Mahmoud Khalil* Has the Right to Speak Because He Speaks the Truth Against Oppression, NOT Because "Everybody Including Oppressors Has a Right to Free Speech"

Defend Mahmoud Khalil with SENSIBLE arguments, not the bogus "freedom of speech" nonsense. Oppressors have no right to use any weapon, not even speech, to oppress.

Not by relying on the oppressor’s First Amendment, but by fighting like this, as described here, is how the have-nots won free speech for the have-nots in the United States.

If you think that only be relying on the First Amendment that protects speech by oppressors can we protect freedom for anti-oppression speech, then you are mistaken, and the source of this mistaken reasoning is likely that you don’t know the truth about working class people that I discuss here.¹

Defend Mahmoud Khalil with sensible arguments, not counter-productive ones.² Mahmoud Khalil has the right to speak (and remain in the United States) because he speaks the truth against Zionist oppression. Had he been speaking lies in support of Zionist oppression then he would NOT have any right to do so.³ If you don’t understand this it is because the ruling class has worked very hard to make sure you don’t.

Excuse Me for Being Blunt, But If You Believe that Oppressors Have the Right to Oppress by Using Any Weapon Whatsoever--Including Speech--Then YOU ARE WRONG.

If you say, "But but but 'Freedom of Speech'," then you have been snookered by the ruling class big time.

If you say, “But but but The First Amendment of the Constitution says “Freedom of Speech” then you don’t understand that the Founding Fathers were enemies of We the People and free speech for oppressors is morally WRONG, not right. If you are confused about this, then keep reading please.

The Freedom of Speech principle—which is a bogus one!—says that the Allies in World War II had no right to censor UNARMED German pilots in spy planes over England because these pilots were only using speech (into their radio) to TRUTHFULLY describe what they were seeing and they had no intention nor ability to use violence and COULD NOT CAUSE IMMINENT HARM to anybody. (I write about this here.)

In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court defined a true threat as “‘serious expressions’ conveying that a speaker means to ‘commit an act of unlawful violence.’” By this criterion the German pilot’s speech did not constitute a true threat and hence was, according to proponents of Freedom of Speech, protected speech. Is this really what you would agree with?

Free speech for Nazis?

The Freedom of Speech principle—which is a bogus one!—says that in the days of Nazi Germany good people had no right to forcibly prevent the Nazis from publishing the antisemitic propaganda that aimed to make Germans view Jews as a mortal enemy that had to be eliminated. I’m referring to propaganda—mere speech with no advocacy of violence, mind you!—such as the following excerpt from more similar stuff online here:

Had you been on the scene back then when good people stormed the publishing house that printed such propaganda that justified this:

would you have said to these good people, “No! Stop! You are violating the Freedom of Speech that this Nazi publisher has and deserves to have. Let him publish all he wants! Then disagree with what he publishes.”

Uh?

Free speech for slave owners?

What about if you had been on the scene in the 1800s when American slave-owners published vile racist tracts designed to persuade whites that black people were inferior sub-human animals that were rightfully made slaves? Stuff reported on here, like this:

More Images

The coon caricature is one of the most insulting of all anti-black caricatures. The name itself, an abbreviation of raccoon, is dehumanizing. As with Sambo, the coon was portrayed as a lazy, easily frightened, chronically idle, inarticulate, buffoon. The coon differed from the Sambo in subtle but important ways. Sambo was depicted as a perpetual child, not capable of living as an independent adult. The coon acted childish, but he was an adult; albeit a good-for-little adult. Sambo was portrayed as a loyal and contented servant. Indeed, Sambo was offered as a defense for slavery and segregation. How bad could these institutions have been, asked the racialists, if black people were contented, even happy, being servants? The coon, although he often worked as a servant, was not happy with his status. He was, simply, too lazy or too cynical to attempt to change his lowly position. Also, by the 1900s, Sambo was identified with older, docile black people who accepted Jim Crow laws and etiquette; whereas coons were increasingly identified with young, urban black people who disrespected white people. Stated differently, the coon was a Sambo gone bad.

Would you have told good people who were trying to stop the printing of such racist propaganda that they were wrong in censoring it? Would you have told them, “Stop! You are violating the Freedom of Speech of the slave-owners. They are only saying things and not advocating violence. Disagree with them all you want but you have no right to censor their words.”

Uh?

“But but but if we censor the bad guys this will enable them to censor us, the good guys.”

This is a stupid argument. It is as stupid as saying, “If we make it illegal to use a knife to murder somebody then that will enable the passage of laws making it illegal to use knives to cook.” Speech in support of oppression is as different from speech in opposition to oppression as a knife used for murder is different from a knife used for cooking. Duh! Banning the former in no way means banning the latter. Does making murder illegal mean that people cannot legally kill in self-defense? USE YOUR NOGGIN!

“But but but the First Amendment is our protection.”

Wrong. The IWW (“the Wobblies”) won the right to free speech for working class people in the early 1900s when the First Amendment was simply not applied to pro-working class speech in the United States. Read all about this in the ConnecticutHistory.org article here. The Founding Fathers who wrote the U.S. Constitution were enemies of We the People, as I show here; they were not at all concerned with protecting the free speech rights of the have-nots; on the contrary.

“But but but, so who gets to decide what's printed and what's not?"

The answer to the “Who gets to decide” question is the same as the answer to "Who gets to decide if a war is just or not just?" and "Who gets to decide if Jim Crow laws are just or not just"? Do you conclude from the lack of some wise authority--perhaps a big bearded man in the sky or a stone tablet somewhere--to declare the answers to these questions that therefore all wars are OK and all laws are OK? Do you conclude that all wars are OK and all laws are OK since there is no document describing how people must go about deciding such questions? I certainly hope not! So why do you resort to such specious thinking when it comes to denying oppressors the ability to use speech to oppress?

Please read this concrete scenario, based on a real experience I had, to decide how you actually feel about this question.

Please read here why it is wrongful fear of the working class that causes far too many activists to defend the right of oppressors to use speech to oppress.

Stop relying on bogus concepts such as “freedom of speech” handed to us by the oppressors and that are designed to hamstring our efforts to abolish oppression, OK?

Speech against oppression should not be censored; speech in support of oppression has no right to be spoken or printed or broadcast (and, depending on the circumstances—as discussed here—may sometimes usefully be censored.)

* After I posted this a person I respect (Z.M.) told me that Mahmoud Khalil, who was not a UK citizen, was an agent of the UK government with security clearance and therefore likely involved with UK intelligence and possibly also U.S. intelligence, and that Khalil had, as an activist at Columbia, advocated pro-terrorism (pro-Hamas) views that were not at all representative of the great majority of the Pro-Palestine protesters. I don’t know if this is true or not. If it is true then it would suggest that Khalil is being used as a patsy to falsely stigmatize the people who oppose Israel’s genocide of Palestinians as pro-terrorism. This is indeed the reason why the mass media frame the conflict as Hamas versus Israel in the first place. Be this all as it may be, the point of this Substack post is to clarify that anti-oppression speech is a right but pro-oppression speech is not right. I write to further clarify this in this more recent post.

1. This is what I mean. If you lack the knowledge (which my linked article discusses) that most ordinary people want an egalitarian revolution to abolish oppression, then you will lack confidence that you can rely on ordinary people to defend the right of anti-oppression speech and you will think it is necessary to rely instead on the First Amendment that purports to defend the right of speech for both oppressors and the oppressed.

2. Counter-productive because they defend the right of oppressors to use speech to oppress.

3. If a person does not have the right to speak (because they are using speech to oppress) that does not necessarily mean the appropriate thing for good people to do is to forcibly prevent that person from speaking. Depending on the circumstances, it may be wiser to let them speak and refute what they say. The goal is to build maximum opposition to what they say. In some circumstances the way to do that is indeed to forcibly prevent them from speaking.