The Double-Edged Sword of the Right to Free Speech One of the most common and heavily etched studies embedded into a person’s head is one of the prime principals the United States was not only founded on, but a prime practitioner of, is the First Amendment. This amendment covers the basics of allowing news to come in without government interference, the right to gather and practice a religious belief without being persecuted, and the right to free speech. These three tenets are great and priceless means of rights and universal practice, but it does not come without some sort of cost. For instance, the right to free speech, the right to speak what one has on their mind or desire to voice their opinion without fear of persecution has its moments of where it is overly abused by groups with subversive intentions. The cost of granting everybody the right to speak their mind can often lead to a great deal of tension. One of the most commonly thought of groups or people that will abuse the right to freedom of speech, and cause a deal of hostility between themselves and everyone else are racist, or supremacist groups. For instance, neo-Nazi groups such as the American Nazi Party, when it was founded by George Lincoln Rockwell had greatly exploited the right of free speech. The group would go and organize local rallies and shout their message of how they saw themselves as being saviors of their fellow “white brethren.” While the roots of such a group and the practice of expressing controversial beliefs can be traced back as far as to the early days of the 1930s and during World War II, they are of two different structures. The American-Nazi groups like the Friends of the New Germany during the 1930s through the Second World War were silently supported and approved by the Nazi government at the time. The plan was to have the group gather and recruit United States citizens of German descent, and have the group act as a friendly and non-violent organization that would eventually act as either a means to slowly turn the U.S. government into a powerful ally towards the destructive Nazi government across the Atlantic, or keep the U.S. under its isolationist policies in order to lessen the number of enemies the Germans would have to fight. However, the group would have to act quietly and not really have its name in any newspapers or other pieces of media attention. This is a stark contrast whereas the 1960s saw the rise of self-sufficient and American founded groups like the American Nazi Party which acted differently from their wartime counterparts. During the 1960s, the issue of civil rights was at the height of social and political debates as figures like Martin Luther King Jr. were marching in order to promote the ideals of equality among all humans regardless of what skin color a person was. George Lincoln Rockwell would respond by countermarching in the cities that Martin Luther King Jr. was visiting, and hold rallies where he would then shout his group’s message of how it was acting as a means to ensure there was only one superior race, and that there was no such thing as equality among all people. From that point on, even after the assassination of
