【Text/Observer Network Columnist Li Quan】
On December 16, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution submitted by Russia and 30 other countries to "oppose the glorification of Nazism". The vote was supported by 130 countries, 49 abstained, and only the United States and Ukraine voted against it.
Russia has submitted a similar resolution to the United Nations every year since 2015, but it has been opposed by the United States and Ukraine. This year, when explaining why the relevant US representative to the United Nations voted against it, he gave two reasons.
First, the United States sees the proposal as a public opinion war for Russia to smear its neighbors ( in fact , Ukraine . In view of the geopolitical reality of the direct game between Russia, the United States and Europe, which has been affected by the situation in Ukraine since 2014, it is not surprising that the United States is willing to ignore the neo-Nazi movements in Ukraine and support Ukraine for geopolitical interests.
But the second reason given by the representative of the United States is somewhat bizarre. The statement said that while the United States in principle opposed Nazism and all forms of racism, xenophobia, discrimination and intolerance, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that Nazis also enjoyed freedom of expression and assembly in the United States. Citing the case law in the United States, the United States believes that the text of the resolution restricts freedom of expression, and the amendments proposed by the United States are not accepted by other countries, so they voted against it.
From the perspective of the current domestic situation in the United States, this move by the representative of the United States is very unreasonable. Because now the right-wing extremist forces in the United States are forming an increasingly serious threat, and then allowing extreme speech to flood, after losing control, they will impact the domestic order of the United States, and only the United States itself can be damaged.
The Capitol Hill incident is still in sight...
Did the Nazis have freedom of speech in the United States? The answer was "yes and no". If one refers only to the two key jurisprudences of the Supreme Court in 1969 and 1977 (Brandenburg v. Ohio, National Socialist Party v. Skokie), both the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis had the freedom to express their positions in the United States. But with reference to other jurisprudence (Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, Ward v. Rock Against Racism), U.S. governments at all levels can also limit speech that leads to violence and personal harm, and regulate the time, place, and manner in which speech is expressed.
Moreover, although the Supreme Court has always emphasized the principle of so-called "content neutrality", that is, it does not take a position on the content of the speech itself, but in practice this is not the case at all. With harsher restrictions on which speech to say, judges' judgments are often driven by political factors.
Between 1919 and 1956, the United States imposed far harsher restrictions on the surging socialist and communist rhetoric in the country than later on the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis (Schenck v. United States, Dennis v. UntiedStates). After the "McCarthyism", when the Communist Party of the United States had completely declined, the Supreme Court revised the interpretation and relaxed the scale of expression, and the first to enjoy this freedom was the Ku Klux Klan in 1969.
A clip from the movie "The Black Party"
According to a 1986 U.S. Department of Justice report,[1] left-wing extremist forces in the United States only emerged in the late 1960s, while right-wing extremist forces have permeated the entire history of the United States. And because right-wing extremist forces embrace white supremacy and extreme Christian interpretations, and are almost paranoid about embracing the so-called traditional American values they endorse, they have all the more potential to storm the American system.
One of the oldest examples of this was the Nazi rally organized by the German-American Bund at the Madison Square Garden Gymnasium in Manhattan, New York, in February 1939. In the middle of the scene hung a huge portrait of Washington, surrounded by Nazi swastikas, in the name of loving the United States, to promote the transformation of the United States into a white country. A not-so-distant example occurred in 1995, when a far-right man blew up an entire ten-story government office building in Oklahoma with a truck full of explosives, killing 168 people simply because he was dissatisfied with the federal government. It was the worst terrorist attack in the United States before 9/11.
Before World War I, the United States studied under Germany in the fields of science and technology and education. A large number of Americans returned to the United States after studying in Germany, promoting the establishment of modern disciplines in universities. The origin of modern American political science can be traced back to a group of scholars who returned to the United States from Germany to 1881 to 1895. But paradoxically, on the issue of race, the United States seems to have become a teacher in Germany.
In the process of translating racial ideas into law, Nazi Germany made extensive references to various racial segregation legislation in the United States at that time. In 1935, Nazi Germany passed the Nuremberg Race Laws, two of whose main components were The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor and The Reich Citizenship Law.
According to research, in 1934, when the German Ministry of Justice discussed the legislation, it passed a memorandum to sort out in detail the various racial legislation after the founding of the United States, such as the prohibition of interracial marriage and the principle of "one drop of blood", that is, even a trace of black ancestry in the ancestors can only be identified as black [2].
In 1967, after the united states finally repealed the ban on interracial marriage at the state level, racial segregation in the legal sense no longer existed, but racial discrimination and segregation at the social level have not been completely eliminated. As we enter the 21st century, far-right organizations are expanding day by day. After Trump's election in 2016, conspiracy theory groups like Anonymous Q went from the fringes of the internet to a far-right narrative close to the mainstream, believing that only Trump could save the United States from the grip of the "deep state." And because of the decentralized nature of these organizations, it is difficult for U.S. law enforcement agencies to respond effectively[3].
The slogan "Anonymous Q" appeared at trump campaign rallies
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies,[4] the violence and injuries caused by far-right white supremacists, anti-Muslims, and anti-government extremists have been on the rise in the United States in recent years. From 2007 to 2017, attacks related to far-right groups occurred in almost every U.S. state.[5]
Since 2015, there have been 267 cases planned or carried out by far-right in the United States, resulting in 91 deaths. The cases on the far left were 66 and 19 deaths. Although it does not seem high in absolute terms, the impact of a single event on the far right, such as the "Capitol Hill incident" on January 6, has generally worried various think tanks in the United States.
In fact, before Capitol Hill was breached, the U.S. Congress began to try to pass a "domestic terrorism prevention act" in 2019. Both the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI cited indicate that white supremacist groups and the far right have become the greatest threats to U.S. domestic security. But to this day, due to partisan strife in Congress, the law is still under consideration in the Senate.
According to the analysis of the Brookings Institution, at present, the United States has difficulties such as inflation in economic fundamentals due to the impact of the epidemic, which objectively provides rich soil for far-right organizations to absorb new members [7]. Dissatisfied with the epidemic control measures last year, the far right orchestrated a plot to kidnap Michigan's governor.
Since Congress can't pass new laws, the Brookings Institution can only recommend that law enforcement be stepped up, for example by using more FBI undercover agents to dismantle the activities of far-right groups. While preventing far-right groups from infiltrating the U.S. military and police, it is also necessary to clean up the accounts of far-right armed groups on social media and avoid public office politicians who support far-right groups. In addition, in order to offset the influence of the extremist ideas of far-right groups, it is also necessary to carry out early education and guidance among young people.
The extent to which all these proposals will be implemented and how effective they will be is still unknown, but one of the more dire situations facing the United States today is that Trump has not yet conceded defeat. If he decides to run in 2024 but fails again, Newsweek fears that his millions of gun-wielding supporters will even use force to change the outcome of the election, which will far have a far more impact than this year's Capitol Hill incident.
Trump's supporters are certainly not all far right-wing. But today, when it is difficult to distinguish whether information is true or false, who can guarantee that a small group of far-rightists will not succeed in stirring up a bigger storm?
From the perspective of realpolitik, the reason why the United States has a more relaxed tolerance for right-wing ideological trends than left-wing ideological trends is that even if the right-wing has anti-elite elements, it does not oppose but fully supports the maintenance of the core capitalist system and international hegemony of the United States. The far right, because of its white supremacy, anti-immigrant, and racial discrimination characteristics, objectively forms an effective squeeze on minorities in the United States.
In Charlotteville, Virginia, in 2017, far-right groups marched with torches and Nazi slogans shouting "Fire and Earth." The scene resembles the resurrection of the Nazi dead in the 1930s. Today, when the far right in the United States is likely to regurgitate, if there are still commentators who are willing to see this as a symbol of free speech in the United States, they can only ask for more blessings.
bibliography:
[1]https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/comparative-analysis-violent-left-and-right-wing-extremist-groups
[2] James Q. Whitman. 2017. Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law.https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-whitman-hitler-american-race-laws-20170222-story.html
[3]https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/qanons-growth-mirrors-sharp-spike-extremist-violence-us/story?id=73079916
[4]https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2021/domestic-terrorism-data/
[5]https://www.csis.org/analysis/rise-far-right-extremism-united-states
[6]https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/s894/BILLS-116s894is.xml
[7]https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/01/21/how-to-counter-right-wing-armed-groups-in-the-united-states/
[8]https://www.newsweek.com/2021/12/31/millions-angry-armed-americans-stand-ready-seize-power-if-trump-loses-2024-1660953.html
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