Re: When they came for the Jews...

["E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>]

	In regards to all this, I thought that people might be interested in
knowing about an interview on Fresh Aire, a radio program I heard via WNYC. The
individual being interviewed was the American Jewish Committee's person on
Hate Groups, Kenneth Stern. He was being interviewed due to a book he'd written
before the Oklahoma City bombing, in which he (mis-)called all militia groups
hate groups.
	In the interview, he was asked about the Simon Weisenthal Center's
letter in regards to the Internet. He spoke in opposition to it, and mentioned
later that he tends to advise people that the best solution for hate speech is
speech against it- a definitely good message.
	He mentioned the Internet as being a popular place for militia and
similar groups to form. The two reasons he gave were that it was an easy means
to spread information, and that the information was hard to verify (the
urban/computer legend phenomenon, helping give rise to the various conspiracy
theories circulating on the Net). He also mentioned that "hate" groups,
including militias are using encryption, but didn't say anything further.
	Unfortunately, he also had some problems, which I'll go into here
because of the analogies between guns and cryptography. While having respect
for the First Amendment's protections of speech and press, and (to some degree)
even the Second Amendment's protections of the right to keep & bear arms, he
forgot completely about freedom of association- he called for a federal law
making it a felony to have "private armies." There are some such laws on the
books on various states, but they are (fortunately) not enforced, and thus
have not yet been constitutionally challenged.
	The second group of his problems were in defining all militia groups as
"hate" groups. His basic analysis for this was threefold:
	A. They have members in common with some definite hate groups, such as
the Aryan Nations.
	B. Some militias have made racist, etcetera statements that qualify
them as hate groups.
	C. They hate somebody, namely the federal government.
	The first argument falls apart once one points out that this is a
classic conspiracy theorist untrue argument- one can use it to argue that the
Trilateral Commission runs the US government, for instance.
	The second argument is obviously false. It's a variety of stereotyping,
something that I would have thought he'd be more sensitive to.
	The third argument would classify the Simon Weisenthal Center as a
hate group... he might actually have the guts to do this, since he also named
the Nation of Islam as a hate group (due to their antisemitism, though, not
due to their anti-white racism).
	All in all, though, he gave a much better impression for his group than
I've gathered for the Simon Weisenthal Center. IIRC, the latter was essentially
put together to pursue Nazis, as opposed to Neo-Nazis. My guess is that they're
feeling useless and wanting to pursue somebody- sort of like the Secret Service
and Steve Jackson Games.
	-Allen