ACLU Silent on McInnes’ Free Speech Lawsuit, Twitter Files
Once mighty organization abandons core mission, focuses on woke causes
The Skokie free speech battle of 1978 remains a defining moment in American life.
A neo-Nazi group, with the ACLU’s support, planned to march in the same Chicago suburb many Holocaust survivors called home.
The outrageous event (which eventually became a rally held in downtown Chicago) became national news, spawned a 1981 TV feature starring Danny Kaye and confirmed the ACLU’s free speech stance.
The notoriety of the case caused some ACLU members to resign, but to many others the case has come to represent the ACLU’s unwavering commitment to principle.
It’s easy to defend speech we embrace. Defending bigoted views, even ones associated with the greatest horror of the 20th century? That’s another matter, but it’s covered under the First Amendment.
How times have changed.
The American Civil Liberties Union is too often silent on the modern free speech fight. Take comedian Gavin McInnes’ beef with Rutherford, New Jersey.
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The extensively canceled McInnes, who founded the Proud Boys in 2016 but left the group two years later, is suing the city following the cancellation of a November comedy performance slated for the Williams Center.
The suit claims that the borough violated McInnes’ First Amendment rights … McInnes, who also co-founded Vice magazine, is accusing the Police Department of canceling the show, an action that was later “ratified” by the mayor and council, according to the suit.
The town’s police chief admitted to calling for the event’s cancellation due to potential violence. McInnes’s conservative stances have enraged groups like Antifa, which purport to fight fascism but often use violence against those who don’t share its radical Left views.
Hollywood in Toto reached out to the ACLU for comment on the McInnes suit, one seemingly close to its decades-long fight for free expression.
No response.
The FBI paid Twitter $3.41 million to censor speech! This is strong evidence of the government employing a private entity to censor. The case needs to get to SCOTUS! https://t.co/vtCVL1QWKu
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 22, 2022
The ACLU has more urgent matters to discuss, apparently.
A quick perusal of ACLU’s “news” ticker showcases a plethora of hard-left causes, from racial justice to so-called “gender-affirming care” for trans teens. The group supports open border-style policies, admitting trans women into existing women’s sports and more causes deemed progressive in our modern vernacular.
What’s missing from its news page beyond the McInnes suit? The Twitter Files.
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A look at the organization’s Twitter feed over the past two weeks also shows no mention of the Twitter Files.
The ongoing series, sparked by journalists given access to material produced under the platform’s old, censorious regime, proves the shocking censorship happening on Twitter for years.
Scientists had their voices silenced for sharing views that conflicted with existing, and often dubious, pandemic rules. Government bodies coerced Team Twitter to suppress information they deemed problematic to their talking points.
Right-leaning voices got shadow-banned or canceled for the crime of sharing right-leaning views.
And the biggest news story of the 2020 presidential campaign, the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, got buried at the behest of government forces aligned against President Donald Trump.
The Twitter Files don’t get name-checked on the ACLU’s news page, alas. A Google search for “ACLU Twitter Files” comes up empty, too.
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The group did support new Twitter owner Elon Musk’s decision to allow President Donald Trump back to the platform after a year-plus suspension under the old regime.
This reporter has reached out to the ACLU’s press team in the past on a separate free speech issue and similarly failed to get a response.
Even the New York Times noticed the group’s course correction via a 2021 investigation.
An organization that has defended the First Amendment rights of Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan is split by an internal debate over whether supporting progressive causes is more important.
The answer is becoming more clear every day.
Ironically, the ACLU trumpets its role in the Skokie matter via its Web site. In 40 years, the organization may look back at this time and wonder why it went silent when it mattered most.
Again. Some of you right wingers are so effing stupid that you have to type S-L-O-W-L-Y to make you understand. THE ACLU has ALWAYS BEEN LIBERAL . They HAVE NEVER DEFENDED “CONSERVATIVE SPEECH” unless you consider NAZIS to be conservative , which would be STUPID since the word SOCIALIST is literally in their name. O
LIBERALS including the ACLU are like MUSLIMS. When they are in the minority and THEIR speech is threatened or censored they cry for “free speech” and “minority representation”.
When they achieve the MAJORITY there is no more “free speech” and “minorities” (Now Conservative voices) can go eff themselves.
Leave this site you communist pig.
Long before Trump, the ACLU sat on the sidelines in silence as they and America learned that Obama had told the IRS to shut down GOP get-out-the=vote groups during his 2012 re-election bid. While those groups on their own later sued for damages – which they were awarded and American taxpayers, not the Democrats, paid… the ACLU watched all of this with the silence of the Sphinx.
Since then, we now know that Obama and his police state fascists at the very top of leadership in the FBI, DoJ, etc fraudulently prepared FISA counterintelligence spy warrants, perjured themselves to the judges of those courts in support of uttering those fraudulent documents. They altered exculpatory letters so that instead they claimed their target, a veteran risking his life in Russia to gather intelligence for the CIA, was supposedly a traitor working with the Russian government to rig the 2016 election for Putin.
Here we are, six years later, a long list of further civil rights abuses by politicized bureaucrats and now the current president… and the ACLU has lost any serious claim to being a defender of civil rights and freedoms. Their hypocrisy on that front is only matched by that of the political party that they regularly function as a support arm for.
And the Mainstream Media that regularly turns to them for expert analysis of issues has never (to my knowledge) questioned them on their hypocrisy regarding fundamental constitutional rights and freedoms.
I would describe the ACLU as “vaunted” as opposed to “mighty.” Good article.