalins.
In fact it’s a great illustration of how it starts.
My best friend as a kid in Alabama was black. Then we moved up to Detroit just in time for the Detroit riots.
Another moron Professor that hasn’t worked a day in the real world in his life.
I think the only people who need to worry about that are Black people themselves because they’re the only ones who spew that horrible word out of their mouths.
Alternatively, how about making it a hate crime to call for the limiting other people's free speech?
Let’s make attending UMass a “hate crime” ... In fact, let’s make the existance of Massachusetts itself a hate crime ... We don’t call them “Massholes” for no reason ... Massholeah - aka the gay State, aka “Fagachusetts” ...
MA stands for Marxist
The socialist state should have been thrown out of the Union long ago, physically severed from North America, towed out to sea and sunk.
Let’s make advocating communism a capital crime.
Steal his car and paint the flag on the roof.
Break in and take a picture of the flag on his bed and email it to his class.
Drug him and tattoo it on his hand.
They’re Obeyme’s civilian army.
Just got back from Gettysburg Bike Week.
Tens of thousands of bikers.
A good 80% were flying that flag.
Shops downtown were lousy with them and residents had them all over their houses.
Things could get...interesting.
For once conservatives aren’t being conscientious objectors in the culture wars. Amazing what it takes to break the apathy.
Well, it was a gay rights activist who back in 2012 or so went into a conservative/religious organization’s office with the aim of murdering a bunch of people... in addition to his guns he brought a bag of Chick fil le sandwhiches which he planned to use as “markers” of his deed by rubbing them onto his murdered victim’s faces.
Funny thing is, no liberals called for the banning of the gay flag.
He would like it very much, actually, as it would bolster his propaganda authority to be a “victim.”
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