October 27, 2014

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The ISUPK was recently targeted in a lawsuit by Philadelphia storeowners who averred that the group’s stubbornly loud presence outside the amalgamation of upscale shops at the Liberty Place mall and food court constituted trespassing and a nuisance. Litigants argued that amplified threats to smash white infants”€™ skulls were bad for business. (They even hired a white DJ to try and drown them out by spinning ironic songs such as “€œPlay That Funky Music”€ and “€œRunning With the Devil.”€)

The ISUPK was so persistently loud in Washington, DC that city officials reportedly once measured their electrically amplified speechifyin”€™ at 90 decibels.

But on October 14, a Pennsylvania state Superior Court upheld a lower court’s decision that the shop owners failed to make a persuasive case that the Black Israelites were either trespassing or comprised a nuisance. The court ruled that the First Amendment protected the group’s right to call people faggots and scream at passersby about white genocide.

“€œIf this were a group of Klansman in West Philadelphia standing outside a small business owned by an African American proprietor, there is no doubt in anybody’s mind that they would last about ten seconds before the police hauled them away,”€ groused Jason Gosselin, a lawyer for the shop owners.

Gosselin is absolutely correct. Egregious double standards regarding which breed of “€œhate”€ is tolerated are the order of the day. But from a First Amendment viewpoint, is the injustice here the fact that the Black Israelites are allowed to speak, or that the KKK”€”assuming it even exists in the City of Brother Love”€”isn”€™t spitting and stomping and screaming through their own set of speakers right alongside them?

Many would wish for both groups to stop shouting and learn to get along. That would be nice. Good luck with such pipe dreams. Gandhi famously said, “€œAn eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” Perhaps, but one hate-speech law piled atop another will only make the whole world go mute. And as long as these delusional Black Jews don”€™t crank up their speakers so loud that they make anyone go deaf, it would be a step in the wrong direction to try and mute them.

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