Erica Etelson
1 min readSep 4, 2017

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I agree that the hate groups are there to attack us, not to debate us. I get that free speech for them is just an effective media frame and that, as fascists, they don’t believe in the principle of freedom of speech. At the same time, I think there are very important free speech issues at stake here for anti-racists to think long and hard about. Simply chanting “no free speech for racists,” w/out more carefully reflecting on where exactly speech we loathe crosses the line to violence, does our own movement a disservice. I’d encourage folks to read Glenn Greenwald’s latest — he says it far better than I can. https://theintercept.com/2017/08/29/in-europe-hate-speech-laws-are-often-used-to-suppress-and-punish-left-wing-viewpoints/

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Erica Etelson

Writer, voting rights activist, mutual aid organizer. Author of Beyond Contempt: How Liberals Can Communicate Across the Great Divide (New Society 2019).