Nedd Kareiva, Stop the ACLU Encourage Christians to Harass Jews? (Numerous Updates)

Stop the ACLU Coalition, a "coalition" that appears to consist of no one but Nedd Kareiva, has created what he calls the "Expose the ACLU Plaintiff" project - something which should probably be more accurately named "Harass and Intimidate the ACLU Plaintiff" project. Nedd Kareiva is starting with a Jewish family chased out of a Delaware school district for challenging school board prayers.

Stop the ACLU will be publishing the address and phone numbers of plaintiffs in ACLU lawsuits which Nedd Kareiva disapproves of:

When an individual, group or even church (yes, there are churches that support the ACLU) is using the ACLU (or similar groups like Americans United, People for the (Anti) American Way, Freedom from Religion Foundation and American Atheists) to facilitate removal of a cross, the 10 Commandments or other religious symbols or the ceasing of prayer from a school or government entity, we want the community to know about it. We will start with the Dobrich family which is largely responsible for this case being taken. We are offended that the Dobrich’s want to impose their atheism at the expense of the vast majority of community members who aren’t offended. We will let all of Delaware know who used the ACLU to sue this school district. [emphasis added]

Nedd Kareiva says that his “policy” is for people to not be rude and not harass those involved. I don’t find that credible for two reasons. First, the very language Nedd Kareiva uses to describe these people is not consistent with treating the plaintiffs with respect. Kareiva doesn’t describe the Dobrich family with the slightest modicum of respect and so he can’t expect their readers to react with respect. Second, a large number of phone calls, emails, and letters is harassment — harassment doesn’t require rude communications, just a lot of unwanted communications. You can harass someone while being polite in your choice of language. If I called Nedd Kareiva in order to politely and respectfully inquire about his family, his job, etc., I'd be harassing him.

Read the emphasized text again — there are two problems with it which expose how the Nedd Kareiva completely disregards reality and reason in the pursuit of his ideology. First, he complains about the Dobrich family trying to "impose their atheism” despite the fact that the family is Jewish. Granted, it’s possible to be a Jewish atheist, but several news reports have made it clear that this is a believing family — Jewish atheist don’t typically wear yarmulkes, after all. Even Ann Coulter doesn’t say that Jews are atheists, though she does have the temerity to call them “Christians.” I’m not sure which is worse.

Either Nedd Kareiva has seen the news stories which make it clear that the Dobrichs are Jews, or he has only read news stories which don't mention their religion at all. If the former is true, then Kareiva is lying. The latter strikes me as implausible, but if it's true then Kareiva is assuming, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, that people opposing government promotion of Christianity must be atheists. This would mean that Kareiva can’t conceive of the possibility that such people might belong to a non-Christian religion — or a minority Christian group, which is also often the case. Such blatant bigotry is common among conservative Christians who are trying to get the government to endorse or promote their religion.

The second problem with the above is also common in these cases: Nedd Kareiva is basically arguing that if the government is prevented from promoting his religion, then the government must necessarily be “imposing” atheism on everyone. How does the government “impose” atheism by simply failing to endorse Christianity? Consider the fact that if what Nedd Kareiva says is true, then the act of endorsing Christianity in Christian prayers must therefore mean that the school board is “imposing” Christianity on everyone. Somehow, I doubt that Nedd Kareiva has considered that implication of his statement — or that he would care if it had occurred to him.

The simple fact of the matter is, the government doesn’t “impose” or even promote atheism when it simply fails to endorse one religion over all others or even when it fails to endorse religion generally. The government can’t even be described as “promoting” atheism unless it specifically encourages an endorses atheist views — like issuing a statement against theism, for example. This would be just as unconstitutional, though, as instituting official prayers in the name of some god. Unlike Nedd Kareiva, I’m able to recognize unconstitutional behavior even when it is ostensibly done for the benefit of views I agree with.

As I wrote before, Christians who are accustomed to being privileged can react violently to attempts to end those unjust privileges because their very identities are wrapped up with being privileged. Harassment is one form of violence because it’s ultimately an attempt to get people to change through intimidation, fear, or social pressure rather than through reasoned argument or dialogue. What else do you think Nedd Kareiva has in mind here? The only purpose behind the actions he is encouraging is to apply social, emotional, and psychological pressure to the Dobrichs — either as punishment for their past actions or to force them to stop pursuing their legal case. Nedd Kareiva’s “project” here doesn’t strike me as any different from posting the address and phone number of a black family suing to stop racial discrimination in a school.

 

Update: Jesus’ General wrote to Nedd Kareiva to thank him for his efforts to drive Jews out of Christian communities and Kareiva responded, in part:

I am pleased that we had an effect in this case. We have others we want to put up on the site to shame them but have not gotten around to it. And I’m not so sure I can take credit for it. However, if an ACLU speaker was booed, that’s music to my ears.

What “effect” does Kareiva have in mind if not that a Jewish family felt that they had to flee their home because they were afraid of local Christians? This, it appears, is what Nedd Kareiva is “pleased” to have assisted in achieving. Kareiva also appears to hope to have a similar impact on others in the future. Granted, evidence indicates that the family left before Kareiva posted their address and Jesus’ General appears to have made an error in suggesting that Kareiva’s posting of the contact information was involved. However, Kareiva didn’t object to this and proclaim his innocence in having helped local Christians drive the Jews away. Instead, he’s pleased to hear that he helped.

The fact that he didn’t help means that he wasn’t personally involved in driving the family out; the fact that he expressed pleasure and satisfaction at the thought that he really did help means that condemnations of Nedd Kareiva for being unethical are accurate. If he were a virtuous person, he’d have expressed horror and remorse at hearing what Jesus’ General told him.

 

Second Update: Glenn Greenwald, who has defended several extremist groups and individuals in court, points out that this behavior is standard for far-right extremists — typically White Supremacist groups seeking to terrorize their enemies:

One of the favorite tactics used by such groups is to find the home address and telephone number of the latest enemy and then publish it on the Internet, accompanied by impassioned condemnations of that person as a Grave Enemy, a race traitor, someone who threatens all that is good in the world. A handful of the most extremist pro-life groups have used the same tactic. It has happened in the past that those who were the target of these sorts of demonization campaigns that included publication of their home address were attacked and even killed.

But these intimidation tactics work even when nothing happens. Indeed, these groups often publish the enemy's home address along with some cursory caveat that they are not encouraging violence. The real objective is the same one shared by all terrorists -- to place the person in paralyzing fear. The goal is to force the individual, as they lay in bed at night, to be preoccupied with worry that there is some deranged individual who read one of the websites identifying them as the enemy and which provided their address and who believes that they can strike some blow for their Just Cause by visiting their home and harming or killing them. The fear that they are vulnerable in their own home lurks so prominently and relentlessly in a person's mind that it can be as effective as a physical attack in punishing someone or intimidating them.

This thuggish tactic of intimidation -- publicly railing against someone's grave crimes and then publishing their home address -- has been creeping out of the most extremist precincts on the Right and is becoming increasingly common among mainstream right-wing individuals and organizations.

As Greenwald also notes, the same conservatives who are only too happy to publish the home addresses and phone numbers of private citizens whom they don't like are often the same ones who complained about The New York Times' article about the vacation homes of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. You see, it's treason to publish information about the homes of two of the most-protected men in the world, even though their own security people said that the information wasn't a threat; at the same time, there's nothing wrong with publishing addresses and phone numbers of people with no security whatsoever and merely because you object to what they say or write. Glenn Reynolds, who plays a lawyer on the internet, openly defended such behavior.

As people like Horowitz, Malkin and Reynolds well know -- and just as my most extremist former White Supremacist clients well knew -- if you throw burning matches at gasoline enough times, an explosion is inevitable. The rhetoric of treason -- accusing individuals and organizations of aiding and abetting our nation's enemies and even waging war on this country -- is a lit match. After all, the widely accepted penalty for traitors is execution, which is why it is such an inflammatory yet increasingly common accusation being hurled by the Right against their domestic "enemies" (for precisely the same reason, the favorite accusation of the World Church of the Creator was to label someone a "race traitor," since everyone knows what should be done with traitors).

There's a better-than-even chance that someone will get hurt or even die because of the rhetoric of people like David Horowitz, Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds. Their rhetoric is well outside what is acceptable in political discourse; the fault for this, however, lies not just with them but with the entire conservative movement in America. Conservatives and members of the Republican Party have had the moral and political responsibility for shutting such people out and loudly condemning them. Instead, they have welcomed ever more extremism into their ranks and are thus complicit not only in the current situation, but also in whatever violence is perpetrated as a consequence of it.

 

Third Update: The Stop the ACLU blog is annoyed that they are being associated with the unethical conduct of Nedd Kareiva’s Stop the ACLU site. The fact that Nedd Kareiva describes it as “our blog” means that they cannot avoid the association — and since the association is entirely chosen, this means that Jay Stephenson and the others at the blog have to shoulder some of the responsibility for this association. If they didn’t accept Kareiva’s actions as adequately ethical, they could walk away and pursue their ideological goals without being associated with him. Anyone can create a blog any time. Stephenson doesn’t have to be associated with Kareiva if he doesn’t really want to and/or doesn’t really approve of Kareiva’s tactics. Stephenson chooses to remain, so he also chooses to assume responsibility for the association.

The truth, however, is that they don't really object. Jay says that he “would not expose the personal details of anyone’s private info” and don’t “defend” it, but he also doesn’t condemn it. He describes it as a “personal decision” to do it or to not do it, which basically means that there is no significant ethical component to the decision. It’s like saying “I would not wear a stripped shirt with plaid pants and don’t defend anyone who does it.” If Jay Stephenson doesn’t regard posting such personal details has having any more ethical consequences than one’s choice in fabric patterns, then he’s as ethically bankrupt as Nedd Kareiva. No wonder they work together.

Of course, merely declining to condemn unethical behavior because it happens to help your own ideological agenda isn't quite as bad as openly defending it — Jay leaves that to Kender MacGowan, who writes:

At the end of the day the people with the CHARACTER will be the ones standing, because it is the people with character that will stand up for what they believe in, and the people without character will go cry in their diaries.

I picked this quote for two reasons. First, it's just about the only passage not heavily laced with profanities and violent imagery — Kender MacGowan doesn't appear able to express himself civilly.

Second, Kender MacGowan makes it clear that people like Nedd Kareiva who publish the addresses and phone numbers of families who challenged government-endorsed Christianity is a sign of "character." Well, I guess that's true — it is a sign of characater, but all of poor. It's a sign of just how far a political movement has degenerated when they pretend to pursue an ideology that is supposed to return morality to society, but their means for doing this is defined by extensive immorality. It's a sign that the ostensible goal no longer matters, assuming it ever did — instead, all that really matters is achieving and holding on to power. In pursuit of power, all ethical considerations are made irrelevant.

 

Fourth Update: Alonzo Fyfe argues that there is a fundamental moral comparison to be made between the actions of the conservatives described above and the Nazis in Germany:

We know that revealing this contact information is a deliberate act. All deliberate acts aim to fulfill the desires of their agents (given their beliefs). We can then look for a theory of desires that best explains a body of intentional actions in the context in which they took place. Once we have a theory of motivating desires, we can ask about whether those are desires tend to fulfill (virtue) or thwart (vice) other desires. This tells us if these are the actions of people of virtuous or vicious moral character.

Long before there were concentration camps in Germany, there were laws that required Jews to wear a large, yellow, Star of David on their clothing. The reason for this was to mark these people for private vengeance. Once exposed in this way, the people so marked could be expected to be visited with all sorts of private violence by nationalist thugs who were told that these are traitors and the source of all of their woes.

This gives us reason to think that the intentional act of putting a mark on an individual for the purpose of making him the target of private violence is the mark of a vicious individual. ...

In contrast, the virtuous person recognizes that there will be differences of opinion in any population, and a need for institutions and social customs that would allow individuals in that culture to express their opinions peacefully. Virtuous people would hold to a standard that the first person to step outside of a discussion of the peaceful debate of ideas within the legal institutions that exist, and to resort to private extra-legal violence and intimidation, is the wrongdoer.

So, on a moral level these actions are disturbingly level similar to those taken by Nazi thugs against dissenters and “traitors.” On a practical level, these actions are almost identical to modern-day neo-Nazis in America against critics and “race traitors.” It can’t be because they all share common ideas about race, but then what’s the source for this similarity? I don’t think it’s coincidence; instead, I think it’s a set of similar ideas about the nature of government and the American nation.

The key is in the last quoted paragraph from Fyfe above: a virtuous person (and especially someone who takes seriously the values necessary for a liberal democratic republic) respects not only the presence of differences of opinion, but also that our courts are one means for sorting out those differences. It’s not simply a “vicious” person who rejects this, but a person who rejects the very principle that differences of opinion — at least in some areas — are legitimate. We’re also talking about people who reject the legitimacy of using courts to resolve such differences opinion — again, at least when the possibility exist that their opinion will lose.

People like this seem to regard the nation as more like a tribe and the tribe cannot be withstand the stresses or tensions created by significant differences of opinion about foundational matters like the role of religion, the privileging of Christianity, the authority of the president to wage war at will, and so forth. Thus weren’t not simply dealing with vicious individuals, but a vicious political philosophy — one which has consistently lead to significant violence over the decades.

 

Fifth Update: A timely example of how neo-Nazis and White Supremacists like to publish the contact information of enemies for the purpose of intimidation and even encouraging violence comes to us from Poland. With the help of the FBI here in America, Polish authorities blocked local access to a neo-Nazi site focused on Polish gays, feminists, and liberals:

The list included not only the names of gay, feminist and left-wing activists and sympathisers but also their photos and sometimes their phone numbers and addresses.

On the website, Blood and Honour urged its followers to gather information about "persons engaged in anti-fascist and anti-racist activites, on coloured immigrants, on left-wing activists and sympathisers and on the homosexual and pedophile lobby." [Yahoo News]

What's the difference between what the Blood and Honour site did and what Nedd Kareiva did? Apparently the neo-Nazi site didn't encourage any violence be done to those list — just that information about them gathered. On the other hand, the Blood and Honor blacklist may have already led to violence:

On May 16, a human rights activist, whose name was on the Blood and Honour list, narrowly avoided a knife attack in a Warsaw street. According to the US embassy in Warsaw, the would-be victim is Jewish. "We believe that attack was linked to the website," police officer Pawel Biedziak told AFP.

Further problems include Poland's Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich being attacks and numerous liberal journalists receiving threats. Of course, the Blood and Honour blacklist has been online since February; Nedd Kareiva has only just started his version of a blacklist. How long will it be before blacklists such as his do lead to violence in America?

 

Sixth Update: Glenn Greenwald has a new and interesting post on the larger issue I’m dealing with here. In one of the updates above, Greenwald has a post addressing the extent to which “mainstream” conservatives are adopting the extremist tactic of publishing personal contact information for the purpose of harassment. One of those who has been defending this horribly unethical behavior is Glenn Reynolds, a self-proclaimed libertarian who hasn’t supported anything vaguely libertarian in quite some time. Reynolds has responded to Greenwald by asserting that Greenwald has done the same to him — by posting Reynolds’ email address:

Reynolds is referring here to two posts I have written in the past regarding blatant falsehoods or hypocricies contained in posts of his which he refused to address, and I therefore encouraged readers to e-mail him asking him to respond. The reason I know his e-mail address is because he publishes it prominently on his blog. ... Reynolds’ “point” here is that what I “did to him” in including his e-mail address in my post is no different than what Horowitz and StopTheACLU did in publishing, respectively, the home addresses and telephone numbers of the NYT photographer and the plaintiff-family in the Delaware lawsuit. Listing someone’s email address and their home address are, argues Reynolds, indistinguishable and equally “thuggish.” Is it really possible that Reynolds is incapable of seeing why this argument is nothing short of laughable? Is there really anyone incapable of understanding the profound difference between these two acts without having it explained to them? [emphasis in original]

Like Greenwald, I’m having trouble processing Glenn Reynolds’ claim. Publishing an email address which the person has displayed prominently on the blog is ethically the same as publishing a home address and telephone number which the same person doesn’t publicize anywhere? I’m sorry, but I cannot fathom the thought process that could allow a sane adult to arrive at such a conclusion.

So assuming that Glenn Reynolds is a sane adult (usually a safe assumption, but...), then it is at least arguable that he knows this “argument” is completely bogus and is just making it to cover his tracks. This means that his previous unethical defense of unethical conduct is being magnified by a further unethical defense of the whole thing now.

 

Seventh Update: Nedd Kareiva has been making some changes to this site, although he denies that it has anything to do with all the criticism he has been receiving. In addition to the page I link to at the top where he posts the Dobrich’s address and phone number, he also posted their contact information on another page which was designed to be an central resource for all the contact information he wanted to post on ACLU plaintiffs. That page has changed and now says:

You may think you have gained the upper hand by the removal of this previous page’s content. I assure you that is not only not the case but we will be doing many other things to annoy you and tell you the truth about the ACLU.

It was suggested, NOT compelled or mandated, by our legal counsel to delete the content and thus take this page out of your arsenal. In its place, we will continue to post ACLU supporting lawyers and companies like Progressive Insurance and the Ford Foundation so that we may boycott them from ever getting our money and business.

If it was only “suggested,” and if Nedd Kareiva is convinced that he was right in publishing the private contact information, why did he bother removing it at all? He didn’t remove it from the original page on the broader case. It really doesn’t make any sense to me that he removed the Dobrich family address and phone number from this page alone.

Before he deleted the information, he had a slightly different message at the top (I have screen captures from the Google cache, if anyone is interested):

To all you liberals who are reading this web page as a result of a link from Salon, the Daily Kos or one of your other obnoxious blogs, be advised that there have been some minor corrections made to this page, not as a direct result of your e-mails but because I believe it was the right thing to do. However, there will be no more changes.

Yet let me say that this individual below is not the sole target here. It’s just that I have not had time to update this page. But now I will. And I assure you of this - the more e-mails you send, the faster I will get more individuals and groups posted. And believe me, I have a lot of them. [emphasis added]

Let’s see.... first, Kareiva insists that the original batch of changes (I have no idea what they were) were not prompted by the email criticisms he received. Are we really to believe that he intended to or would have made those changes on his own anyway? Why can’t he do the decent thing and acknowledge that by criticizing his actions, it was brought to his attention by others that he did something wrong and had to make a change? Is it really that psychologically difficult for him to admit that perhaps he could be wrong about something and liberals right about it? Given that he seems to have wrapped his entire identity and mission in life around attacking the ACLU, perhaps it is too difficult for him.

Second, Kareiva insist that there would be no more changes — but not only were there further changes, but he got rid of the entire page except for a personal attack against all those who criticized his unethical behavior. Funny how in his second message to critics, he fails to acknowledge that he said there would be no more changes but had to make changes anyway.

Third, Kareiva insists that he has the personal contact information for a lot more people and will be putting it up as fast as he can — but then he gets rid of what little has and without acknowledging that his plans had changed. It’s curious that at no point does he even make a lame attempt to defend his actions as appropriate and ethical. All he does is attack others for criticizing him. Maybe it’s just me, but if someone said that I had done something unethical, I'm sure that I’d at least try to offer arguments, rationalizations, or context to try to justify what I did. Why doesn’t Kareiva?

 

Eighth Update: In an entirely separate case, Ed Brayton finds someone expressing the hope that intimidation and violence be used against the plaintiffs in the Dover trial over Intelligent Design:

I hope someone keeps track of the 11 parents and their children. Everyone in Dover knows damn well that no children were forced to listen to the 60 second announcement regarding evolution and intelligent design. So what you have is 11 parents whose religious hostility extended to such a trivial matter they were willing to make the tiny school district pay a million dollars.

I grew up in a small town and when a few people pull crap like that that hurts everyone there will be payback. I won't be at all surprised if the children of these parents are so badly ostracized and abused by other students that they're forced to find another school and the parents will be snubbed and insulted and their cars keyed and their coworkers and supervisors making their lives miserable that they'll all end up moving away.

I hope that's all tracked so that the next group of parents that gets their panties in a bunch and volunteers to the be the designated shitheads know what it's going to cost them.

Although the case is different, I don't think that what DaveScot is expressing here is much different from what Nedd Kareiva was intending — it's just that DaveScot said out loud what is usually the purpose behind posting the private contact information of unpopular people. What DaveScot says here is the reason for Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists posting the contact information of their enemies. Why should anyone imagine that this isn't what Nedd Kareiva was intending as well?

 

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