I remember back in 2010 and 11 writing about the bogus Reverend Terry Jones of Gainesville. You may remember the idiot. He’s the one who held those “Burn a Koran Day” and drew all sorts of unfortunate attention to Gainesville and Florida while triggering riots in Afghanistan that ended up killing dozens of people, including United Nations aid workers.
He is a miserable human being who only made a name for himself by demeaning the religion of a billion people and provoking as much harm as he could by abusing his rights to free speech, like his fellow bogus reverend Fred Phelps, thankfully dead, who went around with his congregation holding up homophobic posters at the funerals of American servicemen killed in the line of duty.
But I also remember writing without hesitation, as I would again, in defense of Terry Jones. He may have been an idiot. But if he wanted to put the Koran on trial, burn it in a public ceremony and disseminate the videos of his vileness, it’s his right. We may disagree. We may find it repulsive as any reasonable person should. But it’s not illegal, nor should it be. Words don’t kill. Burning a Koran doesn’t kill anymore than burning a flag. Terry Jones did not kill those innocent victims in Afghanistan. Only Islamic fanatics and murderers who were themselves blaspheming what the Koran stands for did so.
The U.S. Supreme Court used pretty much the same reasoning when it defended the vileness of Fred Phelps and his trolls to do what they did at servicemen’s funerals and elsewhere, even though they are among the most disgusting hate groups in the nation. That’s saying something in a country where it’s beginning to take something special to stand out, if hate is your business. Like being president.
Unfortunately for Gainesville, it’s been in the news again this week for all the wrong reasons with the speech at the University of Florida by Richard Spencer, a better dressed but no less vile sort of Terry Jones. His message is a bit different. His organization, called National Policy Institute, which is neither national nor policy-minded nor anything like an institute, believes in a white-only America. Everyone else should be ethnically cleansed. If it sounds familiar, it should, because it’s basically the cliff notes to Mein Kampf, the autobiography of Hitler’s anti-Semitism. The difference is that Spencer hates anything not white, not just Jews.
And yes, he was among the organizers of that orgy of hate in Charlottesville in August, that so-called “Unite the Right” rally that lit up the night with tiki torches and the goons that carried them, chanting primitive phrases like “Jews will not replace us,” and that culminated in the murder of Heather Heyer. But Spencer was not her killer and does not appear to have had a conspiratorial hand in the act.
And yet this whole business of trying to ban him or stop him from speaking at UF seems to me to have been as exaggerated as the governor’s emergency declaration and all those cops going haywire with snipers and overhead helicopters over Gainesville. I’m not saying tight security to keep another Charlottesville from happening wasn’t necessary. But turning Gainesville into a scene from “The Longest Day” was not. It contrived a state of siege that gave the goons more credit and influence than they deserve, and it set the sort of precedent that could just as well be applied to any other ideological event, left, right or indefinable. That show of force was far more ominous than the disruptions it was meant to contain. And as they have with increasingly McCarthyist shrillness on many campuses across the country, counter-protesters’ flirtations with violence–and at times outright acts of violence–have undermined their message and makes a sham of academic freedom, however delinquent its occasional practitioners.
Any talk of preventing Spencer from spewing his stupidity on campus seems to me itself more offensive to our principles of liberty than anything he could possibly say. I’m tempted to say that the way University of Florida students handled it today was not bad. Half the auditorium was empty, and much of the other half was filled with protesters there to drown out whatever Spencer had to say. But I’d have rather seen the students respect what the University itself ultimately was forced to respect, once Spencer had properly and legally secured a venue from where to speak: a person’s right to speak, however vile the person and the words. By getting drowned out by protesters inside the venue, Spencer scored a rhetorical victory. The story will be the students’s shouts, not his brays.
The First Amendment is resilient. Like the heart of a nation’s principles, it’s strengthened by being exercised, tested, honored, whether people are taking a knee in front of a flag, burning a flag or raising it above a liberated continent. The amendment wasn’t written so we could post kittens and Oprah quotes on the Internet. It was written to protect freedoms for the thoughts that we hate, to paraphrase the line by Oliver Wendell Holmes. We don’t have to concede when confronted with words of hate (acts being a different matter altogether). We should certainly protest, be angry, scream and yell up to a point. The speaker’s indoor venue was that point in Gainesville. But let’s not turn out the mob on our own principles.
Words people like Richard Spencer speak are vomit. Let’s give these Aryan asses all the freedom they need to drown in it.
Pierre Tristam is FlaglerLive’s editor. Reach him by email here or follow him @PierreTristam. A version of this piece is airing on WNZF.
Knightwatch says
Well said. Let them speak and let rational people reject them. Unfortunately, far too many people in this troubled country agree in whole or in part with Spencer’s message. After all, they voted their skin color when they voted in Trump. And they now have a leader and a bully pulpit. As they gain ground, and they will, their “free speech” becomes problematic. It is so disturbing.
Lou says
Amen, I wish more people would see things your way, Pierre.
Veteran says
No Pierre, kneeling at the national anthem does NOT honor the flag!
SCOTCHWORKS says
I suppose if Mrs. Clinton had been elected the same rationale of “they voted their skin color” would have applied . I have no idea what Mr. Phelps speaks for or espouses, I have no desire to understand the content of his speeches and values.
SCOTCHWORKS says
* excuse me….Richard Spencer
That is how little I care about the speech and the man and his values. If you ignore the content of his hatemongering in the media and continue with our lives he gains no additional support. People will always find/seek out the like minded and certainly don’t need the medias help
Marlee says
A perfect response to this guy would be no one showing up. It would make him look like a fool.
All that security indeed give him credibility.
Proud American says
What a classy title, you do realize that you are scooping just as low… and by the way, you do realize YOU are racist… aryan ass? That’s the same as calling someone the n word…
Pierre Tristam says
Proud A, I’ll defend anyone’s right to vomit all they please, but don’t expect me to speak civilly in the face of barbarism any more than you’d quote Kant to a maggot. As to your analogy, as misplaced as it is transparent for its attempt at that false equivalency by bogus white victimhood, you clearly need a refresher on the word, which I’m happy to provide.
knightwatch says
No, Veteran… waving the flag is NOT a reliable measure of patriotism. Nor is praying a true measure of piety. Or tossing paper towels a measure of compassion.
CJ says
I was reading it as “burn a Korean” i think its spelt Qur’an.
FlaglerLive says
Actually CJ it’s more like القرآن .
Sherry says
Excellent article Pierre!
The FACTS: Taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem was started by Colin Kaepernick for the following reason. . . Kaepernick’s direct words:
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview after the game. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
trump completely FABRICATING/TWISTING the motivation for such “peaceful” protests, to gin up bigotry and division in our country, only further emboldens white supremacists/Nazis! Some of them continuously spew their despicable hatred in comments on this site. I see all such words as coming from “deplorable” human beings with tortured, rotting souls!
rst says
I love the article and the responses. Keep it up Pierre…
Just-Askin says
Are you a racist if you quote the following:
From the U.S. Census Bureau:
White alone, (V2016)(a): 76.9%
Black or African American alone, (V2016)(a): 13.3%
From the FBI UCR Table 43A
Crimes by race:
Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter
White 45.9%
Black or African American 51.1%
Robbery
White: 44.4%
Black or African American 53.5%
Bc. says
I agree with you not often but I do on this
Pogo says
@Pierre Tristam
Proud to agree with you.
@FL readers
Ever wonder how this punk Spencer finances his Hitler wannabee life? Hold your nose and read on.
…White Nationalist…Spencer Gets Millions in Federal Subsidies for His Family’s Cotton Farm in Louisiana
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/white-nationalist-spencer-gets-federal-subsidies-for-farm.html
Look – a Nazi squirrel! Meanwhile, Mitch, Paul, and Trump’s cabinet of swamp creature super crooks are robbing the treasury blind.
palmcoaster says
Excellent Pierre! I take my hat out t and honor all those students and protesters that drown the vomit that this racist intended.to poison those students as he does his ignorant Nazis base!
By the way peaceful exercising by a knee down does not mean at all disrespect for our anthem, flag or armed forced like this racist POTUS politicizes.
Pierre Tristam says
You kind of are because you’re intentionally cherry-picking a-la-Fox the two or three categories that show lopsided disproportions of black crimes while leaving out a slew of other crimes that show whites overwhelmingly in the lead, and of course the overall average that has whites committing 70 percent of all reported crimes. As always, the figures don’t account for what studies have shown again and again and again: that racism does play a role in the disproportionate punishment of blacks. This conservative narrative that I see with Pavlovian regularity, this gleeful frothing at the mouth over a few calculated statistics color-coded to reinvent the old myth of the big black predator out to rape and murder and breach your lil’ white picket fence of a saintly guilt-free life, hidden behind its snidely innocent just-askin’ cynicism, is itself of course profoundly racist. So yes, to repeat…
smarterthanmost says
“By the way peaceful exercising by a knee down does not mean at all disrespect for our anthem, flag or armed forced…”
Actions speak louder than words, since most of us are not mind readers, how am I to know what you are protesting? Therefore, if you are kneeling during the National Anthem, you are protesting the anthem, the flag, and the military. This freedom was paid by those that served, and died.
Sherry says
Here is PRECISELY the “widely published” reason why Colin Kaepernick started this “peaceful protest” by taking a knee. . . these are his words. There is NOTHING else to say:
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview after the game. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
If YOU. . . like trump. . . prefer to twist and pervert the protest to your own meaning, then you are the real problem in our society!