Thank you for this thoughtful and balanced coverage of the issue of Leslie Mehta’s legal defense of Nazi Jason Kessler. I have had ambivalent feelings about the ACLU’s decisions to provide free, valuable legal services to virulent hatemongers ever since they facilitated the Nazi march in Skokie, Illinois - a Chicago suburb with many Jewish Holocaust survivors and their families- in the 1970s.
While I agree with the ACLU on a range of other issues and agree that everyone deserves legal representation, their defense of actual Nazis has kept me from donating to them for the simple reason that I would never want a penny of mine to go towards helping somebody whose ultimate goal is to throw me into an oven.
The quote you cite from the former VA Director of the ACLU that they only agreed to represent Kessler after he promised to refrain from promoting violence shows the absolute height of precious, clueless progressive naivete - “But, but, but the Nazi guy promised he’d be nice to everyone!” Mehta can and will defend what she did, but consequences matter and sometimes you have to re-examine your principles and policies when the consequences of them turn out to be absolutely God-awful.
Thank you for this thoughtful and balanced coverage of the issue of Leslie Mehta’s legal defense of Nazi Jason Kessler. I have had ambivalent feelings about the ACLU’s decisions to provide free, valuable legal services to virulent hatemongers ever since they facilitated the Nazi march in Skokie, Illinois - a Chicago suburb with many Jewish Holocaust survivors and their families- in the 1970s.
While I agree with the ACLU on a range of other issues and agree that everyone deserves legal representation, their defense of actual Nazis has kept me from donating to them for the simple reason that I would never want a penny of mine to go towards helping somebody whose ultimate goal is to throw me into an oven.
The quote you cite from the former VA Director of the ACLU that they only agreed to represent Kessler after he promised to refrain from promoting violence shows the absolute height of precious, clueless progressive naivete - “But, but, but the Nazi guy promised he’d be nice to everyone!” Mehta can and will defend what she did, but consequences matter and sometimes you have to re-examine your principles and policies when the consequences of them turn out to be absolutely God-awful.