relevant:
https://twitter.com/zarzarbinkss/status/897880604309684224
from "Der Fremde in uns" ("The Stranger Within Us") by Arno Gruen.. from one of the last chapters, crappy translation below the German:
> Mit liebevoller Toleranz und verständnisvollem Entgegenkommen werden wir gewalttätige Rechtsradikale und Neo-Nazis nicht besänftigen können. Aus der Forschung mit geschändeten und mißhandelten Kindern ist bekannt, daß diese auf liebevolles Entgegenkommen mit Haß und Gewalt reagieren. [..]
> Haß und Gewalt sind jedoch auch nicht die geeigneten Gegenmittel. Im Umgang mit haßerfüllten Menschen gilt es vor allem, konsequent zu sein. Das heißt: Grenzen setzen! Das ist die einzige Sprache, die Menschen ohne innere Identität verstehen. Wer ihnen helfen möchte, braucht eine innere Authorität. [..]
> Konsequenz trägt zunächst zur Beruhigung derjenigen bei, die Autorität für ihr Persönlichkeitsgefüge brauchen. Bei Hitlers Putsch 1923 in München geschah das Gegenteil. Als die bayrische Regierung Hitler mit ein paar Schüssen Einhalt gebot, fiel dessen Bewegung zusammen. Erst als die gerichtlichen Instanzen ihm verständnisvoll als Menschen mit berechtigtem "Leid" entgegenkamen, verkehrte sich der Zusammenbruch in einen Neubeginn.
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> With loving tolerance and an understanding approach we won't be able to placate violent right-wing extremists and neo-nazis. From the studies with abused children we know, that they react with hatred and violence to a loving approach. [..]
> But hatred and violence is not the appropriate anti-dote either. When dealing with hateful people the most important thing is to be consequent. This means: setting boundaries! This is the only language that people without an inner identity understand. Who wants to help them needs inner authority. [..]
> Being consequent calms those who need authority for their personality structure. During Hitlers coup [attempt] 1923 in Munich the opposite happened. When the Bavarian government stopped Hitler with a few bullets, the movement collapsed. Only when the judicial instances approached him understandingly as a human with justified "suffering", the collapse reversed into a new beginning.
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I'd say the ACLU may be great with many things, but here, they're way out of their depth. As is HN. Even journalists begging Trump for a statement, while well meaning, are way too weak; either you respect the office of President or the person currently holding it, you can hardly have both. Generally it would be great if those who don't have the guts and the grounding for the necessary confrontations would stop trying to stop those who do. Arno Gruen, Hannah Arendt, et al: don't discard the wisdom they extracted from things that can simply not be allowed to happen again. Or ignore all I said, but do read their books. I left out big chunks from the Arno Gruen quote; when he says being consequent and setting boundaries he really means disarming people, not wailing on them or anything. I'm too full of spite for that job, but I'd have the back of anyone who isn't but also isn't a coward. Nothing more, nothing less.
I wholeheartedly agree.
How about it being a felony to brand yourself part of a party that was an enemy of the state at one point? Not citizens of other countries, but self-professed members of a political class or party that caused a war and casualties. Would the United States permit an ISIS rally, or an Al Qaeda rally in the middle of a city with a state University? But yet somehow we're allowing one of the most heinous groups in all of history, one that we were at war with less than 100 years ago, to represent themselves in public, armed and screaming for inequality, for murder of people that aren't pure Aryan?
This isn't a freedom of speech issue, this is a what are we going to tolerate issue. We won't let people walk down the street with an AL Qaeda shirt on, why should we let people walk down the street with swastikas?
This. Violent sedition, undermining the rule of law and promoting the destruction of Democracy is not a right and defending Democracy is our duty.
What is democracy without the freedom of association, which OP was proposing to undermine by jailing self-professed members of a group. We already have laws against the actual seditious acts, we don't need laws saying which groups you may and may not belong to.
When that group exists to undermine the rule of law and carries out illegal acts it actually is against to law to belong to them. It's falls under conspiracy and aiding and abetting laws. This is why you can't be a member of ISIS.