[Marxism] Hate crimes legislation and libertarianism

[David Thorstad]

Jeff wrote:
>
>  But I was disgusted to see a Marxist finding common cause with the 
> reactionaries who attack such laws (and apparently prevented its passage in 
> Wyoming).
>
> I was further disturbed that David Thorstad justified his opposition using 
> an identical argument used by the right-wing to oppose passage of these 
> laws. That is the specious argument that hate-crimes laws are "unfair" 
> because they punish a person for "what he is thinking" rather than just the 
> physical act of violence, thereby interfering in ones "freedom of thought." 
>   
I don't think I have ever used quite this kind of formulation. I regard 
hate-crimes legislation as wrong and wrongheaded because it punishes 
what is allegedly in someone's head (or bad words spoken, whether in 
execution of a crime or not, as on some college campuses, where merely 
calling someone a "fag" or a "honky" or similar epithets is verboten) 
rather than (or in addition to) the actual crime. In this, it seems to 
me to be a tool for punishing "thought crimes," which additionally 
increases the powers of the police and the state in a way that strikes 
me as misguided. (In that, it is similar to making illegal the 
possession of pornography, something for which many feminists pushed.) 
Such legislation resembles Nazi legislation. For example, Paragraph 175, 
which in Germany punished certain homosexual acts between males (but not 
females), was extended by the Nazis in 1935 (as Paragraph 175a) "to 
include kisses, embraces, and even homosexual fantasies. The utterly 
irrational nature of Nazi philosophy is perfectly illustrated by their 
being as concerned with what was allegedly in someone's head--with his 
'intent'--as with practice in the real world. This mystical nonsense was 
justified by a Nazi theory of 'phenomenlogical justice' that purported 
to evaluate a person's character rather than his actions" (from John 
Lauritsen and David Thorstad, /The Early Homosexual Rights Movement 
[1864-1935]/, p. 44). In one case, a man was convicted under this 
statute because he admitted that while watching a hetero couple fuck in 
a public park, he had looked only at the man. I do not believe bad words 
or bad thoughts should be punished. The murder of Matthew Sheppard 
called for severe punishment, but the fact he was gay should not have 
made it any more severe.
>
> But more disturbing to me is that Thorstad was so inclined to borrow 
> arguments from the right wing. I guess it's possible he came to this 
> conclusion himself, and it happened to be the same argument as advanced by 
> the right. But I suspect otherwise. Especially given that elsewhere in his 
> post he pointed to "libertarian" (= right wing) support for his views.
>   
I do not believe anyone on the list, including Jeff, actually engaged 
any of the arguments that Justin Raimundo made in his piece. Jeff 
appears to merely dismiss him because he's a libertarian. To this kind 
of argumentation, I would respond as follows:
    1. There are both left and right libertarians. I do not know which 
Raimundo considers himself to be. It doesn't matter. Sometimes, 
libertarian views--particularly those that express hostility to state 
intervention in the private lives of citizens, above all in areas of 
morality--are superior to those of some leftists, who seem to have 
forgotten that their ultimate goal is to eliminate the state. (The same 
could be said of some anarchists or utopian socialists, such as Fourier, 
who pithily said that "Laws against morality are designed to catch the 
little fish and let the big fish through." Fourier's views on sexuality 
and morality were miles ahead of most leftists, whether of the Stalinist 
or the Trotskyist variety.)
    2. I wonder how Jeff arrives at his "suspicion" that I may not have 
"come to this conclusion" by my own self, rather than borrowing from 
right wingers. Maybe he's a mind reader. Had he read any number of 
articles I have written over the past few years, both about the left and 
homosexuality and in opposition to same-sex marriage (I posted a link to 
some more than once), it would have been clear, I think, that I have 
subscribed to a general libertarian outlook for a long time. I disagree 
with right-wing libertarians on many things (private medical industry, 
private fire departments...), but their hostility to state involvement 
in private and moral affairs is not one of them. I can allay his 
peculiar suspicions and confirm that I have arrived at my views on my own.
    3. There is also a strain of left-wing libertarianism, which I find 
congenial. My good friend Daniel Guérin, for instance, called himself a 
"libertarian communist." That earned him some hostility from mostly 
American anarchists, who attacked him, for example, at an anarchist 
conference at Hunter College in the 1970s for supporting the NLF against 
the U.S. imperialists and the Palestinians against the Zionists. Many 
leftists, in my experience, look upon the state with a too benevolent 
gaze (perhaps from decades of defending the Soviet "workers' state" and 
the Cuban regime). I believe it was Engels who said "The existence of 
the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery." Unfortunately, 
many people today still enjoy being slaves more than being free individuals.
    4. "Hate-crimes" legislation is, as I noted earlier, one of the 
three central demands of the currently degenerated American gay/lez 
movement. The other two are marriage and getting into the imperialist 
military (to kill third world babies for Wall Street). I regard all 
three as misguided and a sign of how far that movement has strayed from 
the Stonewall vision of liberation, replacing it with assimilation to 
the status quo, conventionality, and conservatism. I don't think such a 
bourgeois agenda augurs well for the future of that movement.
David