If you can remove the rights of people you don’t like, others can do the same to you
Except we remove these rights all the time, in large part because of the insidious bigotry that fanatics propagate. Defending the bigots does nothing to expand civil rights for the minorities they are marching to oppress.
FFS, the ACLU defended the Charleston tiki torch rioters. Whose interests did that serve?
If it’s not universal it cannot be a right.
Selective enforcement of civil rights is routine in the US. Hell, the same people crying about Campus Free Speech in 2022 ago were the ones calling for the heads of Palestine Solidarity protesters a year later.
It isn’t. When you’re describing is a revisionist mission adopted by the New York branch in the 60s and 70s.
The original mission of the ACLU was the defense of labor agitators, picketers, and organizers - common targets for right wing hate groups.
This article from Jacobin goes into the transformation of the radical labor rights organizer to centrist Free Speech absolutist.
The mission has shifted from defending working people to bad people as the ACLU grew divorced from its labor roots.
If you can remove the rights of people you don’t like, others can do the same to you.
If it’s not universal it cannot be a right. They’re mutually exclusive.
Except we remove these rights all the time, in large part because of the insidious bigotry that fanatics propagate. Defending the bigots does nothing to expand civil rights for the minorities they are marching to oppress.
FFS, the ACLU defended the Charleston tiki torch rioters. Whose interests did that serve?
Selective enforcement of civil rights is routine in the US. Hell, the same people crying about Campus Free Speech in 2022 ago were the ones calling for the heads of Palestine Solidarity protesters a year later.