I generally enjoy Patrick McKenzie’s writing. After quickly skimming this post, I don’t see anything objectionable from a journalistic standpoint. However, I firmly believe the federal indictment of the SPLC is motivated purely by political motives. Out of all the possible financial crimes the federal government can investigate and prosecute, they target a well-known progressive organization that’s spent decades fighting for marginalized communities against white nationalists? This is a miscarriage of justice wrapped in a thin veneer of respectability.
This is completely irrelevant to the article. The SPLC committed wire fraud to subsidise the supply of and activities of the kinds of people they told their supporters they were against. Separately, they worked hard over a period of years to censor their political opponents in a partisan fashion. Those are illegal acts. If you want to defend their actions as such by all means do so. But if you’re just pointing out that the motivating factor behind this particular prosecution might not have been entirely apolitical so what?
No one expects the US court system or US attorneys general to act apolitically. The Obama administration extensively used the IRS to target Republicans as such. If you don’t want to be prosecuted for illegal conduct, you should not do illegal things. Alternatively, you could arrange to never lose elections so that your friends are always in power.
What are the likely long-term consequences of this? Destruction of the SPLC and imprisonment of several officers for wire fraud? Slap on the wrist? End of the widespread use of their censorship product?
What would the maximally charitable but in contact with reality [Republican|Democrat] expect or want out of this?
I generally enjoy Patrick McKenzie’s writing. After quickly skimming this post, I don’t see anything objectionable from a journalistic standpoint. However, I firmly believe the federal indictment of the SPLC is motivated purely by political motives. Out of all the possible financial crimes the federal government can investigate and prosecute, they target a well-known progressive organization that’s spent decades fighting for marginalized communities against white nationalists? This is a miscarriage of justice wrapped in a thin veneer of respectability.
>>However, I firmly believe the federal indictment of the SPLC is motivated purely by political motives.
You may be right, but you have to remember that the SPLC was motivated purely by political motives.
FAFO.
Governments should be more constrained than private individuals' enterprise.
"Political" motives are inappropriate for the federal government.
This is completely irrelevant to the article. The SPLC committed wire fraud to subsidise the supply of and activities of the kinds of people they told their supporters they were against. Separately, they worked hard over a period of years to censor their political opponents in a partisan fashion. Those are illegal acts. If you want to defend their actions as such by all means do so. But if you’re just pointing out that the motivating factor behind this particular prosecution might not have been entirely apolitical so what?
No one expects the US court system or US attorneys general to act apolitically. The Obama administration extensively used the IRS to target Republicans as such. If you don’t want to be prosecuted for illegal conduct, you should not do illegal things. Alternatively, you could arrange to never lose elections so that your friends are always in power.
Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47973309
What are the likely long-term consequences of this? Destruction of the SPLC and imprisonment of several officers for wire fraud? Slap on the wrist? End of the widespread use of their censorship product?
What would the maximally charitable but in contact with reality [Republican|Democrat] expect or want out of this?