Hate Speech
Source: Free Speech - November 1995 - Volume I, Number 11
“Hate Speech”
by Dr. William L. Pierce
I’VE SPOKEN OFTEN with you about the Jewish monopoly control of our mass media of news and entertainment. Recently I detailed the takeover of the Disney company by Jews and its conversion into an instrument of brainwashing used against young Americans.
In addition to this consolidation of Jewish control over the media, there’s another subversive campaign underway in this country which is just as dangerous for our future. It’s the campaign to stifle any expression of opinion except those coming from the Jew-controlled mass media: the campaign to outlaw all dissident voices.
When I’ve mentioned this campaign in the past, some people have thought I was being an alarmist. They believe that freedom of speech is too deeply rooted in American soil to be done away with by a few extremists in the Clinton administration, or any administration. The American people won’t tolerate having their freedom of speech taken away, they believe.
I wish that I could share their optimism. What makes it difficult for me to do so is the fact that there is a growing body of opinion in America that no one should have the right to do or say anything which offends someone else. The people who believe this are not only entrenched in the Clinton administration, they’re entrenched in the Congress, in the universities, and in many other American institutions. These people will tell you with a straight face that the First Amendment was never meant to protect offensive speech — or what they more often these days call — hate speech. The Constitution doesn’t give anyone the right to hurt someone else’s feelings, they say. It doesn’t give anyone the right to offend someone else. It doesn’t give anyone the right to say unkind things about someone else, so that other people might be influenced by what is said and then in turn think or say unkind things themselves — perhaps even do something unkind.
Actually, what these Politically Correct people really mean, although they won’t tell you this — what they really mean is that no one should be permitted to write or say anything which might offend one of the officially favored classes of people: homosexuals, morally or physically defective people, Jews, Blacks or members of other non-White racial groups, and women. They see nothing wrong with offending a White male, for example: they do it themselves all the time. But they do believe that it ought to be illegal to do or say something offensive to almost anyone else.
Let me tell you about something which happened last month in Ottawa. I’m reading from a news article in the August 5 issue of the Toronto Sun. It says:
‘A female Ottawa dentist who wore a facemask, gloves, and gown while treating an HIV-positive patient is facing charges of discrimination by the Ontario Human Rights Commission. . . . Medical history revealed that the patient was HIV-positive and had a past drug dependency, according to an Ontario Dental Association report. Before treating the patient in the two and one half hour visit, the dentist discussed with the patient her preference to wear a disposable gown, gloves, facemask, and eye protection while treating the patient. Following completion of the treatment the patient left without any negative comment about the care he received and booked for a six-month checkup.’
That’s the first part of the Toronto Sun story. The dentist and the patient talked things over before the treatment began; the dentist then put on her disposable gown, gloves, and so on to protect herself from the blood and saliva of the AIDS-infected patient; and after the treatment the patient left with no complaint.
But then one of the Politically Correct watchdogs of the Human Rights Commission heard about it, and things changed in a hurry. The Toronto Sun article continues:
‘Both the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the Royal College of Dental Surgeons say in a report that the dentist acted in a discriminatory manner when she wore a paper gown in addition to her barrier protection gear, based solely on the patient’s HIV status.’
The news article went on to say that the dentist must not treat a patient with AIDS in any way differently from a healthy patient. If she doesn’t wear a paper gown in treating healthy patients, then it is discriminatory to wear one when working on an AIDS-infected patient’s teeth.
The article continues:
‘The Ontario Human Rights Commission has threatened legal action against the dentist unless she complies with eight conditions, including paying the patient $8,000 to “compensate him for his mental anguish.” ‘
Well, you say, that was Canada, not the United States.
Let me tell you, the people of Canada are not really very different from the people of the United States. What they will let their government get away with now, we’ll let our government get away with in five or ten years. America already is swarming with Human Relations Councils and Human Rights Councils, whose business it is to sniff out cases of AIDS carriers who have had their feelings hurt by some insensitive person who refused to treat them as if they were healthy. And believe me, every one of these Human Rights Councils in the United States is just itching to have the judicial power to order people locked up who say or do anything they don’t like.
I have another newspaper article in front of me, this one from the Minneapolis-St Paul Star Tribune for July 23. It describes a ruling issued by an official of the Minneapolis city government, warning city workers that henceforth they may be disciplined for what the official calls “visual harassment.” By “visual harassment” the official means looking at any female who does not want to be looked at. A woman had complained to the official, he said, that it made her “uncomfortable” that members of city work crews had stared at her as she walked past them. The name of the official who decided that such looking would henceforth result in disciplinary action is, believe it or not, Carl Markus. Not Marx, just Markus.
Now that would just be funny, if it were an isolated case. But things just as ridiculous, just as Orwellian, are happening every day in America. The people who want to get rid of the First Amendment — and the rest of the Bill of Rights too — the people who want to make it illegal to say or do anything which might offend an AIDS carrier or a feminist with a chip on her shoulder or whatever — are probing, pushing, trying to see what they can get away with, trying to see how far they can go, how much the American people will tolerate. The two articles I’ve quoted from today I chose as examples because of the air of absurdity to them which makes them a little catchy, a little memorable. But I have a hundred more news articles from the past few months which in more prosaic terms describe the same sort of efforts to outlaw offensiveness, or “hate, as it’s often called.
Perhaps I should say at this point that I understand what it means to be offended and to have one’s feelings hurt. I’ve worn glasses since I was five years old, and it used to hurt my feelings when some of my school classmates would call me “four eyes.” I used to do pretty well in my school work too, and as a result occasionally one of the kids who didn’t do so well would refer to me sneeringly as “Einstein.” That really made me feel uncomfortable.
And I’m sure it’s uncomfortable for a person who’s overweight to hear herself called “fatso.” I’m sure it makes a retarded person feel bad to be told he’s stupid. I’m sure that a person who’s not attractive doesn’t like to be reminded of that fact.
But, you know, that’s life. We all put up with a lot of things we don’t like. We try to make the best of it. If we’re fat and we don’t like being called fatso, we try to lose some weight. If we’re nearsighted and have to wear glasses, perhaps we can switch to contact lenses — or take karate lessons and punch out anybody who calls us “four eyes.”
There’s really something seriously wrong with the people who believe that it should be illegal to hurt a homosexual’s feelings, or to stare at a pretty girl — or to call a person who wears glasses “four eyes,” for that matter. Some of these people clearly believe that it’s more important for us all to be able to feel good about ourselves all the time than it is for us to be free.
And some of these people are simply using the “feel good” faction to push their own agenda, which is to make it impossible for the few people who have figured out what they’re up to tell the rest of the people. They want to make it illegal to tell people about the Jewish control of the news and entertainment media, for example. They want to make it illegal for this program to be on the air. They call this program “hate radio,” because it is offensive to them.
What makes me worry so much is that the “feel good” faction is growing. There’s something unhealthy about life in America today, and it’s making more and more people really believe that they have a right not to be offended or have their feelings hurt, and that that supposed right is more important than the right to free speech. And the folks who are taking advantage of this sickness by pushing the idea that offensive speech or hate speech ought to be outlawed are becoming more pushy in their efforts.
Back in 1978 I wrote a novel which I called The Turner Diaries. It’s a novel about life in the United States as I imagined it might be in the 1990s, if some of the trends I could see in the 1970s continued for another 20 years. I imagined that the government would become more repressive, and it has. I imagined that most of the people would react in a sheeplike way to government repression and would not complain as long as they could still be comfortable and feel good, and that’s the way it’s turned out. And I imagined that a few people would not react like sheep, but instead would fight back violently — and a few have. In writing my novel, I really tried to be realistic, and to speak my mind completely. I didn’t rewrite any part of my book or leave out any part because I thought it might be offensive to some people — and, of course, it has been.
I have a clipping here from the July 14 issue of The Jewish Press, which is published in New York City and which describes itself as the world’s largest circulation English-language Jewish newspaper. It’s a story about what the folks at The Jewish Press see as a need to “close the loopholes in the U. S. Constitution,” as they so nicely put it. And it’s a story about the novel I wrote. I’ll read you a couple of paragraphs from this story in The Jewish Press:
‘The radical right is taking advantage of the Republican victory in Congress to push its own agenda in defiance of the principles that have made the United States a haven for persecuted minorities, a beacon of freedom, justice, and liberty to all people. Unfortunately, the man-made laws under which we operate are like a two-edged sword, offering opportunity to all elements of society to achieve their goals but also similar rights for all to speak their minds even when it contravenes the very essence of tolerance and democracy. One glaring example of this attempt to exploit the loopholes in the U.S. Constitution to bring prejudice and racism in their most vicious forms to public attention is the publication in 1978 of a book called The Turner Diaries by Andrew Macdonald, the pseudonym of William L Pierce, a former professor of physics and research scientist . . . . Pierce’s book, which surpasses Mein Kampf in its virulent anti-Semitism, has sold more than 187,000 copies. It describes an end-of-the-century scenario in which the Jewish dominated government is overthrown by the Organization, an underground white group which succeeds where Nazism failed. . . . Our first reaction . . . is that even in the United States there must be a limit to such abuse of so-called freedom of speech. We have enough experience with vicious racists to justify some control over their actions. ‘
Did you note the phrase “so-called freedom of speech”? These folks at The Jewish Press really would like for the government to prohibit the writing and publication of novels with plots they find offensive or hateful.
I have another newspaper clipping, this one from the August 23 edition of the Fulton County Daily Report. It’s an editorial written by two radical feminists, one a law professor and the other a law student at Northwestern University. Like The Jewish Press these two women also focus on my novel The Turner Diaries. They urge that the laws of our land be changed so that I and others who write books they find offensive can be prosecuted — or at least sued for the damage they claim our writing causes. In my case, they allege that the person or persons who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City earlier this year were caused to do so by reading The Turner Diaries, and so therefore I should be sued for all of the deaths and property loss caused by that act. And, of course, the same for other books which they allege caused people to do harmful things or which offend people — and, believe me, these women and their friends on the Human Rights Councils are easily offended. And they are quick to see a cause-and-effect relationship between written words or an image in a book and criminal acts by people who read those words. They take it for granted that literature which they consider demeaning to women causes men to rape women. I’ll read you just a little of their article:
‘Even under current constitutional law, all speech is not equally protected regardless of content. The test is whether the harm caused by the speech is so grave that it outweighs the benefits of protecting its authors from liability. Usually the answer is no. This delicate balancing of interests, however, depends upon judgments about the severity of the harm, not on some absolute legal protection for all things written. Wrapping William Pierce in the fabric of the First Amendment ensures that there is a class of harms occasioned by violent and hate-filled images — insults, threats, beatings, rapes, and killings — that remain immune from ordinary legal consequence, even when cause and effect are plainly evident. In reality, if not in First Amendment theory, there persists a connection between image, incitement, and violence: cross-burnings and lynchings, yellow stars and deportations, pornography and rape, The Turner Diaries and Oklahoma City. ‘
Well, it’s pretty clear what these two feminists have in mind, even if they don’t come right out and say it. They want to make it illegal for you or for me to insult or offend them or someone in solidarity with them — or, barring that, they want to be able to sue us for saying something which hurts the feelings of an AIDS carrier or a homosexual or a feminist or a member of one of the other officially protected minorities. They say, in effect, “Look, if we let William Pierce get away with writing books like The Turner Diaries just because of this obsolete legal fiction called the First Amendment, then we’ll also have to put up with all sorts of other insults and hate-filled images.”
I don’t know what sort of insults have so rankled these two feminist lawyers, but it’s pretty clear that they’re rankled. I wouldn’t worry about that so much, except that I’m afraid that the number of feel-good trendies who’ll fall for their argument to abolish the First Amendment is growing. Worse than that, I worry that too many of the rest of us will just sit on our hands and let the anti-Constitutional lynch mob have its way.
And, you know, politicians keep up with these trends too. They read the newspapers. They take polls. If they believe that the majority of Americans will fight to keep their rights, then the politicians won’t mess with them. They’ll even make speeches about how much they love the Constitution, and especially the First Amendment. But as soon as they figure that the people won’t fight for their rights, they’ll be leading the lynch mob and making speeches about the need to protect people from being offended or harmed by hateful speech.
And what I’ve just said applies to nearly all politicians and their camp followers, not just to the Clintonistas. It applies to Republicans and conservatives at least as much as it applies to Democrats and liberals. I have another newspaper article, with an essay by Robert Bork, the very conservative legal scholar who was hounded out of his Supreme Court nomination a few years ago because of his conservatism. Mr. Bork now says that we need to reinterpret the First Amendment, so that it does not protect hateful speech. I don’t know what appointment Mr. Bork has his eye on now, but that’s what the man is saying.
It all boils down to this: Nobody in this country, or anywhere else, has any inalienable rights: not the right to free speech or freedom of religion or assembly, not the right to keep and bear arms, not the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. There always will be scoundrels who will try to take away your rights if they believe they can get away with it. And there always will be fools who will let them do it. The only rights that we have, the only rights that we can depend on, are those that we are willing and able to fight for, to shed blood for. And that’s what it’s coming to in this country very soon.
Now you’ve heard it. Now I want you think about it. And then I want you to start getting ready for what’s coming.
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