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Comment by gsk22 | Hacker News Reader

How has the ACLU lost its way? Is there a specific incident that happened?

I don't follow these things too closely, but my perception is they continue to do the same kind of work they always have.

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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

Also: The ACLU Has Lost Its Way

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/aclu-johnn...

The ACLU taking donations to silently support Amber Heard suing Johnny Depp is so far afield of their mission it’s unforgivable.

Here are a couple of reference documents [1][2]

tl;dr : the ACLU used to be a free speech absolutist organization to the point of self-sabotage. (eg: Jewish ACLU lawyers defending Neo-Nazis). In that sense, it went from a libertarian organization to a progressive activist organization that now supports cases that suppress civil liberties as long as the cause supports their (faux activist?) progressive agenda.

[1]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/aclu-johnn...

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

The ACLU was never a "libertarian organization." It is an accident of language that in modern American politics "libertarians" and "civil libertarians" sound more similar than they actually are.

It's only self sabotage if you define self narrowly. They chose that case because it so strongly demonstrated the true principle they were defending.

From a practical standpoint, the Nazi group they were defending didn't amount to anything, and they never even held their march after going to all the work of taking the case to the Supreme Court.

I assume you aren’t suggesting it was astroturfed? I have never heard that claimed.

Not at all. It was just a strategic choice. It’s hard to say what they would have done had it been something like the actual Nazi party though with thousands of brownshirts etc.

The specific incident was the Charlottesville protests and consequent murders by white supremacists. They had stepped in to defend Jason Kessler's argument against moving the protest (where the city wanted to move the protest because they correctly identified the violence that would occur) and made a ton of PR gaffes during this time. As a result the ACLU ended up losing a ton of support both externally and internally because they had played a part in an event that was obviously going to turn violent.

They also support compelled speech in 2023, when it comes to pronouns, etc.

https://twitter.com/kittypurrzog/status/1449545013684146176

This definition of compelled speech is inherently politicizing an apolitical thing. I find it super strange to refer to using someone's gender as compelled speech. Sometimes I mistake a man for a woman, especially long-haired men from behind, and if the man corrects me and asks me to refer to him as a man, I don't throw a fit that my civil liberties are being violated. Certainly if I kept insisting on calling my male student she/her pronouns in kindergarten because he happened to have long hair and I got in trouble for it, this isn't compelling my speech any more than if I got in trouble for refusing to use "John" if a co-worker says "Hey don't call me Jonathan please, I go by John". I don't see why we should hold trans or nonbinary people to a standard we don't hold everyone else: if I call someone P and they correct me and ask me to call them Q, I don't think it's compelled speech.

The compulsion element arises if you risk being fired for not using the words you are being asked to use.

If I intentionally called a co-worker by the wrong name when it obviously upset them, should I be surprised if I got fired?

A pronoun is not a name

If you don't want to respect the people around you at work, you should be fired.

See how easy it is to fall into supporting compelled speech? It’s all for a good cause, after all…

No you don't understand it's not compelled speech if it's something I agree with.

If you go around your workplace intentionally calling your manager a 'woman' or a 'female' in spite of him being a cisgender man you will probably be fired quicker than you think. But by all means you can try and see how long you'll last.

See how easy it is to fall into assuming I care? This is not "compelled speech" in the sense of the Constitution, anyway, your disingenuous attempts to paint it as such notwithstanding.

I mean, it's also super inappropriate to run around calling a random guy with long hair she/her. It's obviously super inappropriate to call a female co-worker a man if she lifts weights, y'know? It's always been a firable offense. I don't see the difference here except to say we want to treat trans people special, or something, and I just think that's just bringing politics into it.

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