The Pornography of Hatred
October 8, 2015
The Pornography of Hatred
by William John Cox
There is danger in the pandering of hatred that goes beyond the freedom of expression. Is there a right to profit from supplying the seeds of destruction to those who have the need to blame others for the poverty of their existence? Bar owners who continue to serve drunks can be held responsible for the deaths of those later killed in traffic collisions, but to what extend should those who peddle the rhetoric of hatred, bigotry, and violence be held responsible for the consequences of their merchandising?
These were some of the questions that confronted us in 1980 when I represented a survivor of Auschwitz against those who denied the Holocaust. Alleging an “Injurious Denial of an Established Fact,” I argued that someone should not be able to grasp a blatant lie in one’s hand and slap another person in the face with it. The matter was resolved when a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled: “this Court does take judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944 . . . . It is simply a fact.”
The defendants were the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) and its parent company, the Liberty Lobby—which was a conglomerate of radical right-wing organizations that marketed individualized packages of hatred to those with particular proclivities. The IHR was attempting to move onto college campuses by circulating a slick “scholarly journal” that offered pseudoscientific theories denying the existence of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry. We were successful at blunting its collegiate campaign; however, 35 years later, these and similar organizations—now making full use of the Internet—continue to promulgate lies for profit. The danger of these lies threatens everyone, not just those targeted by the propaganda of violent hatred.
Freedom of Speech
James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, considered the First Amendment to be the most important, since without the freedom of speech all others are forfeit. The ink was hardly dry on the document before Congress enacted the Sedition Act in 1798 to punish “scandalous and malicious writings” about the president or the government which caused them to be held in “contempt or disrepute.” The Act expired with the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800, and President Adams later considered the Act to be the greatest mistake of his administration. Opposition by Jefferson and others, who encouraged nullification of the Act, planted the seeds of disunion that later led to the Civil War.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/08/the-pornography-of-hatred/
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