'occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes' of Jehovah's Witnesses in regard to the Anti-Islam Videographer’s First Amendment Right to Insult Religion cited

by Sol Reform 16 Replies latest social current

• 

  Sol Reform

  3rd & last try

  Marci A. Hamilton gives poor grades to both the Obama Administration's and Romney in failing to articulate long-settled First Amendment principles of the USA.

  September 20, 2012 Marci A. Hamilton

  Why the United States Must Either Get Behind the Anti-Islam Videographer's First Amendment Right to Insult Religion (and Politics and Politicians and Every Other Power, Large or Small), Or Lose What Matters Most

  ...Accordingly, three years later, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, the Supreme Court upheld the right of Jehovah's Witness schoolchildren to refuse to salute the American flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance, because their religious beliefs forbade them to make pledges to symbols - even when the symbol is a treasured national symbol.
  Justice Robert Jackson's groundbreaking opinion made this point as eloquently as it has ever been made:
  The case is made difficult not because the principles of its decision are obscure but because the flag involved is our own. Nevertheless, we apply the limitations of the Constitution with no fear that freedom to be intellectually and spiritually diverse or even contrary will disintegrate the social organization. To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds. We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.
  Note how Jackson ties the First Amendment's absolute protection of belief to diversity. This is a freedom to "be intellectually and spiritually diverse," he writes-which is to say, there is a fundamental right to disagree. The price may be "eccentricity and abnormal attitudes," but that price is worth it. The result is diversity. Though neither the President nor Romney picked up on it, the miracle of American liberty is that we have found a way to encourage religious diversity while preserving the right of every believer (and nonbeliever) to criticize the others' beliefs and conduct. The road to peace is, ironically enough, boisterous and even cruel debate.
  Moreover, according to Jackson, writing for the Court, the absolute right to believe what you want, and, therefore, to differ with others, must be strong even when the issues deeply matter, as with issues relating to religion or politics.
  Creating an exception to the absolute right to believe what you choose, moreover, would turn this extraordinary liberty into, again in Jackson's words, a "mere shadow of freedom." The Obama Administration is perilously close to making the First Amendment a shadow, and it must change course or we won't have a First Amendment worth the loss of life.

  http://verdict.justia.com/2012/09/20/either-get-behind-or-lose-what-matters
• 

  glenster

  We shouldn't be prejudiced in our opinions, even of things we criticize, and we
  shouldn't gratuitously provoke harm. But once people insist their religion is
  proven, should be law of the land, and require non-believers of their religion
  anywhere in the world to be punished for someone's definition of blasphemy/
  apostasy of that religion, don't expect continuity of logic.

  The Obama administration asked YouTube to review whether to continue hosting
  the video at all under the company's policies. YouTube said the video fell within
  its guidelines as the video is against Islam, but not against Muslim people, and
  thus not considered "hate speech".
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocence_of_Muslims#Blocking_of_the_YouTube_video

  Yet in some of the Muslim countries where the outcry against the video has been
  loudest, the notorious anti-Semitic libel known as "The Protocols of the Elders
  of Zion" is freely sold and published.
  http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-muslims-free-speech-20121001,0,4593239.story
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion

  Mein Kampf

  In Mein Kampf, Hitler used the main thesis of "the Jewish peril", which speaks
  of an alleged Jewish conspiracy to gain world leadership.[6] The narrative
  describes the process by which he became increasingly anti-semitic and militar-
  istic, especially during his years in Vienna. Yet, the deeper origins of his
  anti-semitism remain a mystery. He speaks of not having met a Jew until he ar-
  rived in Vienna, and that at first his attitude was liberal and tolerant. When he
  first encountered the anti-semitic press, he says, he dismissed it as unworthy of
  serious consideration. Later he accepted the same anti-semitic views, which be-
  came crucial in his program of national reconstruction.
  
  Mein Kampf has also been studied as a work on political theory. For example,
  Hitler announces his hatred of what he believed to be the world's twin evils:
  Communism and Judaism. The new territory that Germany needed to obtain would
  properly nurture the "historic destiny" of the German people; this goal, which
  Hitler referred to as Lebensraum (living space), explains why Hitler aggressively
  expanded Germany eastward, specifically the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Po-
  land, before he launched his attack against Russia. In Mein Kampf Hitler openly
  states that the future of Germany "has to lie in the acquisition of land in the
  East at the expense of Russia."
  
  In his work, Hitler blamed Germany’s chief woes on the parliament of the Weimar
  Republic, the Jews, and Social Democrats, as well as Marxists. He announced that
  he wanted to completely destroy the parliamentary system, believing it in princi-
  ple to be corrupt, as those who reach power are inherent opportunists.

  (One ME country is listed as restricting the sale or having special circum-
  stances in regard to it, and it isn't for restricting sales):

  Turkey: It was widely available and growing in popularity, even to the point
  where it became a bestseller, selling up to 100,000 copies in just two months in
  2005. Analysts and commentators believe the popularity of the book to be related
  to a rise in nationalism, anti-US and antisemitic sentiment "because of what is
  happening in the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian problem and the war in
  Iraq".[24] Dogu Ergil, a political scientist at Ankara University, said both
  left-wingers, the far-right and Islamists, had found common ground—"not on a com-
  mon agenda for the future, but on their anxieties, fears and hate".
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf#Current_availability

  Mein Kampf in the Arabic language
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf_in_the_Arabic_language

  The Quran

  The Quran contains seven references to "the people of Lut", the biblical Lot,
  but meaning the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah (references 7:80–84, 11:77–83,
  21:74, 22:43, 26:165–175, 27:56–59, and 29:27–33), and their destruction by Allah
  is associated explicitly with their sexual practices:

  “And (We sent) Lot when he said to his people: What! do you commit an indecency
  which any one in the world has not done before you? Most surely you come to males
  in lust besides females; nay you are an extravagant people. And the answer of his
  people was no other than that they said: Turn them out of your town, surely they
  are a people who seek to purify (themselves). So We delivered him and his fol-
  lowers, except his wife; she was of those who remained behind. And We rained upon
  them a rain; consider then what was the end of the guilty.”[7:80–84 (Translated
  by Shakir)]

  The sins of the people of Lot became proverbial, and the Arabic words for homo-
  sexual behaviour (liwat) and for a person who performs such acts (luti) both
  derive from his name.[7] There is, however, only one passage in the Qur'an which
  can be interpreted as prescribing a legal position towards homosexual behaviour:

  “And as for those who are guilty of an indecency from among your women, call to
  witnesses against them four (witnesses) from among you; then if they bear witness
  confine them to the houses until death takes them away or Allah opens some way
  for them. And as for the two who are guilty of indecency from among you, give
  them both a punishment; then if they repent and amend, turn aside from them;
  surely Allah is oft-returning (to mercy), the Merciful.”

  The Hadith and Seerah

  The hadith (sayings and actions of Muhammad) show that homosexuality was not
  unknown in Arabia.[9] Given that the Qur'an is vague regarding the punishment of
  homosexual sodomy, Islamic jurists turned to the collections of the hadith and
  seerah (accounts of Muhammad's life) to support their argument for Hudud punish-
  ment; these are perfectly clear but particularly harsh.

  Ibn al-Jawzi[disambiguation needed] records Muhammad as cursing sodomites in
  several hadith, and recommending the death penalty for both the active and pas-
  sive partners in same-sex acts.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_in_Islam

  Islam and antisemitism

  The words "humility" and "humiliation" occur frequently in the Quran and later
  Muslim literature in relation to Jews. According to Lewis, "This, in Islamic
  view, is their just punishment for their past rebelliousness, and is manifested
  in their present impotence between the mighty powers of Christendom and Islam."

  The Quran associates Jews above all with rejection of God's prophets including
  Jesus and Muhammad, thus explaining their resistance to him personally. (Cf.
  Surah 2:87–91; 5:59, 61, 70, and 82.) It states that they are, together with out-
  right idolators, the worst and most inveterate enemies of Islam, and thus will
  not only suffer eternally in Hell but in this world will be the most degraded of
  the Peoples of the Book, below even Christians, everywhere. (Cf. Surah 5:82; 3:
  54–56.)

  They listen for the sake of mendacity (Surah 5:41), twisting the truth, and
  practice forbidden usury, and therefore they will receive "a painful doom" (Surah
  4:161).

  Mein Kampf has been published and, according to the Middle East Media Research
  Institute (MEMRI), was 6th on the Palestinian best-seller list in 1999.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_antisemitism

  Antisemitism (defined as being anti-Jews) in the Arab world

  Egypt
  
  The Egyptian government-run newspaper, Al-Akhbar, on April 29, 2002 published
  an editorial denying the Holocaust as a fraud. The next paragraph decries the
  failure of the Holocaust to eliminate all of the Jews:

  With regard to the fraud of the Holocaust… Many French studies have proven that
  this is no more than a fabrication, a lie, and a fraud!! That is, it is a
  'scenario' the plot of which was carefully tailored, using several faked photos
  completely unconnected to the truth. Yes, it is a film, no more and no less.
  Hitler himself, whom they accuse of Nazism, is in my eyes no more than a modest
  'pupil' in the world of murder and bloodshed. He is completely innocent of the
  charge of frying them in the hell of his false Holocaust!! The entire matter, as
  many French and British scientists and researchers have proven, is nothing more
  than a huge Israeli plot aimed at extorting the German government in particular
  and the European countries in general. But I, personally and in light of this
  imaginary tale, complain to Hitler, even saying to him from the bottom of my
  heart, 'If only you had done it, brother, if only it had really happened, so that
  the world could sigh in relief [without] their evil and sin.'

  Cartoons appearing in the daily Al-Wafd in 2003 depict Jews as Satanic figures
  with hooked noses and equates them with Nazis.

  In an article in October 2000 columnist Adel Hammoda alleged in the state-owned
  Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram that Jews made Matza from the blood of (non-Jewish)
  children.[26] Mohammed Salmawy, editor of Al-Ahram Hebdo, "defended the use of
  old European myths like the blood libel" in his newspapers.

  Saudi Arabia

  Saudi Arabian media often attacks Jews in books, news articles, at their
  Mosques and with what some describe as antisemitic satire. Saudi Arabian govern-
  ment officials and state religious leaders often promote the idea that Jews are
  conspiring to take over the entire world; as proof of their claims they publish
  and frequently cite The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as factual.

  One Saudi Arabian government newspaper suggested that hatred of all Jews is
  justifiable. "Why are they (the Jews) hated by all the people which hosted them,
  such as Iraq and Egypt thousands years ago, and Germany, Spain, France and the
  UK, up to the days they gained of power over the capital and the press, in order
  to rewrite the history?"[37]

  Saudi textbooks vilify Jews (and Christians and non-Wahabi Muslims): according
  to The Washington Post, Saudi textbooks claimed by them to have been sanitized of
  anti-Semitism still call Jews apes (and Christians swine); demand that students
  avoid and not befriend Jews; claim that Jews worship the devil; and encourage
  Muslims to engage in Jihad to vanquish Jews.

  Syria
  
  On March 2, 1974, the bodies of four Syrian Jewish girls were discovered by
  border police in a cave in the Zabdani Mountains northwest of Damascus. Fara
  Zeibak 24, her sisters Lulu Zeibak 23, Mazal Zeibak 22 and their cousin Eva Saad
  18, had contracted with a band of smugglers to flee Syrian to Lebanon and even-
  tually to Israel. The girl’s bodies were found raped, murdered and mutilated. The
  police also found the remains of two Jewish boys, Natan Shaya 18 and Kassem Abadi
  20, victims of an earlier massacre.[39] Syrian authorities deposited the bodies
  of all six in sacks before the homes of their parents in the Jewish ghetto in
  Damascus.

  In 1984 Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass published a book called The
  Matzah of Zion, which claimed that Jews had killed Christian children in Damascus
  to make Matzas (see Damascus affair). His book inspired the Egyptian TV series
  Horseman Without a Horse (see below) and a spinoff, The Diaspora, which led to
  Hezbollah's al-Manar being banned in Europe for broadcasting it.

  Arab newspapers
  
  Many Arab newspapers, such as Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah, the Palestinian Authority's
  official newspaper, often write that "the Jews" control all the world's govern-
  ments, and that "the Jews" plan genocide on all the Arabs in the West Bank. Oth-
  ers write less sensational stories, and state that Jews have too much of an in-
  fluence in the United States government. Often the leaders of other nations are
  said to be controlled by Jews. Articles in many official Arab government news-
  papers claim that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, reflects facts, and thus
  points to an international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Arab_world
• 

  Band on the Run

  Obama taught const'l law at the Univ. of Chicago for years so he clearly knows First Amendment case law and tneory. Const' theory may be different from actual practice. The very fact that he knows he will be scrutinized by the Supreme Court means he has some leeway. If he were the final const'l actor, he might have problems with his conscience. I believe his role as president requires him to balance diplomacy and what is the best intersts of the United States in the foreign policy area with his role as chief administrator. Frankly, I don't see what specifically Marci Hamilton faults in either case. Good sense is obvious. The US will face consequences b/c the Middle Eastern world is different from our own. They seem to have no conception of separation of church and state. Regardless of Middle Eastern law, there is often tension between the Free Exericse Clause and the Establishment Clause. We cannot alter our freedoms to accomodate Moslems. As a Christian, I found the film to be needlessly provocative and beyond poor taste. The First Amendment protects speech, however, no matter how tacky or ill-advised. As bad as the film was, it wasn't screaming "fire" in a crowded theatre. Perhaps the old concept of "fighting words" might apply. What does she suggest that Obama do? I feel there is tension inherent in our foreign policy and the First Amendment here, regardless of the specific content. No one censored the film. I've stated earlier than I am aware of Marci Hamilton's work in the Establishment Clause area. We can't empathize with their world view and they cannot empathize with others. Also,what should Romney have done if he were president?
• 

  Band on the Run

  I am one third of the way through Mein Kampf, a book I wanted to read since high school. What completely shocked me was that I actually agree with Hitler for a long while. He never seems to state what specific incidents changed his mind. I've read or heard on TV that he lived in a Jewish quarter and dined with Jews with no problem. Jews purchased his art so he could exist. He never was known to be rabidly antisemitic. So I am worried that I am agreeing with Hitler,who sounds so calm and rational. Suddenly, with no explanation, he becomes a believer in dictators, hates Jews with a passion that is hard to fathom, and loves the German language. I was disappointed. Was he denied a loan from a Jewish bank? Did he love a Jewish woman who rejected him? HOw could he be so rational for so many pages and suddenly go wild dog? Perhaps there is more in the part I have yet to read. Some have suggested that like the segregationists in the South he knew how to tap into existing hatred to win votes and power. How could Rutherford have written that letter without reading Mein Kampf? He is totally bonkers when he warms to his subject.
• 

  glenster

  Antisemitism
  
  Mein Kampf was significant in 1925 because it was an open source for the
  presentation of Hitler's ideas about the state of the world. The book is
  significant in our time because a retrospective review of the text reveals the
  crystallisation of Hitler's decision to completely exterminate the Jewish
  presence in Europe. While historians diverge on the exact date Hitler decided to
  exterminate the Jewish people, few place the decision before the mid 1930s.
  First published in 1925, Mein Kampf shows the ideas that crafted Hitler's
  historical grievances and ambitions for creating a New Order.
  
  The racial laws to which Hitler referred resonate directly with his ideas in
  Mein Kampf. In his first edition of Mein Kampf, Hitler stated that the destruc-
  tion of the weak and sick is far more humane than their protection. However,
  apart from his allusion to humane treatment, Hitler saw a purpose in destroying
  "the weak" in order to provide the proper space and purity for the strong.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf#Antisemitism

  The idea of the Northern origins of the Aryans was particularly influential in
  Germany. It was widely believed that the "Vedic Aryans" were ethnically identical
  to the Goths, Vandals and other ancient Germanic peoples of the Völkerwanderung.
  This idea was often intertwined with antisemitic ideas. The distinctions between
  the "Aryan" and "Semitic" peoples were based on the aforementioned linguistic and
  ethnic history.
  
  Semitic peoples came to be seen as a foreign presence within Aryan societies, and
  the Semitic peoples were often pointed to as the cause of conversion and destruc-
  tion of social order and values leading to culture and civilization's downfall by
  proto-Nazi and Nazi theorists such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Alfred
  Rosenberg.
  
  According to the adherents to Ariosophy, the Aryan was a "master race" that
  built a civilization that dominated the world from Atlantis about 10,000 years
  ago. This alleged civilization declined when other parts of the world were colon-
  ized after the 8000 BC destruction of Atlantis because the inferior races mixed
  with the Aryans but it left traces of their civilization in Tibet (via Buddhism),
  and even in Central America, South America, and Ancient Egypt. (The date of 8000
  BC for the destruction of Atlantis in Ariosophy is 2,000 years later than the
  date of 10,000 BC given for this event in Theosophy.) These theories affected
  the more esotericist strand of Nazism.
  
  A complete, highly speculative theory of Aryan and anti-Semitic history can be
  found in Alfred Rosenberg's major work, The Myth of the Twentieth Century. Rosen-
  berg's well-researched account of ancient history, melded with his racial specu-
  lations, proved to be very effective in spreading racialism among German intel-
  lectuals in the early twentieth century, especially after the First World War.
  
  These and other ideas evolved into the Nazi use of the term "Aryan race" to re-
  fer to what they saw as being a master race, which was narrowly defined by the
  Nazis as being identical with the Nordic race, followed by other sub-races of the
  Aryan race. They worked to maintain the purity of this race through eugenics
  programs (including anti-miscegenation legislation, compulsory sterilization of
  the mentally ill and the mentally deficient, the execution of the institutional-
  ized mentally ill as part of a euthanasia program).
  
  Heinrich Himmler (the Reichsführer of the SS), the person ordered by Adolf
  Hitler to implement the Final Solution, or The Holocaust,[43] told his personal
  masseur Felix Kersten that he always carried with him a copy of the ancient Aryan
  scripture, the Bhagavad Gita because it relieved him of guilt about what he was
  doing – he felt that like the warrior Arjuna, he was simply doing his duty with-
  out attachment to his actions.[44]
  
  Himmler was also interested in Buddhism and his institute Ahnenerbe sought to
  mix some traditions from Hinduism and Buddhism[45] – Gautama Buddha's original
  name for the religion we now call Buddhism was The Aryan Path.[46] Himmler sent
  a 1939 German expedition to Tibet as part of his research into Aryan origins.
  
  In 1936 biologists Julian Huxley and Alfred Court Haddon famously ridiculed the
  Nazi idea of the superior Aryan race, writing:

  "Thus our German neighbors have ascribed to themselves a Teutonic type that is
  fair, long-headed, tall, slender, unemotional, brave straightforward, gentle, and
  virile. Let us make a composite picture of a typical Teuton from the most prom-
  inent of the exponents of this view. Let him be physically as blond and mentally
  as unemotional as Hitler, physically as long-headed and mentally as direct as
  Rosenberg, as tall and truthful as Goebbels, as slender and gentle as Goering,
  and as manly and straightforward as Streicher."
  
  —"We Europeanse" p. 171
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_race#Nazism_and_Neo-Nazism

  Nazism developed several theories concerning races. The Nazis claimed to
  scientifically measure a strict hierarchy of human race; the "master race" was
  said to be the most pure stock of the Aryan race, which was narrowly defined by
  the Nazis as being identical with the Nordic race, followed by other sub-races of
  the Aryan race.
  
  At the bottom of this hierarchy were "parasitic" races (of non-"Aryan" origin)
  or "Untermenschen" ("sub-humans"), which were perceived to be dangerous to socie-
  ty. In Nazi literature, the term 'Untermensch' was applied to the Slavs (even
  though the Slavs had been normally regarded by non-Nazis as one of the sub-races
  of the Aryan race), especially including Russians, Serbs and ethnic Poles. Nazi
  ideology viewed Slavs as a racially inferior group, who were fit for enslavement,
  or even extermination.[2] About 2 million non-Jewish Poles were killed by Nazi
  Germany.[3][4] Lowest of all in the Nazi racial policy were Gypsies and Jews,
  who were both eventually deemed to be "Lebensunwertes Leben" ("Life unworthy of
  life") and to be exterminated during the Holocaust (see Raul Hilberg's descrip-
  tion of the various phases of the Holocaust). Not to be forgotten, Hitler did
  have people of Jewish descent working for him. Coined as mischling (or 'Part-
  Jews'), they were often employed in the Wehrmacht, although they were not allowed
  to be soldiers after 1940. One mischling, Werner Goldberg, was even called "The
  Ideal German Soldier" by German newspapers.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism_and_race

  Ideology and scale
  
  In other genocides, pragmatic considerations such as control of territory and
  resources were central to the genocide policy. Yehuda Bauer argues that:
  
  The basic motivation [of the Holocaust] was purely ideological, rooted in an
  illusionary world of Nazi imagination, where an international Jewish conspiracy
  to control the world was opposed to a parallel Aryan quest. No genocide to date
  had been based so completely on myths, on hallucinations, on abstract, nonprag-
  matic ideology – which was then executed by very rational, pragmatic means.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust
• 

  Band on the Run

  I would appreciate it is someone would explain specifically what Marci Hamilton believes Obama and Romney should do. From what I read in the post, it seems more than she is using the opportunity to show that injustice speech is championed by the First Amendment which has been valid First A. law since the fall of the "fighting words" doctrine. Interestingly, it was a very rude JW who made statements that were termed "fighitng words" b/c they provoked a violent response.

  Does anyone have any clues as to why Hitler would raise rational point after rational point, full of bonhommie and good cheer, and suddenly switch to evil not too much later?

  Personally, I believe free speech and free religion (and freedom from religion) are important b/c I am a child of the West, born American. I wonder what specifically there is in some cultures that dissent is viewed as a sacred right and yet other countries only seek conformity. We keep focusing on a few Moslems who are terrorists. I don't want the Crusaders during the Middle Ages to speak for Christianity. What do mainstream MOslems in state religious nations believe concerning mockery and satire. Think of all our famous comics who would be unemployed if we held a similar view.
• 

  Band on the Run

  Also, what does 'occasinal eccentricity and abnormal attitudes" of Jehovah's Witness have to do with this thread. I don't see any direct reference concerning JW beliefs about videography. It seems disjointed.

  I like member content. The Internet is full of access to countless journals with nice content. I feel as though I am a mind reader.

  Perhaps there was some computer glitch.
• 

  Band on the Run

  Would Marci have Obama lecture other countries concerning our First Amendment. I truly believe she used this to introduce an already written article. For years, I have admired her work. Compared to her other work, this piece is overly simplistic and not well written (she is an extraordinary writer in my opinion.)
• 

  glenster

  "Also, what does 'occasinal eccentricity and abnormal attitudes" of Jehovah's
  Witness have to do with this thread?"

  "...in regard to the Anti-Islam Videographer’s First Amendment Right to Insult
  Religion cited":

  Rutherford's JWs literature and sound trucks had very insulting politicized
  religious propaganda about other religions and the US and other governments. He
  was 'centric and intolerant but court cases about it favored his followers' free-
  dom to be so.

  Likewise the "Innocence of Muslims" and Muslim homophobia and antisemitism and
  anti-Western propaganda.

  All as abnormal and misguidedly insulting but set free as the thing sewn up in
  Frankenstein's monster's head.

  I'm not sure what the "occasional eccentricity" is.
• 

  King Solomon

  Furthermore, the "videographer" in this case wasn't a citizen with the rights of a law-abiding citizen, but an ex-con who was released on parole with conditions he may have violated by uploading that video to YouTube. That means all bets as to his "rights" are off, as criminals lose certain rights (such aa voting, communicating with their victims, etc) as a direct result of their actions.