The 1981 TV movie “Skokie” captured the ACLU’s glory days. It’s also a reminder of how far the group has fallen in recent years.
The fact-based tale starred Danny Kaye as a Holocaust survivor aghast that Neo Nazis were planning to march in his bucolic Chicago suburb. Many residents, including fellow Holocaust survivors, raged at the proposal, but the ACLU was one of several groups to support the Nazis' right to march.
Free speech for all, the group cried. And the ACLU was right. It’s easy to protect innocent, thought-provoking speech. Standing up for the right to say something subversive, challenging or downright hateful is another matter.
A necessary matter.
Yet that version of the ACLU has been missing in action for far too long. The group said little during the Cancel Culture revolution, the perfect time for it to assert its moral authority. When sensitivity readers excised passages by the likes of Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming and Agatha Christie, the ACLU didn’t publicly battle the overt censorship.
The Twitter Files scandal came and went with no major pushback from the august group, even though stories like the Hunter Biden laptop scandal got suppressed at the worst possible moment. Conservatives have faced cancellations for years on college campuses, simply because they held the "wrong" views. Those lucky enough to actually make it to the podium have done so via strict security measures.
Ben Shapiro has been told by his security team (yes, the slightly-built pundit has one) to wear a bulletproof vest in public.
And the Hollywood Blacklist 2.0, a suppression of stars who lean to the Right, has yet to get the ACLU's attention. Here's betting James Woods can share some anecdotes on that subject.
This reporter reached out to the ACLU’s press office a time or two on free speech-themed stories but got no response. Not surprising.
The group’s web site promotes transgender rights, racial justice and pro-abortion measures ... along with free speech. The nonprofit has become an overt tool for the Left, and since the Left mostly abandoned free speech concerns in recent years, the ACLU appeared to follow suit.
Until now?
The ACLU just debuted “Know Your Rights University,” an animated series teaching children about free speech and related constitutional rights. The first episode deals with the First Amendment.
The four inaugural shows can be seen on YouTube Kids and ACLU.org.
It’s about time. And where have they been? A cynic might note the Left’s sudden interest in speech, like supporting Jimmy Kimmel during his one-week suspension for misleading viewers, coincided with President Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office.
Do we even need to say that speech should be a top priority no matter what party is in office?
Kaye himself defended free speech in a Christian Science Monitor interview from 1981.
“If we agree that our purpose is to defeat what Collins (the Nazi) stands for, to protect democracy against Nazism, against genocide, I say the most practical way, in fact the only way, is to defend the First Amendment as our strongest weapon…If speech, if protest, can be stifled by government today, the village of Skokie against the Nazis, even the Nazis, the same principle can be applied tomorrow when others may have the desperate need to cry out for help and justice.''
