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What Is Unite The Right Attack?

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On August 12, 2017, a “Unite the Right” rally was planned to protest the removal of a Statue of Robert E. Lee. This “Unite the Right” rally was the largest white supremacist rally in recent U.S history and caused a local state of emergency to be declared in Charlottesville and the County of Albemarle. ( “Charlottesville Attack: What”, 2017) This state of emergency caused local officials to be able to call the rally a “unlawful assembly ”. Many accounts state that many of the alt-right protestors came geared up with batons, shields, guns and face masks (Yan, 2017). The peak of the protest hit when a speeding car rammed into a group of anti-racist protesters injuring 19 and killing one. ( “Charlottesville Attack: What”, 2017) The driver …show more content…

In the article “Why We Must Still Defend Free Speech”, Cole states that many people have asked the ACLU , which he is a prominent member of why they would choose to defend the organizer of the white supremacist rally in helping to protect the permit he got for said rally . Cole then asks the question , “Should the fatal violence that followed prompt recalibration of the scope of free speech?” ( Cole, 2017) He then goes on to say that the First Amendment’s future may be at stake and points out that a 2015 poll done by the Pew Research Center stated that 40% of millennials felt that the government should be able to censor speech that minority groups deemed offensive . Cole states that the more recent generations believe far less in free speech then the generations before them and that views on free speech can vastly differ with Europe not protecting racist speech whatsoever. He then goes on to do a concession , stating that the people who oppose racist speech being protected make many arguments that all end up leading to the point of free speech impeding equality and that equality should take prevalence over free speech. He then goes on to say that while yes they are partially right, in the way that America is not a fair and equal place that ultimately their argument that free speech shouldn’t be protected under grounds of inequality is wrong. Cole goes on to state that “ The right to free speech does not rest on the presumption of a level playing

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