Freedom of speech contingencies

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment does not protect U.S. citizens who are providing four types of “material support” to “foreign terrorist organizations”: “training,” “expert advice or assistance,” “service” and “personnel.”

The Supreme Court justified the prohibition of free speech by citing a Congressional record which states that terrorist organizations “are so tainted by their criminal conduct that any contribution to such an organization facilitates that conduct.”

To begin with, I think it is important to note that the U.S. terrorist list is basically a sick joke. Words like “arbitrary” and “capricious” should immediately come to people’s mind when they hear a politician or television pundit talk about it.

For instance, Iraq was on the terrorist list until 1982. The Reagan administration then decided to take the country off the list so we could start sending financial credits and CIA assistance to support it in the Iran-Iraq War. At one point, Saddam’s regime was the third largest recipient of U.S. assistance.

Almost all of Saddam’s worst crimes, like the Halabja Massacre and other similar atrocities, occurred while he was receiving assistance and support from the United States. Once he acted aggressively without the United States’ consent, the friendship was terminated.   

As former President Jimmy Carter highlighted, the ruling’s content permitting the state to imprison human rights activists “threatens our work and the work of many other peacemaking organizations that must interact directly with groups that have engaged in violence” and “the vague language of the law leaves us wondering if we will be prosecuted for our work to promote peace and freedom.”

The former president appears to be correct in his analysis. Denying human rights organizations the legal authority to communicate with listed terrorist organizations or teaching them how to settle international conflicts by nonviolent means is not a way to combat violence. It aids it.

Linguistics professor and cultural critic Noam Chomsky also commented on the ruling, focusing more on its larger implications by referring to it as “the first major attack on freedom of speech in the United States since the notorious Smith Act back around 1940.”  

The Supreme Court’s ruling no doubt has far-reaching implications.

The U.S. government is now able to prohibit speech on one side of a particular issue while not applying the same standards to the other.  

It also suggests that freedom of speech is completely contingent on whether or not the government approves of the message being said.


E-mail: mardunba@indiana.edu