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Comment by chrononaut | Hacker News Reader

I am out of the loop on this one. What has the ACLU become today, and why is the EFF growing questionable?

From my understanding the ACLU used to stand for the civil rights of everybody and even defended KKK members. But now they have taken sides on various social justice movements and targeted groups that oppose these sides. Instead of fighting for civil rights like they used to, they pick and choose which rights they think are okay to violate if it's for the "right cause". It goes completely against their old motto.

Except that's not exactly true; here is a counterexample.

https://lawandcrime.com/first-amendment/aclu-backs-n-j-woman...

State chapters of the ACLU have usually been a lot better, the rot is more at the top and with the stands the leadership takes

General trend has been that they've become more lopsided due to their donor demographics and having to serve them. Providing one counter example doesn't disprove it.

Is there something I can read that establishes the general trend? I know there was a recent leaked memo, but it seems like a weak way to establish general trend.

'Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the A.C.L.U. Faces an Identity Crisis'

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html

Thanks!

Was in 2017, but things probably have changed: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/how-could-you-represen...

The ACLU also opposed [1], [2] banning the non-medically necessary genital cutting of infant boys (“infant circumcision”) in the SF Bay area.

[1] http://www.bayareaintactivists.org/sites/default/files/aclu_...

[2] https://www.aclunc.org/news/aclu-urges-court-invalidate-sf-c...

For the ACLU, they have lost the institutional interest in fighting for free speech. Fighting for the rights of digital Nazis to march, so to speak, is not something the ACLU defends today.

Here's a recent NYT article discussing this change in the organization: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html

Yep... once noone defends the nazis, anyone can be branded a nazi, and you lose one more right (free speech).

And sadly, the word 'nazi' has lost all of it's meaning in the last years, and has gone from swastika carrying Hitler supporters to someone who doesn't want illegals working below minimum wage to take his job.

If people come to a different country to make a better life for themselves than they would in the countries they were originally from, what's wrong with that? If you're regarding them as sub-humans who don't deserve to work to make a decent life for themselves, rather than directing your anger at the employers who exploit those unable to rise up against the poor pay/working standards/..., we could argue over whether "Nazi" is the best word to describe those views, but it's irrelevant, we should be talking about those views. Do you think you're entitled to a better life than someone else solely based on the fact that you're born in one place and they're born in another? Do you perhaps think the responsibility lies with them to get themselves fired so that that poor employer who always wanted to employ you and pay you a decent wage but was somehow tricked by them can now do so?

There is always someone from some shithole country who's willing to do the work cheaper than you.

I live in a small european country, and literally every foreign worker is lowering the wages of all the local workers - because why offer higher pay to get a local, if you can get some cheap foreigner to do it at minimum wage? And i'm talking about legal workers... if you take in account illegals, that are willing to work below minimum wage, the situation gets even shittier for locals.

You weren't talking about legal workers, you were specifically talking about, this is an exact quote, "illegals working below minimum wage". That's what I was responding to. If you also have issues with people "from some shithole country" employed, working, and paid fully in accordance with your own country's laws and regulations, that's a different discussion, in that case the employers and employees are all doing what's expected and encouraged by your country; this is your country giving them and you a signal that your own expectations are unrealistic.

Yes, and in the secon post I was talking about both legal and illegal, and both of them destroy the labour market for the locals.... and in both cases, opponents to imigration (legal economic or illegal) are branded as nazis.

Is it all opponents of immigration that are branded Nazis, or is it just those that regard foreigners as sub-human and refer to their countries as shitholes?

I never said subhuman. But yes, many do live in shithole countries. And I'm saying that as someone who lives and works in the balkans.

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