Little Green Footballs’ Charles Johnson Speaks
Los Angeles blogger Charles Johnson shook up the 'sphere last week when he announced his 10 reasons why he was quitting the Right. For years, his site Little Green Footballs had been a watering hole for some pretty frothy anti-Jihadists and related ilk. As I said earlier this week, I always personally liked Charles and now I like him more.
Now we have the first in-depth interview with him where he explains his decisions. He spoke with reporter Hillel Aron from the USC-based Neon Tommy (which I happen to direct) :)
Here's a taste of the dialogue:
Was there a moment where you started to change your mind?Yeah. There was a documentary that came out of the UK called The Great Global Warming Swindle. When that was released I looked at it and I thought, 'Wow, this really is a hoax. All these evil scientists are lying to us.' Within about six months or so, I started to read articles that were debunking the movie. And I realized that a lot of the information that was in that movie was not only false, but deliberately misleading. I understood that this was gonna be a huge issue. I began to read everything I could get my hands on about the subject. Scientific journals, books. And the evidence just piled up and piled up, until I could no longer be a denier.What about the jihadist debate? I feel like you've softened on that as well.Well, I kind of have. What started the break for me was when I realized a lot of the right wing bloggers, the so-called anti-jihad bloggers, were making alliances with groups, in Europe, that I consider to have fascist roots. And I didn't want to be part of that.It's pretty rare today for a blogger or pundit to come out and say, I've changed my mind about something.It sure is.Why is that?Human beings have a strong resistance to change. For most people, it's a lot more attractive to just stay where you are, as long as it's comfortable. But I've always been a contrarian that way. I like to shake my beliefs up every few years. I wish that more bloggers would start to think critically about what they're writing. Blogging was originally an alternative to mainstream media, but now it's kind of been dominated, especially on the right, by people who are emotionally driven, and not very rational about a lot of things.
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December 4th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Every blog should have its very own Prodigal Son piece.
Johnson responds to this nugget:
“What about the jihadist debate?”
” I feel like you’ve softened on that as well.
Well, I kind of have. What started the break for me was when I realized a lot of the right wing bloggers, the so-called anti-jihad bloggers, were making alliances with groups, in Europe, that I consider to have fascist roots. And I didn’t want to be part of that. ”
Euros like Geert Wilders, banned in the UK, gets a heros welcome among Republican leaders, pundits, and talking heads. The Glenn Beck crowd lauds the outlaw BNP.
But here we have DEMS who’d rather keep their mouth shut over praise for incipient fascism to take on populists like Kucinich in their own party.
I have come to the tentative conclusion the euro-fascists are not reviled by Dems because LePen, Wilders, BNP have taken a convienient and temporary pro-Israel stance simply because it aids in the isolation and demonization of muslims- who are the latest target of racist vitriol.
Dem leadership find themselves, for the sake of comity, not willing to tackle the party of torture on the issue of Republicans creating poster-children out of euro-fascists for the sake of their giving red meat to the base.
Dems have succumbed to the Right’s sound-bite which cannot allow for two competing simultainious ideas: Virtually all muslims are not jihadists and not all critics of the State of Isreal are anti-semites.
Intellects on this blog are pondering the why of Johnson’s remark: :..the so-called anti-jihad bloggers, were making alliances with groups, in Europe, that I consider to have fascist roots.”
Scratch the surface of any of these anti-jihad blogs and one sees their real enemy isn’t muslim at all: it’s the left.
December 4th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
Pretty simplistic view, amigo. Lots of anti-Jihad blogs are most certainly anti-left. Agreed. But how many lefties are too apologetic for the jihadists because they are supposedly anti-imperialists? The anti-Jihadis make too many alliances with Fascists. The anti-Americans make too many alliances with the Jihadis. It’s a complicated world.
December 5th, 2009 at 5:25 am
Reeves, Ouch!
December 5th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Amen, Pablo:
Euros like Geert Wilders, banned in the UK, gets a heros welcome among Republican leaders, pundits, and talking heads. The Glenn Beck crowd lauds the outlaw BNP.
But here we have DEMS who’d rather keep their mouth shut over praise for incipient fascism to take on populists like Kucinich in their own party.
December 5th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Pablo and Anna both give us sickening displays of their love of autocratic rule with their dark talk of Geert Wilders being banned from travel to the UK, as if that is an indictment of Wilders and not the UK. (An “Amen” of the sentimient counts). It is wholly an indictment of the UK. It is wholly an indictment and diminishment of any country that bans travel on the basis of thought crimes and political talk.
And I can’t help but note the rich, rich irony of Pablo admonishing Dems for their silence on others’ praise for fascism, while he serves up his own tacit approval of inicipient fascism two sentences before.
You might want to remove the beam from your own eye first.
December 5th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Excellent comments, Reeves, and DanO. (See, JimR? And here you thought all us liberals were so similar! There’s Anna & Pablo & sergio, and there’s DanO and reg, and a whole lot of other shades…)
Back on topic: Marc, great interview. I’ve done a complete 180 on Charles Johnson for the obvious reasons (i.e., he’s clearly not a right-wing extremist), but even before his rift with the right I was visiting lgf on a regular basis–you could see the gradual separation of the loons from those conservatives actually interested in fair debate. So I kept visiting, and it kept getting better.
Gives me hope that productive dialogue between honest righties and lefties (or whatever terms you want to use) can get closer to becoming the norm.
December 5th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Mention of the term “anti-jihadist bloggers”, and this classic comes to mind.
http://dir.salon.com/story/comics/tomo/2003/11/10/tomo/
Indulging in “kill them all and let God sort them out” fantasies from the comfy of one’s own home doesn’t do much to impress.
December 5th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
But how many lefties are too apologetic for the jihadists because they are supposedly anti-imperialists?
Perhaps it would be worthwhile for you to do some research on this subject and present us with some actual facts and examples.
That would certainly be novel.
December 5th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Dan, what planet are you on. You are like some crew cut Hoovered FBiI agent Terminator. Single minded, no ability to understand nuance or subtlety and your program seems to limit you from understanding any more than the party line that jingles inside the hard drive that is in place of your cerebral cortex.
December 5th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
I singled out exactly a point he made that had merit. But thats too subtle for your robot eye to discern.
December 5th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
BTW. I don’t find a Johnson at all interesting…only as a case study. He cites global warming as an issue he dismissed out of hand and then realized–as he said over and over–emotion and towing the partisan line and baying with the mob is his knee jerk instinct until he can gather his wits. Thank god he wasn’t a Southerner living prior to Civil Rights laws or we could have expected to see him with face twisted in hate spewing venom as African American students were walking the gauntlet to get to school. And thank god he wasn’t alive in Nazi Germany or we could have expected to see him maybe in black and white reels spitting or perhaps kicking an elderly orthodox Jew on the sidewalk.
Anyone who admits that his initial instinct was to “defend” Palin is someone whose psychological balance is not something I would want to bank on.
December 5th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
OK, let me see if I have this straight.
I am an automaton because I insist on the liberal right of free expression unfettered by punishment for views that some government doesn’t like?
It’s a right I regard as perhaps the most important core right that feeds democratic civic culture. A right that you and Pablo both seem to hold in less esteem based on your tacit approval of Wilders banning from the UK.
If I missed some of your oft (self-)reported subtelty in there somewhere, lurking in the shadows, I’d love to hear about it, but I’m really interested in how you square this circle: Surely as a dedicated democrat you oppose punishment for political speech. Correct?
December 5th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
How’s that health care and peace Obama promised going?
December 5th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
I was going to develop a response to Anna, but then Godwin’s Law was invoked, and, well, I had a soup on the stove that needed tending.
DanO, I’m glad you have the gumption to engage the ANSWER types, because I sure don’t. Thanks for taking one for the team.
December 5th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
One really has to hold one’s nose to defend Geert Wilders. But at the end of the day, even his views, as over the top as they are, have to be beat in the public square of ideas; not by banning his right to that public place.
Regarding Johnson: good interview by the Neon Tommy team. Would love to have Johnson sit down with John McCain and talk some sense into the good Senator. Maybe make John do some ‘community service’ for unleashing Caribou Barbara on the nation.
December 5th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
She’s a deer I’s like to bag.
December 5th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
I take all my supplements daily but still can’t get as smart as Anna. Stupid me! Of course Charles Johnson couldn’t possibly be interesting Even though this thread elicited FOUR responses from Anna to date). My mistake and I apologize for boring you. A guy who comes out of nowhere and aggregates a couple of hundred thousand right-wingers on his site and then moves toward a reasonable center, taking a lot of his readers with him is just downright boring! Nothing to see, just move along. Yes, we could speculate what Johnson, or anyone else, would have said or done if he or she had been 25 years old when Hitler was in power. I often spend sleepless nights wondering how Anna Churchill would have responded to the 1937 Stalin Constitution if she had been a teenager at the time living in the burbs of Moscow. I wonder how my late Aunt Lena would have responded to the Girondiste seizure of power on the 9th of Thermidor as well but have not yet reached a firm conclusion. I fear she would have lined up against the Jacobin Mountain. Any guesses?
Much more interesting would be to see the complete list of folks that a Churchill-Pablo regime would ban from publicly speaking in the workers’ paradise they would construct. I shudder at the thought. And I would love to hear Radical Pablo reconcile his admiration for socialist revolutionaries with his equal admiration for Dennis Kucinich who, in the end, is a liberal capitalist Catholic.
On second thought, don’t bother.
December 6th, 2009 at 6:57 am
That was kind of an interesting phenomena. I caught a whiff of something going down when I saw some right wing blogger (whose name I can’t recall) was entreating Charles to return to the fold. Thought it was odd but dismissed it as more churn within those who support the GOP. Then, I caught Andrew Sullivan’s me, too post which linked to Little Green Footballs.
John Cole of Balloon Juice has noted similar tendencies in Rick Moran of Rightwing Nuthouse. Of course, Cole was a sort of convert a couple of years ago, and did a magnificent rant in the threads at Crooked Timber (see comment #5).
So, Charles Johnson isn’t the first, but he’s interesting in that he’s held out a bit longer than some of his contemporaries and his following was pretty hard core. I wish I could say I’d followed all 1,400+ comments to his post. I didn’t. Only enough to determine that people were either largely with him, or agin’ him. And, those who weren’t, were apparently sufficiently obnoxious to be banned within minutes of showing up.
I have a bit of hope that out of this churn a loyal opposition of honest conservatives might grow. I think it’s going to take awhile, however, and I hope they don’t register as Democrats in the meantime. Or, that the Democrats will decide to recruit them. For awhile I thought these folk might camp out with the Libertarians, but it looks like Glenn Beck is successfully making that choice unpalatable.
Interesting times.
December 6th, 2009 at 7:49 am
Oh, Marc, be serious.
You know damn well what my point was– even if you disagree and want to throw a hand out to anyone who hasn’t walked off the cliff with Palin and co.
I think there is something patronizing in your singling out a Johnson to say ‘look’, ‘good boy’, goooood job…just because a grown man who otherwise demonstrates his thinking function is in tact has reasoned that global warming MIGHT be an issue given all those darn pesky FACTS and empirical evidence.
What you conveniently refuse to recognize is that he repeatedly admitted that baying for blood with the mob has been his normal response. He uses the word “emotion” to define what colors his reasoning faculties given some geopolitical event.
That after 8 fucking years (since September 11th) He has gotten his wits is hardly something to clap about. What happens with the next trigger…and the next?
This is a PSYCHOLOGICAL problem, Marc. And then there is the issue of group and collective psychosis.
Yes, its INTERESTING, that he reflected and realized he had bayed with the mob and decided he wanted to wean himself off such inclinations. Thousands of “normal” Republicans decamped when Palin got on board. That was clue enough for them they no longer wanted to be associated with their party nor vote for a man who found her acceptable as a running mate. Not our Johnson.
For me its a little like a child molester confessing, murderer, former Nazi sympathazer (it was the times you know) he has mended his ways.
Millions of people, Marc, don’t have the reactions to events he did. And this was NOT Nazi Germany or China or Russia or any number of places where one may fee obliged to even pretend to agree to keep from being killed or members of their family violated. He had no such pressure on him. He came to his conclusions by himself despite plenty of information available to him to do otherwise.
And your last two paragraphs, Marc, are just plain silly. Your fantasy that I am some uber Marxist just shows you to be someone who plays fast and loose with reality not to mention facts.
Shall I repeat once more that a few threads back I happened to make the point about the Cuban revolution being lost the moment Che started executing people in cold blood in the Sierra Maestre?
THat one statement, Marc, should pretty much clue you up as to my “politics”.
You want to keep looking foolish and doing what you accuse others of…be my guest. Its your blog. I would think, though, you would prefer not to soil your own nest.
December 6th, 2009 at 8:03 am
Dan, lets see if you can explain where Pablo panders to “incipient fascism”?
Your post is pure garble to me. And his point about Kucinich and Dems a salient one.
The topic of this thread proof of that. Who gives a shit about yet one more right wing blogger.
Discussing those who are being constructive is far more time worthy than some guy who pretends to hold the center. (but as the guy said : the center cannot hold)
In fact maybe Johnson should read his Yeats:
…Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Fuck Johnson and this notion of his nobility. Its sickening given all the people who have given up their lives for others…including, Marc, your Jesuit friend. Though I suppose your Jesuit priest would have been patient and continued to shepherd a Johnson to come round to being a human being. It is your Jesuit priest friend who should be remembered then…once more.
December 6th, 2009 at 8:12 am
Re Johnson’s reaction to 9-11…for a man whose job (softwear developer) demands an analytical mind his response to 9-11 was adolescent/emotional. Consistent with a psychological imbalance.
December 6th, 2009 at 8:29 am
Dan O Says:
December 5th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Pablo and Anna both give us sickening displays of their love of autocratic rule with their dark talk of Geert Wilders being banned from travel to the UK, as if that is an indictment of Wilders and not the UK. (An “Amen” of the sentimient counts). It is wholly an indictment of the UK. It is wholly an indictment and diminishment of any country that bans travel on the basis of thought crimes and political talk
————————-
So Dan O, you’ve taken on merry ol’ England with their thought police and prior restraint.
Well done, lad.
Curious though, not a peep about Geert Wilders.
To my point, Mr Wilders decidedly facist leanings have garnered at lot of love from those in the american party of torture.
To our gracious host, about to do a little UK style prior restraint on your truly who commented above:
“And I would love to hear Radical Pablo reconcile his admiration for socialist revolutionaries with his equal admiration for Dennis Kucinich who, in the end, is a liberal capitalist Catholic.
On second thought, don’t bother.”
Marc seems to dress me in borrowed robes.. I was making the obvious observation that the DEMS corporate wing
gives the party of torture a pass for hosting falangists like Wilders while spilling tons of rancorous cyber-ink on Kucinich.
Niether observation is a display of revolutionary zeal or an endorsemant of Kucinich.
That said, I will add this observation: Most rank and file Dems are to the left of their party in power when it comes to war, healthcare, and a well regulated financial system… meaning closer to what Kucinich advocates over the pablum being served.
December 6th, 2009 at 8:31 am
PS.. I promise to find the spell check before posting again…
December 6th, 2009 at 8:45 am
Anna, You are your own best detractor. No one need point out your untenable and unrealistic take-no-prisoners position. You do an excellent job of it yourself.
When was the last time peaceful co-existence was achieved by the uncompromising blood thirst warriors (usually the young and brave and stupid) on both sides of a conflict? Charles makes a move to the peaceful middle, extends the peace pipe, and you want to take advantage this weakness and knife him.
Oh. I forgot. It is you that is the pure human being. The prerequisite justification for all sorts of other horrors, and you only need look back to WWII.
Hope this helps you and not hurts too much. Your comments sure help me to try to be more moderate myself.
December 6th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Off with Aunt Lena’s head…
December 6th, 2009 at 11:38 am
To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency. To forgive them is barbarity. -Maximilien the Headless Uncorruptible
December 6th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
So much for Bin Laden…(relevant a thread or two or three back)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6744518/No-reliable-Bin-Laden-information-in-years-says-Robert-Gates.html
Pablo: trying to interpret your own statements– which were perfectly clear–is a pointless exercise here.
How Marc et al take exception to the point about Kucinich is beyond imaging since many times Marc, reg, others use similar analogies.
Its like there is a language barrier.
Oh well.
December 6th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Pablo says: not a peep about Geert Wilders
This is for Anna. Everyone else has seemed to get it.
Don’t like Wilders’s politics. He’s a troglodyte. But he can say what he likes. I also think jailing Holocaust deniers is grotesque. Further, there should be no such thing as a “hate crime” since it makes thought a crime.
December 6th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Two or three years ago, your typical posting at LGF displayed an attitude towards Islam similar to and usually worse than the typical attitude towards Jews in the comments section at Stormfront. And Charles would chime in eagerly. Just go to the LGF archives from say around ’06 and ’07, you’ll see what kind of a show he ran. That place was over the top. Interesting how in their eagerness to gain a comrade, the secular neo-conliberal left is willing to forgive and ignore all of the vile things about an entire religion that he has said or countenanced on his blog.
December 6th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Dan O writes in part:
“. Further, there should be no such thing as a “hate crime” since it makes thought a crime.”
______________________
Anglo-american jurisprudence has a long history derived from the common law whereby specific intent is an element of a crime which must be alleged and proven; thus negating your premise.
The distinction between crimes involving homicide provide a stark example. That which diffentiates murder from manslaughter is specific intent.
Relative recent legislation affecting anglo-american jurisprudence has sought to target the intent of the criminal act further. Thus crimes committed in furtherence of a (sic) terrorist activity carry special circumstances with hightened penalties.
The justification for hate crimes legislation grew out of the felony murder rule (not civil rights legislation) whereby those involved in a conspiracy to commit a felony (typically robbery) are equally caulpable for all crimes committed in furtherance of that conspiracy (meaning the getaway driver is equally guilty of murder if one is committed by co-conspirators inside the bank).
This concept is applied in modern hate crimes settings because application of conspiracy laws are not sufficent to encompass those who cheer-on random acts of violence towards the minority victim who is being randomly targeted because of that victim’s minority status. The case of the random beating death of a homosexual for the sole reason that the victim is homosexual already carried criminal liability for the homicide but did not encompass the accompanied friend of the perpetrator who witnessed but did not conspire yet cheered his friend on.
For the actual perpretrator a showing of actual malice derived from the intent to assault the victim because of that victims status can be rebutted with extrinsic evidence that the ulterior motive for the attack was not based on the status of the victim. Simply put the accused has the opportunity to to rebut the allegation with evidence of motive other than preying on the status of the victim.
This seems to provide a better remedy of both justice for actual crime and deterrance for those who formulate the specific intent to commit crime based soley of the status of the victim because that specific intent is examined in the light of how it relates to the actual. motive (i.e. the criminal who assaults a victim for money is distinguished from the criminal who assaults a victim based on race).
December 6th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
This is interesting. Print media (alongside digital editions, no doubt) still relevant:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/06/50-papers-leader-climate-change
December 6th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
“the secular neo-conliberal left”
Yes, and this blog is absolutely teeming with neo-conliberals! You caught us, dude. Damn. Very astute.
December 6th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
White Cornerback…good god! So now you are aiding and abetting me.
Lordy, I hope what you are saying IS. That makes him worse than I imagined. I don’t waste my time on reading that sort of shit because its boring and predictable…but I supposed in this case its a good thing that your proclivities lead you to trawl through the trash which has resulted in your finding the hard evidence that backs up my point. I operate on intuition. Nice to see it still hits pay dirt.
December 6th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
DanO. Seriously. I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about anymore…making crazy assumptions about what I think or believe. Its like you just miss the point.
Whats this about “hate crimes” being equated with some Orwellian law????
Try to keep it simple, bubba.
December 6th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Kyle,
You’re right, and wiser than me. There’s no point engaging the ANSWER crowd and their satellites. It’s not worth it. I know it’s not worth it, but I find them so annoying it’s hard to stop myself.
Anna: I was talking about my views on the matter of speech, not your views. Is that simple enough for you? Anyway engaging with you is just like getting sucked into a swamp. I’ll try to be better and just let you abuse logic and people in peace.
December 7th, 2009 at 6:33 am
Dan..you consistently misrepresent what I say and then YOU accuse me of creating a swamp?!!!!!
Just be accountable for what your write and the fact you are comprehension challenged.
It is stunning you refuse to acknowledge your mistakes. Pablo had a go at you as well about twisting what he said which I noted to be an interesting point. But you just go off on your little ideological tangent that would put a Beck or Limbaugh to shame.
And please do share your twisted rationale for interpreting the laws around hate crimes as a way of creating a thought police!
The most recent incident: a 1981 lynching in Mobile, Alabama in which a 19-year-old black man was killed by two members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Frankly, I am all for the thought police if it extends to rounding up KKK since their “thoughts”– if one can be so generous–are focused completely on taking away the rights of other people and where possible their lives.
December 7th, 2009 at 8:08 am
One question that would be nice to know the answer to: Why does he name his site after a slang for handgrenades?
December 7th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Fox New and Rush Limbaugh offer daily demonstrations of the voraciousness of white intellectual insecurity.
Johnson merely managed to use his programming skills to put up a billboard within easy reach of any wingnut looking for a place to soothe his weary paranoia.
9/11, for him, was merely a major marketing phenomenon, driving up both the paranoia and ignorance quotients up high enough so that a middle-aged crank such as himself could actually command an “audience” provided he was willing to serve up a diet of hate stiff enough to make the wingnuts forget for a moment how stupid merely reading the newspaper makes them feel on a daily basis.
Johnson now reads the election of Obama as a reversal in marketing trends. He’s merely repositioning himself, though this time, he’s going to find the competition a whole other ball game. Doesn’t take a Nostradamus to predict that LGF will be history within a year, at least in terms of existing as a major blog…
December 7th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
there should be no such thing as a “hate crime” since it makes thought a crime.
How incredibly stupid and ignorant. Hate crimes are crimes of violence directed at someone because of their group identity — “it” (the existence of hate crime legislation) does not make thought a crime, any more than the fact that the distinctions between different sorts of homicide make thought a crime.
December 8th, 2009 at 6:44 am
b4
It’s never been a popular position I’ve found, and I’ve also found that most people react like you and Anna whenever I’ve expressed it.
This is way OT by now, but…
I don’t actually think it’s stupid or ignorant (for me), since I’ve thought about it a lot. But as always, I might be wrong, and I’m happy to learn more.
I’m not a lawyer, but it’s my belief that laws, at least in part, express larger social values, and that hate crime laws are an attempt to express one set of values (anti-discrimination) which comes at the expense of other values (free expression). The two positions are probably incommesurable in this case.
If you wanted to attempt to compare the two postions directly, you would have to assign value to each of them, but it’s not clear how to convert thoe respective values into a common currency. And in any case, there are already laws prohibiting discrimination (in housing and employment, for example), and there are already laws that punish physical violence and intimidation. The addition of bias as a crime on top of physical violence seems gratuitous.
As noxious as they may be, views about race or gender identity are political views. They are thoughts about the status of people, and these thoughts are political. The action (say a beating) is already criminal, but now your political views are also criminal, when you add a hate crime penalty, if the person happens to be in a protected class. This is what makes the “murder intention” argument a particulalry weak one, since the kinds of “intention” are not of a kind at all.
I recognize that hate crimes are crimes that are directed against a group, or against some identity, but I just don’t believe that the crime can be reasonably separated from the political opinion unless the crime is a specific act of discrimination like denying housing to a black person or a Mormon couple.
December 8th, 2009 at 11:10 am
It’s a great philosophical question, Dan O.
From your comments it seems that you’ve wrestled quite a bit with this. IIRC, didn’t it take the ACLU several years of wrangling with the free speech aspect before they ended up supporting a federal version?
December 8th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
FWIW, some of the attorneys I work with are former prosecutors. To prove a hate crime you have to prove intent and that’s a tough row to hoe.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
I’ve thought about it a lot
I feel very sorry for you if all that thought still doesn’t enable you to distinguish between thought and action.
you have to prove intent
If I lose my footing and accidentally kick you in the shin, it’s not a crime. If I intentionally kick you in the shin, it’s a crime. Intent is a fundamental component of crime, but that in no way makes thought itself a crime.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
The action (say a beating) is already criminal, but now your political views are also criminal, when you add a hate crime penalty, if the person happens to be in a protected class.
It’s not your “political views”, it’s your target. You’re taking the “hate” in “hate crime” far too literally; the crimes are put into a separate category because of their social consequences.
This is what makes the “murder intention” argument a particulalry weak one, since the kinds of “intention” are not of a kind at all.
The point about intention is directed to your incredibly foolish equation between “hate crime” and “thought crime”. The point is that it isn’t your thoughts that are being punished, but rather your (intentional) violence.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Let’s not be disingenuous. By intent in this instance, I meant the intent of someone in committing the crime.
In other words, to prove a hate crime, you have to prove that the intent was to commit the crime because of the person’s race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc.
The example you mention is irrelevant as in the first instance, no crime is committed, but in the second instance it is a crime. If someone assaults someone, it is a crime, but in certain jurisdictions, if someone assaults someone because of race, etc., that makes it a hate crime and that was what I meant can be a tough row to hoe.
I’m largely on the fence about this issue, but I believe either you misunderstood my point or perhaps I did not make it clear enough.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
The point is that it isn’t your thoughts that are being punished, but rather your (intentional) violence.
But if that’s the case it would still be punished as a crime regardless of the hate crime component.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
it’s your target
Sorry, I forgot just how dense you are … I need to make the obvious explicit: the target is an entire group in one of the “heightened scrutiny” classes — religion, race, gender (not yet gender preference); the individual target(s) are (presumably) just proxies for the group — the perpetrator isn’t attacking them for what they have done but rather for what they are. So “hate crime” is a misnomer; it’s really “group-directed crime” or something like that.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Let’s not be disingenuous.
Uh, what? I have no idea what prompted that, but it seems to be a misunderstanding.
But if that’s the case it would still be punished as a crime regardless of the hate crime component.
Of course it would, but “hate crimes” have stiffer penalties — that’s the point; I don’t know what yours is. Are you suggesting that there are hate crimes that wouldn’t be crimes in the absence of hate crime statutes? Perhaps that erroneous notion is what is behind Dan O’s conflation of hate crimes with thought crimes.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
I assume you mean sexual preference unless “gender preference” refers to the T in the LGBT community. In NY state sexual preference is included in the Hate Crimes Act of 2000.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Are you suggesting that there are hate crimes that wouldn’t be crimes in the absence of hate crime statutes?
Did I say that? I don’t believe I did. It becomes an aggravating factor and would be harder to prove. NY State’s statute has the following notation:
Accordingly, one has to prove intent beyond the mere fact that someone is assaulted, etc.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Are you suggesting that there are hate crimes that wouldn’t be crimes in the absence of hate crime statutes?
Please don’t put words in my mouth and I’ll gladly afford you the same courteys
NY State’s statute has the following notation:
Accordingly, one has to prove intent beyond the mere fact that someone is assaulted, etc.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Sorry for the double post. It didn’t appear the first time.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
hate crime laws are an attempt to express one set of values (anti-discrimination) which comes at the expense of other values (free expression). The two positions are probably incommesurable in this case.
See, this is absurd; there’s no restriction of free expression when all hate crimes are crimes anyway. We’re not talking here about actual thought crime laws like jailing people for being Holocaust deniers — I too find that repulsive (although I understand the impulse, and that I have that luxury when I live far away from where it actually occurred).
when you add a hate crime penalty, if the person happens to be in a protected class
Another absurdity. The penalty isn’t because the person happens to be in a protected class: everyone is in a protected class — a notion that may seem strange to those who think of white males as being without ethnicity and of “default” gender. The penalty is for crimes directed at the class — and it’s that intent that must be proved, above and beyond the normal intent to do violence.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Please don’t put words in my mouth
I simply asked a question, trying to get clear on what you were saying. Sheesh.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
I assume you mean sexual preference unless “gender preference” refers to the T in the LGBT community.
“male” and “female” are genders, so I think in those terms and forgot to translate it into the “sexual” terminology.
In NY state sexual preference is included in the Hate Crimes Act of 2000.
I was talking federally, but I’m behind the times: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard_Act
December 8th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Let’s not be disingenuous.
I think I figured this out: I quoted you, but my response was aimed at Dan O, who wrote about thought crimes. I apologize for the confusion.
The example you mention is irrelevant
It was highly relevant to the point that I was directing to Dan, namely that intent (and thus what one thinks) is already taken into account in criminal judgments; hate crime legislation doesn’t introduce intent (what one thinks) as a new criterion, it only applies it in a different way. AFAICT, you and I don’t disagree on these points.
December 8th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Let me simplify this: Free speech means free speech. Period. On this I am an absolutist. It should not be a crime to say anything unless you can DIRECTLY and strictly link that to incitement of a violent action. And I mean DIRECTLY.
In case anyone cares, I also oppose all hate crime legislation. A crime is a crime. No one is LESS injured because they are not in a so called protected group. You’re just as dead or wounded either way,
By the way, Randy, we don’t pay overtime for arguing with ANSWERoid ideologues.
December 9th, 2009 at 7:00 am
What? I’m filing a complaint with my shop steward!
December 9th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Let me simplify this: Free speech means free speech. Period. On this I am an absolutist. It should not be a crime to say anything unless you can DIRECTLY and strictly link that to incitement of a violent action. And I mean DIRECTLY.
A typically clueless response; I never claimed otherwise.
ANSWERoid ideologues.
God but you’re an asshole.
December 9th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Hey, “passing through” is back, now with the creative nick “b4″.
December 9th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
B4,
Just a friendly suggestion: when someone allows you in their home, don’t defecate on their floor.
December 14th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
b4 is smart and genuinely adds to these discussions, much like “passing through” of whom I was also a fan.