First shut them up - Je Suis Alex Jones Je Suis Rockland Hassidic Anti Vaxxers
The article below my comments, from the , was linked from the Drudge Report.In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo slaughter, the expression I am also Charlie Hebdo - Je Suis Charlie Hebdo became famous.The concepts of freedom of expression,free thought and free speech are so central to freedom and liberty that they should be self evident.The right to free speech is outlined in the US Bill of Rights not to protect politically correct speech but to protect offensive speech. I am guilty of being silent when the the internet monopolies went after Alex Jones and de platformed him and kicked him off of all the major internet communication platforms and I apologize for my sin of silence.
Jones has been targeted by the shut up police. In Nazi Germany they also had a shut up police known as the Gestapo. When Jews in Germany in the 1930s would write to relatives in America pleading for help to escape, they had to be careful what they wrote because the Gestapo was reading the mail. If you wrote anything bad about Germany you could expect a knock on the door in the middle of the night and it would not end well for you.
Similarly we have seen mainstream media working to shut down opposition to compulsory vaccination. The media has portrayed Hasidim in Rockland county as "insular", "uneducated", and "unworldly"and therefore incapable of making the "correct" decisions when it comes to vaccination for their children. The first lie they have put out is painting all Hasidim as one monolithic group. They have lied about the real numbers of vaccine compliance in the Hasidic community.In the Hassidic schools in Rockland there is a vaccination compliance rate of between 93 and 100 percent more than enough for the mythical herd immunity. It is a tiny percentage of the Hasidic community that has been smart enough to avoid the dangerous vaccines.
When you have Congressmen like Adam Schiff openly calling for online censorship of anti Vaccination speech and getting those companies to actually go along with it with glee, it is a red alert signal.
To you Adam Schiff I say Je Suis Alex Jones and Je Suis Rockland Hassidic Anti Vaxxers
Alex Jones’ lawyer: If you want the Infowars host silenced, you’re scarier than he is
You’ve probably heard by now that Alex Jones of Infowars plans to defend himself against charges that he defamed the families of folks killed in the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in 2012 by claiming some form of psychosis.
You
heard wrong. You swallowed a meme, becoming the very thing you say you
scorn — a dupe to a hateful, half-baked piece of misinformation.
I
know this because I represent Alex Jones in three suits pending against
him in Connecticut. He faces a related suit defended by separate
counsel in Texas.
Alex
Jones is not psychotic. He plans to defend himself on the same grounds
that protect those who take such joy in ridiculing him: the First
Amendment right to freedom of speech.
In
a video deposition posted online by plaintiffs’ lawyers, he says he was
influenced by “something like psychosis” when he opined that Sandy Hook
was a hoax. Jones haters seized on this hazy metaphor like starving
children diving at crumbs.
The
Sandy Hook lawsuits allege that Jones defamed the families by denying
the mass shootings took place. For those of us who live in Connecticut,
it’s hard to take seriously the denial of a reality you lived through.
We lost family and friends at Sandy Hook. We saw colleagues grieve.
Let’s
set the record straight: Alex Jones believes that there was a massacre
at Sandy Hook. He entertained the possibility that it was all a hoax
when events were fresh. He hosted people who wondered aloud why the FBI
would claim there were no homicides in Sandy Hook the very year 26
people were murdered. Just today I received an email from a lost soul
claiming it’s all a hoax.
Jones
never encouraged people to visit the homes of the surviving family
members. He did not himself state that the deaths of children were faked
by families seeking financial gain or elevated status as spokesmen for
gun control. These assertions about Jones have become urban legend —
repeated so often they are taken as true. We are eager to test these
assertions in open court and to let a fair-minded jury evaluate the
actual evidence — if the cases ever actually get to the point of a jury
trial.
The
cases should be dismissed. Alex Jones hasn’t defamed anyone; he has
engaged in extreme speech, a form of speech we’ve cherished since the
days of the penny press.
The
truth of the matter is Jones has a right to his opinions, no matter how
outlandish. That he discomfited the suffering is truly unfortunate. But
our newfound instinct to make symbols of survivors in our roiling
political debates about such things as gun control transforms them into
public figures in the contested terrain of political speech. Declaring
these folks to be off-limits is a misuse of pathos. Victims used to
mourn in private.
Folks
should spend a lot less time taking shots at Alex Jones and more time
wondering what makes Jones possible. It’s the same sort of question
Trump haters ought to ask. Millions of voters and listeners flock to
these men not because they are crazy but because they offer alternatives
to mainstream narratives that fail to resonate with folks who have
little to gain from tuning into CNN, MSNBC or reading the pages of The
New York Times.
Before
I chose to represent Alex Jones, I ignored him. His views were too
extreme for me. He wasn’t a figure I hated; he just didn’t matter. He
was the town crier warning the end is neigh.
Now I defend him from you — you, who want him silenced — because you scare me more than he does.
There
is no mob quite so terrifying as a self-righteous mob. Suppressing
speech because it offends a majority of folks gives the power to censor
speech. We’re close to banning speech simply because it is hateful. Even
Mark Zuckerberg now wants new legislation to limit speech. We’ve gone
from wanting information to be free to fearing the heterodox.
What
motivates hate is fear. Alex Jones and his listeners are afraid of what
this country is becoming. You are afraid of Alex Jones and his
outlandish conspiracy theories. You’re more alike than you think.
Fight
your differences out in the marketplace of ideas. But let’s not fall
down the bottomless pit of censorship. Alex Jones is not psychotic, and
neither, I suspect, are you, although some days I’m not so sure about
either of you.
Norm Pattis is an attorney based in New Haven.
Comments