The 2018 municipal election in Edison, New Jersey, featured some ugly electioneering. In 9 months later, we're still asking who sent racist 'Make Edison Great Again' fliers, Craig McCarthy and S.P. Sullivan reported for NJ.com:
The flyers landed in township mailboxes less than a week before Election Day, carrying racist attacks and pledging to “Make Edison Great Again!”
"The Chinese and Indians are taking over our town!" the fliers said. On one side were pictures of candidates for the local, non-partisan school board, Jerry Shi and Falguni Patel, stamped with the word "Deport."
The bald bigotry of anonymous campaign mailers targeting two minority candidates in the state's fifth-largest town -- known for its ethnic diversity and its tumultuous municipal politics-- lit a firestorm in the local campaign and drew media coverage from around the globe.
So far, so good. Such filth should ignite a public firestorm. But ultimately, such bigoted viewpoints are stupid and ignorant, and should be brushed of as the unserious drivel that they represent. But then:
Now, the town council is being asked to pen a resolution calling on Attorney General Gurbir Grewal's office to investigate the mailers, according to an email from a former mayoral candidate, Keith Hahn, sent to all township employees and obtained by NJ Advance Media.
But NJ Advance Media has learned the Attorney General's Office has already been quietly investigating for months, identifying at least one person of interest but no clear suspects.
I left these comments:
The bald bigotry . . . lit a firestorm in the local campaign and drew media coverage from around the globe.
As well it should.
But why are prosecutors getting involved? This is scary--a whole different issue from a public outcry. These are political flyers sent out as part of an election campaign. Are we getting to the point in America where expressing oneself can land one in jail? Are we going to allow ignorance to override freedom of speech, the basic moral right of intellectual liberty and the only means of fighting back against bad ideas?
It’s bad enough that the Attorney General is wasting taxpayer money trying to find out who sent these flyers. It’s truly outrageous that our tax dollars are being used as a means of putting all of us at risk of prosecution for expressing ourselves in the electoral process, should the prosecutors disagree with one’s message.
There was a joke popular in the 1980s. It went something like this: “An American tells a Russian that the United States is so free he can stand in front of the White House and yell, ‘'To h--l with President Reagan'’ with no fear of getting arrested. The Russian retorts: '’So? In Russia, I’m free to stand in front of the Kremlin and yell, 'To h--l with President Reagan’ with no fear of getting arrested.” Is that where we want to go?
Please don’t insult me by telling me this is about bigotry or racism or “hate speech,” not free speech. The flyers are free speech. The public firestorm is free speech. Government investigation is censorship, the tool of every tyrant. To paraphrase the Star-Ledger from its 8/15/18 defense of press freedom, “the real enemy of the people is never free speech. It is a government that wants to be the sole arbiter of truth.”
Let's not become Russia. Stop the investigation. It is un-American.
Related Reading:
HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship by Nadine Strossen
The Danger of ‘Hate Speech’ Laws is Exposed
How to Overcome Bigotry in a Free Society
John Farmer's Understanding of Free Speech Rights as Non-Absolute is Dangerous and Wrong
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