Texas Fred's No Holds Barred Anti-Immigrant Racism

The First Amendment goes a long, long way in protecting freedom of political expression, including hate speech, which can be defined as "Bigoted speech attacking or disparaging a social or ethnic group or a member of such a group."

I raise the question of hate speech in the context of my recent post, "Texas Fred's Bigotry."

I noted there that Texas Fred has advocated a policy of "shoot-to-kill" in defending our southern boundary from illegal border-crossers, who are identified by Texas Fred as "wetbacks":

Close the damned border and shoot any SOB trying to sneak back in...

I am guessing that at least half of the 18 million or so WETBACKS in this nation would be denied admission to the USA if we’d act, but the time to act is NOW, put the National Guard on the border, with full combat capabilities and tell em, ANYTHING coming over that border is an ILLEGAL invader, KILL IT!!

Piece of cake, we have dead wetbacks all over the place, now that’s what I call ‘Happy Holidays’!!

Now, note that Texas Fred's got at theory (at the link here), that by empowing the U.S. military, or National Guard, to defend the border by force, the practice of shoot-on-sight would constitute the legimate internationalization of the "castle doctrine," from Anglo-American common-law, which protects the rights of property owners to defend their homes by use of lethal force.

I personally embrace the "castle doctrine," but I don't see that as what's really going on in Texas Fred's ideological program of anti-immigrant eliminationism.

For example, Texas Fred is on record in favor of private vigilantism - that is, individual U.S. civilians taking up arms to shoot and kill illegal Mexican immigrants entering the sovereign United States to have anchor babies ("little bastards," in Texas Fred's lexicon), so as not to place "an additional burden on the American TAXPAYER."

The post indicates that the U.S. needs comprehensive immigration reform, and Texas Fred notes...

...as far as I am concerned, the ILLEGALS that are literally pouring into this nation can either be rounded up and deported or allowed to starve to death or die of thirst as they cross the hot desert of the American southwest, that saves the American patriot the problem of having to buy so many rounds of ammunition...

In the comments there, Texas Fred adds:

Americans are tired of this bullshit from the wetbacks and our government that cares more about the security of Baghdad than it does the folks right here…

Bush is your basic moron ... but yes, he DID call the Minutemen ‘vigilantes’ and his assertion was way off base ... until the vast majority of Americans stand and demand that this problem be eliminated, or they take matters into their own hands and carry out that elimination of wetbacks themselves, it will never happen...

Note also this comment from "Basti" and Texas Fred's response:

Basti: So they’re here illegally ... So anything they do (as in have brats, get jobs) is also illegal on our soil. Deport or cage them all, 2nd offenders will be SOS. (Shot On Sight)...

Texas Fred: How do you determine if they are 2nd time offenders?? Just shoot the bastards and be done with it…

We thus see Texas Fred wants private citizens to take the law into their own hands, to kill the "wetbacks" on sight, which will save the country from being overrun by a bunch of brown-skinned "little bastards."

The legal complication for Texas Fred's violent advocacy is that it goes beyond First Amendment protection for the expressions of racist hatred - which have routinely been allowed by the Supreme Court - to the express advocacy of political violence and private acts of militia justice. Such programs of explicit hate-based calls to racial violence fall outside the boundaries of protected speech and are considered criminal offenses subject to federal prosecution.

(Added, in response to the comments: The legal standard for criminally offensive advocacy must be demonstrated to include the actual "incitement to violence" likely to produce "imminent lawless action," which is not clear in Texas Fred's case, but I've never scoured the archives, and as we're talking the razor's edge of essentially criminally-inclined conduct, Texas Fred's bears watching).

Note though my main point is not to argue for federal hate-crimes charges against Texas Fred. My main point is simply to rebut substantively and morally the embrace of racial hatred by Texas Fred and his blog rings of ignorant, intolerant, and racist rednecks.

These people claim to be conservative, for example, and star-spangled websites like "American and Proud" or "Miss Beth's Victory Dance."

The truth is, many of these bloggers - though not all - would fit closely to some of the extremist ideological movements I described in my entry, "Obamacons, Tin-Foil Hats, and McCain Derangement." As I noted in that post, I do not tolerate neo-Nazis, Klansmen, anti-Semites, or other assorted self-appointed border-protection heroes.

This is not conservatism, of which basic components include adherence to the rule of law and toleration of political difference.

But think about what one commenter at Texas Fred's page noted with respect to shooting "wetbacks" on sight:

A policy of shoot first and ask questions later is not, in my opinion, the best answer to the problem. As a Christ-follower, I believe that the unnecessary taking of life is wrong. In the case of shooting illegal border crossers I would have to consider it murder unless the force were necessary within a lawfully conducted arrest. Crossing the border illegally is a crime and the person committing the act should be treated as such.

This comment is longer and more complicated, but the introduction captures the basic moral question that's at base of Texas Fred's embrace and dissimination of racist hatred.

Texas Fred has stated he's a proud bigot, that he wants to kill "wetbacks" and "starve" their babies, and that, "damn right, I AM a racist..."

These kind of ideas represent an extreme minority and should rightly be delegitimized and marginalized as outside the bounds of socially acceptable discourse. The question is not whether one has a constitutional right to express this kind of racial intolerance, the question is whether moral, upstanding Americans should confer moral respectability on such views.

See also, "Texas Fred: The Bigot Connection."