He Infiltrated a Notorious White Nationalist Group. Now, He’s Being Sued for Exposing Them

As an attorney, I would absolutely love to have subpoena and discovery power against right wing loons. I’m surprised they sued in the first place.

Exactly no one can accuse them of being smart.
- Accuse*
- Bone apple tea!
  
  What did they write in the first place?
  
  Exactly no one can excuse them of being smart.
  
  Thanks!
  Imho comments should be append only and not entirely rewritable.
Since Patriot Front itself as an organization is not party to the suit how much can reasonably be gotten from them that wasn't in the leak? And I assume they've all been sanitizing their electronic devices and destroying anything remotely incriminating leading up to this lawsuit. Probably even distancing themselves from Patriot Front itself.

Heard from a friend; Just as real champagne only comes from France, only facists from Germany can be called Nazis. All others a simply sparkling facists.

c'mon, man, "sparkling white supremacists" was right there waiting for you to take it
- White Zin-Heil-dell
Your friend is Nazi.
Champagne for my true friends, And true pain for the sparkling fascists.
- Together, we can make anything better. Up vote for you

I mean, I hate white nationalism just as much as the next guy. But if you go around making it illegal to be anonymous or part of a particular group, whether they're considered terrorist or otherwise, that's bad. It gives the next party in power precedent to make being part of your group illegal. That's why freedom of speech is so important.

I think associating with a group that believes in the creation of an ethnostate should remain legal so that associating with a group that believes in the dismantling of capitalism remains legal.

The paradox of tolerance is real, and not all things are equal.
If you allow a group that wants to murder to organize, they will eventually murder.
Banning genocide enthusiast groups doesn't mean you also have to ban bird watchers.
- I agree, but given that police have tried to charge Cop City protesters with terrorism we need to be really careful and scrutinize any new laws designed to stop these groups and how it may be intentionally or unintentionally harmful to littigamate activism and protest.
  
  That's a reasonable point.
  Writing good laws is difficult.
  
  This is why I'm generally very cautious about suggesting new laws to limit behaviour, and am more supportive of private action (e.g., companies firing Nazis rather than criminalizing being a Nazi). People that are left of center tend to forget that people that are right of center are often able to use the exact same laws written by those on the left to suppress progressive views.
  All of this ends up being a double-edged sword. You need to think of every possible way that a law could be misapplied, or can unintentionally cause harm, before moving forward. Because someone is going to intentionally misapply it for personal or political advantage.
  
  Can we learn to discern between legitimate uses of a term and illegitimate ones? Can we accept it's okay to call hate groups terrorists while their protesters are not? Can we accept reality for what it is?
  
  We can. Our justice system and politics on the other hand seems hell bent not to.
- No it's not. The whole point of the tolerance nonsense is to silence racists while allowing minority groups to thrive. There's nothing hypocritical about it and the fact that people think there is indicates a flaw in their thinking, not tolerance.
- It's not about what groups you ban in the beginning. It's about the groups they'll ban when your particular party is out of power.
  
  I already know my politics will make me a target under fascism. It's one of the reasons I'm so adamantly against it. It's not just repugnant; I'm also the enemy. I say fight them hard because wresting control back from them will be far more difficult because of what they will do to entrench themselves if they gain power.
- The paradox of tolerance is based on some schmo's personal article. It's not backed up by any research, historical analysis, or anything other than the fact that it kinda feels good to think about because it gives us an excuse to other a group, ignoring that someone else will eventually other us. It's literally only in the zeitgeist because it's attractive, not because it's right.
  
  I'm okay with othering the people that want to literally kill me, my family, and my friends.
  People do this thing where they're like "if we refuse to accept their mass murder plans, someone might refuse to accept our bird watching plans!" That's stupid. We're humans not badly written computers.
  
  To be othered, you have to be an ethnic group or a legitimate political group. So you're implying fascism and Nazis are a legitimate political or ethnic group when you complain about being "othered".
  
  They are legitimately identified as a political group because they aim to have a say in politics. This can be true without their beliefs having any legitimacy.
  
  That doesn't make them a legitimate political group, either. By that logic, the Taliban and ISIS would be legitimate political groups, and they're not. They're considered terrorist groups and so are these fucking white nationalists.
  This isn't hard. Common sense exists.
  
  I think both can be true. They are political groups who advocate and practice terrorism.
Yeah, I used to be a "free speech absolutist" too. Used to harp on about how important it is that we allow all views to be spread, regardless of how disgusting it might be... Then I grew up and realized how harmful that idea is to society.
Slippery slope fallacy isn't enough to convince me that having laws similar to Germany is going to lead to oppression or something. These ideologies have no place in modern society, and they should be given no quarter.
These people use your ideal of free speech absolutism against you, and until we realize there needs to be limits, we will never progress as a society because all of our time, focus, and resources will need to be on fighting this shit over and over and over.
- I thought "clear and present danger" took care of this sort of thing.
  
  Not sure where I fall in this conversation, but, imo all hate speech is a clear and present danger. Every time you preach hate, even if you don't have a specific immediate call to action, you are speaking to people that will take it as a call to action. I think the clear and present danger idea is really giving human beings far too much credit. Normalizing hate makes assholes think they have the support of their peers, which leads to bad things, every time. In that sense hate speech is violence. Try being on the receiving end of hate speech and you will understand just how clear and present the danger really is.
  
  My single-sentence comment seems to have caused me to be misunderstood.
  I'm wondering, why is the "clear and present danger" doctrine NOT being used to shut these racists down? Because from my perspective, racist hate speech is clearly dangerous.
  
  Because,as we've seen in this thread, other people are easily manipulated.
- I'm not a free speech absolutist.
  A free speech absolutist would say libel should be legal, and I'd disagree. There are certain things the government can do to ensure a person's right to free speech doesn't infringe upon anothers right to health, happiness, etc, and I think that's okay, but that people really need to be wary of such things so that power doesn't get too concentrated. But I wouldn't say I'm an absolutist.
  Im just saying you shouldn't make it illegal to be a part of a particular group, because then the next party in power will have precedent to make it illegal to be a part of a different group.
- Yeah it hard to xonvuce people that speach beeds limits. All ither rights do.
You make a good point but whar do we do about these white nationalist and fascist?
Agreed. The first Gay and Lesbian liberation groups people operated with aliases because infiltration could mean their persecution under the law. To fight an unjust rule of law anonymity to a degree is needed to shield the just. That someone unjust can utilize that same shield is an unfortunate consequence.
The difference is if people still think your version of justice is deplorable when you come out from behind the shield then the consequences are yours to reap. In this instance it's not a matter of people wanting to be able to love each other publicly and get married it's people wanting to crush people beneath a boot so the issue is a little less gray. Caveat emptor.
The nuance in this discussion has me both-sidesing pretty hard. I'm gonna have to put some deliberate thought into where I land on this.
I think associating with a group that believes in the creation of an ethnostate should remain legal
So long as the group explicitly says they do not condone violence and they want to achieve their goals through purely peaceful means. If they want to deport everyone who "isn't them" to establish an ethnostate, that's one thing. But killing everyone who isn't them to create an ethnostate is very different and crosses the line.
The same would go for dismantling capitalism. Winning elections and passing laws to achieve that is very different from a violent overthrow of the government.
- Why the fuck would wanting an ethnostate magically become okay simply by wanting it done through peaceful means?
  The abortion bans were imposed through "peaceful means".
  Peaceful does not mean good.
  Also countries can and do ban hate groups while allowing other speech. It is possible to have your cake and eat it too. It is possible to define something by observation alone.
  
  I never said it was good. Just that if we're going to be cautious and not outright ban it, then we will need to draw the line at violence.
- So long as the group explicitly says they do not condone violence and they want to achieve their goals through purely peaceful means.
  No, this is still a problem. The Long Shadow podcast did a great job of explaining how groups like the KKK and The Order have decentralized. Everyone knows that their message is a call to action to be taken on by individuals who they can then publicly denounce to say not like that. But they want it exactly like that. People like Timmy McVeinycock understand this.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Berg https://open.spotify.com/show/70a5obPALvMVMPSzxYelik https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/long-shadow/id1577471264
  
  Mmm, fair enough. I guess this is a strain of enlightened centrism thinking. Maybe the best standard is the same for porn -- you know it when you see it. And when your see it, you don't buy any bullshit. You throw the book at them.
- Even if the group calls for violence, it should be legal to be a part of that group. If I am subscribed to a YouTuber who calls for violence on people, and those subscribers commit violence upon those people, and I am sitting at home eating Cheetos, it is not justice for me to be charged for being part of that group.
  The caller of violence should be charged, the co-conspirators, inciters, and the actors -- but not me, because I was eating Cheetos on my couch.
  
  No, calling for violence is generally accepted to be unprotected speech.
  
  As it should be

Not to undercut you, but a study of German police and such recently found there are a LOT of Nazis gaining power...

I heard they've naizies in the military n in their police ranks etc.. do you know/ can You verify?
- I don't know this source that well, but it very recently claimed that Nazi symbols and child porn were found in police chats. I lean more towards believing it after NPR reported in 2020 about Germany investigating their own police during a noticeable rise in "Far-Right Extremism" around the country.
  
  I don’t know this source that well, but it very recently claimed that Nazi symbols and child porn were found in police chats.
  USA Today ran it, so that's some amount of a known-quantity. I'd say the accusation has definitely been made and isn't made up. The veracity of the accusation will have to be determined through the courts.
  https://ustoday.news/nazi-symbols-and-child-pornography-found-in-german-police-chats/
  
  TYVM
  
  NP

It should be 100% illegal to be anonymous to be part of a domestic terrorist groups our a hate group like this.

Now, define "domestic terrorist group" and "hate group" and do so in such a way that someone explicitly looking to attack the causes you believe in can't manage to count people you support in either of those groups. Because that's the hard part.

Also the bit where you have to throw out the 1st Amendment - freedom of speech that doesn't apply to even wildly unpopular ideas isn't actually freedom of speech because only unpopular ideas ever need protecting and exactly how far into unpopular, hated, reviled and abhorrent ideas you have to go before things become illegal is exactly how strong those freedoms are. Henry Louis Mencken once wrote, “The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

Just imagine a hard right fundie christian conservative judge getting to rule whether or not a group falls under the definitions you give, and they'll rule it accurately for any hard and fast cases but also will use any flexibility you give against you.

Do what Germany does with Nazis

What do you think we do with Nazis?

edit: not sure why this is sitting at -1 right now, germany barely does anything against Nazis on a state level. In fact they support them and allow them to grow with barely any hinderance. Check out the NSU Murders, their relationship with the office for constitutional protection (Verfassungschutz) and their reaction and prosecution of the perpetrators. Bonus if you look at Germanys handling of far right groups and people online, in the military and in the police. Extra-credit is if you look how they treat leftist and progressive photojournalists and activists. Extrajudicial searches and wiretapping, smear campaigns, etc.

elect them to political office
- lmao exactly, not sure what the commenter I replied to thinks we do, but it’s basically: “nothing” at best and “allow them to spread their dangerous ideology” or “use taxpayer money to fund terror groups” at worst
https://files.catbox.moe/dcusus.mp4
- Yep…
  Alternative gegen Deutschland polling at 20% a few weeks ago

Lock they up ?

Germany is all talk. They try to PR that they're so anti fascist and pro freedom, but the numbers don't lie. Germany only cares about money

So no different then America.

NP