This morning, on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now, Medea Benjamin asserted with righteous political correctness that hate speech and racist speech we’re prohibited in our national dialogue.
This is the same Medea Benjamin, who I have respected and admired for many years now for her outspoken criticism of this nation’s dishonest and deadly military ventures throughout the world.
There are many countries where she would have been imprisoned for such expression of dissent against a government, most notably Saudi Arabia, which in recent months she has chosen to highlight for their lack of human rights and their slaughter of the Yemeni People, and for which she published a book on the same subject.
I am in total agreement with what Medea purports to say on these accounts about whether it be Saudi Arabia, Syria, Donald Trump, or the condemnation of the violence that erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia.
But a very glaring double standard has reared its ugly head in her denunciation of what she refers to as “hate speech”.
There are many in this country who look upon the many forms of expression Medea has used in her opposition to US military imperialism who would define her behavior and words as “hate speech”, hatred for this country.
I am not one of the them who would see her viewpoint as hatred for this country, but rather “patriotic” in her attempts to correct a government of the People that has for some time now lost contact with its essential moral principles of democracy and freedom. I would agree with Theodore Roosevelt who stated that the highest form of patriotism is dissent.
But let’s face it. Many Americans become less than open minded and less protective of their adherence to the Constitution of the US when they perceive someone who in their mind attacks what they perceive to be inviolable_their interpretation of patriotism: unquestioning allegiance to their government.
What is happening in this nation as a consequence of the violence that erupted in Virginia is a backlash against others’ right to voice their opinion, a supposed Constitutionally guaranteed right.
If all one has to do then is for the politically correct proponents of what constitutes “hate speech” to define that which they find repugnant, unpatriotic, distasteful is to assert their “interpretations” and label them “hate speech”. then Medea Benjamin BEWARE. Your neck may very well be the next on the guillotine block.
Have Americans not noticed that their civil liberties have been eroding exponentially since 9/11, orchestrated by a cabal of deep state actors who Medea has stood so powerfully against?
By Medea’s interpretation of “hate speech” has she joined the ranks of those furthering limitations of our Rights and will she herself end up the Victim of the politically correct voluntary fascists who would eliminate that which they disagree with?
–Bob of Occupy