Social Security Administration 3288: Fill & Download for Free

This would be a very funny article if it weren’t so dangerous. Didn’t the US right wingers say that all US left wingers are snowflakes? Now all of a sudden they want us to believe that they are the victims?The person who asked the question is extremely confused about what constitutes freedom of speech in the US and what the meaning of censorship is.As to the question, whether the right wing has ever curtailed or censored the free speech of the left wing in the US, it hardly seems necessary to give a serious answer. But for people who actually don’t know, just look up the story of Eugene V. Debs, who was jailed for ten years by the Wilson administration for speaking out against US participation in WWI and speaking out against the national draft. His many speeches annoyed President Wilson so much that he had Debs tried under the Alien and Sedition Act. His sentence was commuted, by President Harding, just as Harding had promised to do during his campaign. That should be sufficient - but there is a very long list of similar occasions to be found in US history.Earlier this week, Candace Owens, a young black conservative, was shouted out of a restaurant by a white crowd screaming obscenities and racial epithets at her and her dining companion, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk (who is white). The police had to be called, and the mob shouted obnoxious slurs at the officers as well. Owens tweeted: "To be clear: ANTIFA, an all-white fascist organization, just grew violent and attacked an all-black and Hispanic police force.I would invite people to investigate the funding sources, the publicly claimed purpose, and the ACTUAL ACTIVITIES of “Turning Point USA”.Turning Point USA - WikipediaStart there, it’s as good a place as any, but chase down all of the links and the facts.Candace Owens is not at all what she seems to be. Neither is Turning Points USA.While looking into the facts, take the time to ask yourself, what might be the actual purpose of compiling, maintaining, and publishing a National “Professor Watchlist” including hundreds of supposed “left wing” university professors and “left wingers” all the way down to the level of graduate students?Professor Watchlist - WikipediaWhat has happened to the people on that list? What is happening to them right now? Ask yourself whether the maintenance and publication of such a list is an entirely innocent activity. Is it perfectly consistent with academic freedom?I believe it is certainly under the constitutional protection of free speech to publish that list. But if you do publish it and then you also act on it by ambushing and harrassing and filming and in some cases threatening people on the list, then you had better expect to get a reaction to your free speech, and you should not expect that the reaction is going to be universally positive.Whose free speech is being limited by the publication of that list and how exactly is it being done?To me this list resembles many other lists that I can remember from history.To their credit, many Democrats and other liberals and progressives see the ugly irony and have spoken out against the violence, harassment and abandonment of traditional Democratic values. But it's an open question whether those saner, sober voices will carry the day. (And apparently, there is even doubt among Democrats, part of what is fueling the #WalkAway movement.)The violence has been limited -- and overwhelmingly on one side. But there are plenty of people -- and I am one of them -- sounding the warning: It will not stay like this indefinitely.So, the author is not claiming to be a victim after all.Thanks very much for that “warning”.People still remember Benito Mussolini’s name, correct?Hopefully they haven’t been confused by Ann Coulter or some such American right wing revisionist twit, and they don’t consider Mussolini to have been a socialist and fascism to have been a left wing movement, just because Mussolini wrote for Avanti! up until 1914. Hopefully they know already that the PSI kicked Mussolini out in early 1914, and that within six weeks he founded Il Popolo d’Italia and was agitating for interventionism, War, and Italian nationalism.Benito Mussolini is widely credited as the inventor, the human incarnation, of what came to be called fascism, which in Italy was fundamentally a reactionary, right wing, interventionist and nationalist movement that developed in the chaos and agrarian and economic crisis that continued in Italy post-WWI. There had been massive emigration to the US due to the miserable prospects for life in Italy among the laboring class and especially among the peasant class in the countryside and in the South. The success of fascism came in the context of liberalization, even if it was a paternalistic and decidedly authoritarian liberalization in nature, it was a process of liberalization that began to take place in Italy after unification in 1858, and which continued with various reforms by the monarchy and aristocracy until 1919, when full suffrage was finally granted to the people.In the 1919 elections the Fasci di Combattimento, meaning roughly combat squads, a political Party that had just been formed by Mussolini and a few like minded souls, gained about 4000 votes, in Milan. They had no Deputies, not a single one.By 1922, the FC numbered more than 300,000 in Italy, and King Victor Emmanuel - amid a manufactured atmosphere of panic, a masterfully fascist created illusion of the imminent collapse of the State, and an upcoming “March on Rome” (the participants actually mostly rode to Rome on the people’s trains and they were allowed by the Army to enter the city perfectly peacefully) - was requesting Mussolini to form an emergency Government.This came in the wake of three years of widespread and organized violence against the socialist worker’s collectives and peasant unions who were organized in the countryside, and to a much lesser extent in the cities: the violence was organized and perpetrated by the fascist squadristi who were controlled by the local fascist ras.Mussolini agreed to the King’s request happily. It seems as if no one in Italy imagined yet that fascist control would be anything more than a brief interlude - they all thought, not only the socialists, the liberals, the democrats, the radicals, the unionists, who had opposed the fascists, but also, the Catholics, the military, the police, the industrialists, and the petit bourgeois, who had supported the fascists, that the Fasci di Combattimento would be quickly removed. There would be a short interval, everyone thought, and then the liberal, moderate regime would be restored.No one imagined that it would be twenty years before the man who came to be called Il Duce would be strung up on piano wire, his body hung in the streets, with massive popular approval. No one imagined the deep collaboration that would develop with Italian fascism’s parallel movement in Germany, National Socialism.Mussolini acted quickly and decisively - in effect he set up a parallel State within the State, and gradually this parallel State subverted the power of the actual State. It took quite a while before it can really be said there was a fascist regime. Liberalism did not go down without a fight in Italy. Many would date the beginning of the dictatorship to 3 January 1925, when Mussolini felt secure enough to give a speech accepting moral responsibility for the political murders of the very recent past, claiming that they were done for the greater good of the nation, and then daring anyone in government to hold him responsible. Of course, he couldn’t have done any of this without the backing of the King, the police, the military, the industrialists and the landowners. But he had had that almost from the beginning. What had happened was that the campaign of mass violence and intimidation had succeeded in suppressing and splintering all effective opposition from the left wing of Italian politics.Mussolini had been a journalist and he understood full well the power of the press. By 1923, efforts were well underway on one of the main fronts on which the battle for fascist control was to be fought. Among the very first things to be done was re-writing the law so as to very strictly limit freedom of the press. This was one of the very first goals of what would in time become the fascist regime. As it turned out, the law barely ever had to be used. The press essentially censored itself willingly. Very, very few, if any intellectuals resisted the rise of fascism in Academia. I think maybe ten or fifteen professors in the whole country refused to take loyalty oaths when those were finally instituted in the universities.Here’s an excerpt of Royal Decree No. 3288, of July 15, 1923, published in Gazetta Ufficiale, No. 159 (July 18, 1923) [1] :Decree Regulating the PressArt. 1: In addition to the conditions prescribed by Articles 36 and 37 of the edict on the press dated March 26, 1848, the managing editor of a newspaper or other periodical publication must be either the director or one of the principal regular editors of this newspaper or publication, and he must obtain the recognition of the prefect of the province wherein the newspaper or publication is printed.Senators and Deputies may not serve as managing editors. Anyone who has been sentenced on two occasions for crimes involving the press is ineligible to be managing editor, and he will lose this position if he has assumed it.The decision of the prefect who refuses to recognize a managing editor must be based upon evidence. An appeal from this decision may be made to the Ministry of the Interior (Mussolini was the Minister). The decision of this minister may be appealed on legal grounds to the Fourth Section of the Council of State.Art. 2: The prefect of a province is empowered, except where penal action prevents it, to address a warning to the managing editor of a newspaper or a periodical:(a) If by means of false or tendentious news the newspaper or periodical impedes the diplomatic action of the Government in its foreign relations, or injures the national honor at home or abroad, or creates unjustifiable alarm in the population, or disturbs public order;(b) If by means of articles, comments, notes, headlines, or illustrations it incites to crime or excites class hatred or disobedience to the laws and orders of public authorities, or compromises the discipline of public servants, or favors the interests of foreign states, societies, or individuals to the detriment of Italian interests, or holds up to opprobrium the King, the Royal Family, the Sovereign Pontiff, the religion of the state, or the institutions and organs of the state or of friendly powers.This warning is to be issued by a decree resting upon evidence and in accordance with the recommendations of a committee that consists of the following people; a judge, who presides over it; a substitute for the King’s procurator in the court of the locality or prefectural seat, appointed respectively by the first President and by the procurator general of the Court of Appeal; and a representative of the category of journalists, to be designated either by the local press association or, in its absence, by the president of the local tribunal. The committee will hold office for one year.Art. 3: On the advice of the committee referred to above, the prefect may cancel the recognition of a managing editor who has received two warnings in one year.The prefect may refuse to recognize a new managing editor whenever the previous one has been dismissed or condemned for any kind of press abuse twice in the space of two years to a penalty depriving him of his liberty foir a period of six months or more; or whenever the newspapers or periodicals affected by the prefects decisions have assumed new titles in order to continue their publication.The decisions of the prefect are subject to the recourse set forth in Article 1.Art. 4: Newspapers or other periodical publications printed in contravention of the previous regulations may be sequestered.The sequestration is to be carried out by police authorities with no further need for special authorization.Those who are guilty of abusive publication are to be punished in accordance with the laws in force ….A decree like that coming from a right wing Government, with the force of law and police power behind it - that is what constitutes a severe limitation on the freedom of speech and on the freedom of the press.And here’s another question to ponder.Who is it that, in our current right wing Government in the US, has favored changing the libel laws regarding public figures? Who is it that over and over again demeans the free press and calls them the “Enemy of the People”?Footnotes[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=e7qwCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA53&lpg=PA53&dq=Decree+No.3288,+15+July+1923&source=bl&ots=IZzgq9gsmB&sig=zYA9r0iwR0-ca4qodhuthxBS6Q8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjy9rbRw-TcAhULc98KHQOtCHsQ6AEwAXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Decree%20No.3288%2C%2015%20July%201923&f=false