nuremberg files

I have taken down my NF mirror.
February 29, 1999

The debate about the use some perverts may or not make of the list is so heated that I decided to take it down. Yet I still believe that lists are part of free speech.

Please read on. What would you think in terms of free speech about an article that goes like this:

Some people and groups are vehemently opposed to abortion. They compare it with murder and call the doctors that perform it killers. Some of these anti-abortionists are extremely right-winged, and paint abortion in the darkest colours imaginable; Bob Enyart is one of them, and so is Neal Horsley.

Bob Enyart is a Colorado based talkshow host who seems to have made his extremist view on abortion his sole reason of existence. He talks about hardly anything else. He also maintains a website that propagates his intolerant, lopsided, single-minded view on abortion. Apart from that, he is one of the founders of the Shadow Government, which has as its mission to install a 'true' christian government. The stated aim of the page is to "train men on how to properly fill various roles in government". The page is now disguised as a role playing game, but previously it wasn't. I assume the guise serves to save him (further) legal hassle. The Shadow Government has a Hundred day Scenario that describes how the US should be reformed. On Day One, the Shadow Government proclaims that anybody who is found guilty of performing or advocating (the right to an) abortion, will be sentenced to death; no right to an attorney, no appeal possible.

Neal Horsley is a Georgia based computer programmer. He maintained a well-known and very controversial website that expressed similar views: The Nuremberg Files. The website was rampant with blood-dripping lines, torn foetuses and other such pictures, and listed the names of abortion doctors. Horsley's website stated that his group, the ACLA, hoped for a change of law that would make not only performing abortion a capital crime, but also protecting abortion clinics and defending the right to an abortion. The ACLA stated that it gathered information on the people who currently do what would be a capital crime in an envisioned future. Evidently, Horsley intends to pass laws with retroactive effect, were he to come into office. Horsley is also the owner of Pathway Communications, an umbrella publishing company. I assume he might want to publish the Hundred Day Scenario.

I think that you should know about these people and about the impact they have upon society. If you want to write them and voice your disapproval, you can do so.

Would you consider the above article to be informative? Do you think that people should be able to read this? Do you think that I have the right to gather such information, and collect it in an essay or on a homepage?

In that case, we agree. The above article is well within the limits of free speech. Now imagine that I continue the above article like this:

John SoAndSo [insert real name] is the president of XYZ [insert name of appropriate group], a Milwaukee based organization that demonstrates outside abortion clinics and harasses women who visit the clinic and the people who work there. The harassment that his group perpetrated, managed to close down four abortion clinics in Milwaukee. A member of SoAndSo's organization has killed a doctor who worked at one of these clinics. SoAndSo has afterwards publicly stated that he is "in principle" against violence, but that he can "understand" why some people have killed, tried to kill or wounded abortion doctors. At the very day that the murdered doctor was buried, SoAndSo organized a celebration party in [insert name], where he lives.

You'd still consider it to be an ok article, I think. I would.

Now imagine that for practical purposes, I close the article with a summary, a list of names. There is no new information in this list: every item was already enclosed in the article. It is just a practical overview. It would look like this:

Would this addendum to the article be covered by free speech? It would. It is a terse form of the article that is covered by free speech. A list contains no opinion, nor an argument; yet, is not essentially different.

This is in a nutshell why I think that a list that points to real and actual people should be allowed. Many people and many groups of people maintain lists and publish them, for al kinds of use. Scientology critics collect list of WISE members (Scientology entrepreneurs); they do so, because WISE members, without revealing that they are Scientology members, often actively proselytize for Scientology and give a good percentage of what they earn off you, to Scientology itself. Scientology critics believe that the public should know this. Hence, they use and publish such lists, prefaced by their motives.

What if some Scientology critic goes berserk, gets himself a gun, and kills a Scientologist who is on that list? There is no way of knowing whether there is any relation between that list and the murder or between the list and the murderer. What if there was? Should we therefore ban such lists in general? Or leave out the companies, or their home base? Perhaps we should; we don't want anybody murdered. Or we could add a line to the list that you mustn't use the list for illegal purposes. But that is sort of redundant, isn't it? And if anybody goes berserk, such a reminder wouldn't stop him, would it? Is it the listing itself then that is wrong? No; it isn't. Not if the above article is covered by free speech.

Next experiment. Image a list just like the Nuremberg Files: names of people, some with address and all. Actually, it is the names and addresses of same people as the Nuremberg Files contained. The most noticeable difference is the style: while the NF list had dripping blood and spoke about killing, this version is terribly sweet. It's all pink and rosy; there's pictures of angels and flowery adornments.

There is a short introduction to the list. It says that being an abortion doctor is terribly hard work, that these people do their difficult work in harsh circumstances and under great political pressure, and that it is up to us, the readers, to show these people how much we value their efforts. The introduction closes with a request to please send these people flowers, greeting cards, boxes of chocolates etc.; hence, the addresses.

Would such a list ever be repressed? Could such a list be censored? Should such a list be repressed? I don't think so. If Neal Horsley had been smart, he would have made that list instead of his original one and he would easily have gotten away with it.

Copyright Karin Spaink.
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