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THIS IS SINAI
Michigan's Only Jewish Hospital
22
FRIDAY, MAY 6, 1988,
Should Free Speech
Ever Be Abridged?
KENNETH LASSON
Special to the Jewish News
I
n a free society, should
Nazis be allowed to
march in public,
preaching genocide and in-
flaming racial passions? Can
an ethnic group that has been
maliciously defamed collect
damages in court? Do mere
words cause injury?
These and other questions
were debated last week by
scholars from around the
world, who assembled in New
York for a three-day con-
ference entitled "Group
Defamation and Freedom of
Speech: The Relationship be-
tween Language and Vio-
lence." The gathering at
Hofstra University, co-
sponsored by the Anti-
Defamation League of B'nai
B'rith, the NAACP and an
Asian American group, in-
cluded academics and practi-
tioners from the humanities,
sciences, linguistics, and the
law. All of them suggested ap-
propriate responses to in-
creasing incidents of racial
hatred, particularly in
western democracies.
Elie
Wiesel,
Nobel
Laureate and currently a pro-
fessor of humanities at
Boston University, told the
conference participants that
the "most despicable
enemies" of free people
everywhere remain in the
sophisticated pseudo-scholars
who would rewrite history
and deny the Holocaust ever
took place. Speaking with his
usual quiet eloquence, Wiesel
said that even now he
receives hundreds of hate let-
ters a year.
Somewhat ironically, per-
haps, announcement of the
conference at Hofstra also
resulted in racist mail to the
university — most of it anti-
Semitic but some directed
against Catholics and blacks.
A succession of other
scholars examined the causal
effect between group defama-
tion and oppression. Psychol-
ogist Kenneth Clark traced
patterns of prejudice both
overt and subtle that have
caused what he termed pal-
pable harm to blacks, con-
cluding that, in his lifetime at
least, racial defamation has
equaled oppression. Historian
Laurence Hauptman pointed
to the devastating effects
upon Pequod Indians when
they were labeled "Children
of Satan." Dr. John Dower
described a litany of epithets
aimed at the Japanese during
World War II, when they were
most frequently likened to
"yellow vermin" and "apes."
And sociologist Michael
Blain presented the chilling
development of linguistic
defamation in mid-20th Cen-
tury Germany, where the
Nazis propaganda machine
had first labeled Jews as
"egotistical" and then, pro-
gressively more perjorative,
as "cunning," "sly," and
"destructive." Ultimately, of
course, all Jews were depicted
as "racial monsters" and "un-
Freedom of speech
is a noble
guarantee of the
First Amendment,
and liberty-loving
Americans have
been loathe to
abandon the
principle .. .
termenschen" (subhumans).
"A particular speech or
series of speeches attacking a
minority group may not pre-
sent a clear and a present
danger of violence," noted
Law Professor Monroe H.
Freedman, the conference
director. "We know intuitive-
ly, however, that group
defamation can create a social
climate that is receptive to
and encourages hatred and
oppression. If a minority
group can be made to appear
less than human, deserving of
punishment, or a threat to
the general community, op-
pression of that minority is a
likely consequence."
Other proofs were offered
that language itself can hurt
— that there are words which
by their very utterance can
inflict injury by demeaning
dignity and inducing fear.
Nevertheless, to allow pun-
ishment of group defamation
raises serious questions of
social policy and, in the
United States at least, con-
stitutionality. Freedom of
speech is a noble guarantee of
the First Amendment, and
liberty-loving Americans
have been loathe to abandon
the principle with but
precious few exceptions.
Those thoughts that are
abhorrent to a free society, we
say, will wither when aired
but fester if suppressed.
Moreover, who is to decide
which ideas are offensive?
The traditional arguments
against the constitutionality
of group-libel laws are that to