In March of 1977 –– almost 40 years to this day –– about 30 members of the Nazi Party of America decided to wear the uniforms of Hitler’s henchmen, complete with swastika armbands, to march down the streets of Skokie, Ill.
According to Geoffrey R. Stone, who was involved in the legal brouhaha that followed and wrote about this episode in history for The Huffington Post, the Chicago suburb then had a population of 70,000, about 40,000 of whom were Jewish and approximately 5,000 who were survivors of the Holocaust.
The residents of Skokie sought a court order, Stone wrote, on the grounds that the march would “incite or promote hatred against persons of Jewish faith or ancestry [and] that is was a deliberate and willful attempt to inflict severe emotional harm on the Jewish population in Skokie…”
But the American Civil Liberties Union fought for the Nazis. “Despite severe criticism and withdrawal of support by many its strongest supporters,” Stone wrote, the ACLU represented the First Amendment rights of the Nazis.
I have no doubt that the publisher of this newspaper, Steve Blank, along with his leftist readers, not only supported the decision of the ACLU at that time, but would do it again today.
After all, what is more precious and emblematic of American freedom than Freedom of Speech?
In fact, I –– a rock-ribbed conservative –– supported that decision as well.
What sets our nation apart from all others except Israel is that offensive speech, biased speech, untrue speech, even seditious speech is part and parcel of the freedoms that most of the eight-billion people on our planet are systematically deprived of by the tyrannical or politically correct or cowardly regimes under which they live.
And yet, Mr. Blank recently issued an abject apology for publishing a letter to the editor that some but not all readers considered anti-Semitic, specifically for a Dec. 16 letter from John O’Kelly, a [former] East Williston school board trustee, who called the apostate Jewish Obama backer and One World globalist George Soros a “Rothschild banker.”
So much for anything Mr. Blank has to say about his respect for Free Speech!
A Nazi march, fine. A letter to the editor, not so fine. But why?
Mr. Blank owes his readership answers to two questions: 1. Did Mr. Soros threaten to sue you and/or your business for the letter writer’s description of him as a Rothschild banker? and 2. Did he issue you the exact language you published in your fawning apologia?
Look at Mr. Blank’s pathetic apology (with my own italics added): “[W]e now recognize we made a serious error in not taking proper account of the potential harm certain ideas can cause, as well as the depth of the community’s feelings. We express our profound sadness for the discomfort this may have caused.”
Potential harm? Profound sadness? Discomfort?
Does this mean actual crying and tears and feeling bad may have led a few people to take an extra Omeprazole or Xanax?
Blank’s apology was followed by his business’s following pronouncement: “Blank Slate Media’s six weekly newspapers and website, The Island Now, will no longer publish letters containing such coded derogatory language about marginalized groups.”
Oh…boo hoo hoo hoo hoo!
Today, apparently, at least for the North Shore of Long Island’s oh-so-fragile readers of letters-to-the-editor the “discomfort” with politically incorrect language is so intolerable and threatening that it is clearly far more important than Freedom of Speech.
It is also relevant to mention that several leftist synagogues and businesses threatened to stop advertising on Blank Slate.
So again we have the follow-the-money factor.
Bottom line, publisher Blank’s capitulation to the objections to O’Kelly’s letter does not convince any reader that he was not threatened with a lawsuit and caved.
Shame on yet another liberal hypocrite!
Joan Swirsky
Great Neck
