A while back, I mentioned
the Facebook group “I’m 10-15,” which is the Border Patrol radio code for
“alien in custody,” and the loathsome posts by current and former CBP agents.
The online news site Revealnews.com recently reported
on a number of “Confederate, anti-Islam, misogynistic or anti-government
militia groups” who have public, private, or secret Facebook pages. Another
investigative site, TheVerge.com, identified
more than 400 law enforcement officers posting to hate groups. ProPublica.org
cited a 2018 investigation into Border Patrol Agent Matthew Bowen, who
referred to immigrants as “guats” (Guatemalans), “wild-ass shitbags,” “beaners”
and “subhuman” (the Nazis used to refer to Jews as “sub-human,” as do their
current adherents). And on Friday (July 12), Slate posted an article
on the “10-15” group, including the interesting fact that Border Patrol Chief
Carla Provost participated in the group, which has come under (well-deserved)
fire for its hateful vitriol. The article says Provost commented on a post
regarding her ascendancy to the head of the agency, but they very fact that she
was able to comment shows (a) she was a member of the “secret” group, and, by
extension, (b) she was familiar with the overall tone of the group.
Perhaps the most telling post on the “10–15” group is the
one with the Associated Press photo of Óscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his
23-month old daughter Valeria, lying dead on the bank of the Rio Grande:
“Ok, I’m gonna go ahead and ask……
have y’all ever seen floaters this clean. [sic] I’m not trying to be an a$$, but
I HAVE NEVER SEEN FLOATERS LIKE THIS, could this be another edited photo. [sic]
We’ve all seen the the dems and liberal parties do some pretty sick things….”[1]
Politico reports that senior CBP officials had been
told of the group’s existence as late as 2016, and that senior officials had
been monitoring the group “as a source of intelligence,” but had apparently not
taken any action against CBP officers posting racist or supremacist comments.
The agency did not deny, however, that Provost and other senior Border patrol
agents had participated in the group.
At its peak, the “10-15” group claimed about 9,500 members.
The Border Patrol currently has about 20,000 active agents. Since the group
includes retired agents, let’s be generous and say the pool of prospective
members is 40,000 (20,000 active, 20,000 retired). 9,500 is roughly 25% of the
total… a truly disgustingly large percentage, but reflective of the percentage
of racists, white supremacists, xenophobes, and assorted other haters in law
enforcement as a whole.
Many would say that this hateful speech is protected under
the First Amendment. But retired TV newsman Dave Statter and attorney Curt
Varone (and retired Deputy Assistant Fire Chief in Providence, RI) both point
out that not all speech by public employees is protected. Statter refers to
“SMACSS,” or “Social Media Assisted Career Suicide Syndrome,” in which public
employees manage to shoot themselves in the foot with amazing regularity.
Varone cites the “Pickering Balance Test,”[2]
which holds:
Public employees have protection
under the 1st Amendment when they are speaking on a matter of public concern as
a private citizen, and their interest “in commenting upon matters of public
concern” outweighs the “interests of the State, as an employer, in promoting
the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.[3]
While this may appear to grant blanket protection to the
speech, Varone discusses several caveats:
- “… [If] public employee speech involves a matter of public concern and even if said as a private citizen – if the speech causes actual harm or disruption to the mission & function of the employer, there is no First Amendment protection. In this regard, speech of a racist or discriminatory nature has been found to be unprotected when it causes actual harm or disruption.” [4] [Emphasis in original]
- Speech that threatens violence or harm or encourages others to commit violence/harm to any person or group loses First Amendment protection
- Likewise, speech that threatens to or encourages others to withhold public safety services from any person or group is not protected.
Varone was responding to a social media post in which (now
former) North Chatham (NC) firefighter Caleb Folwell stated “They should
exterminate all captive [sic] right now and broadcast it over Mexican National
TV to send a message if you cross illegally you die.” Caleb’s father, Jeff
Folwell, was forced out as chief of the Julian Volunteer Fire and Rescue
Department (where Caleb also volunteered) also as a result of the post.
Now, the question is, “what do we do about these hideous
groups?” Politico said, “[…] it wasn’t clear as of Wednesday that either
the Trump administration or Facebook would be able to shut the Facebook group
down…”
Bull.
Facebook is a privately-owned entity, and the First
Amendment, which protects against governmental infringement of speech,
has no application there. Additionally, Facebook can, and has, shut down other
hate groups recently. They are very quick to suspend users (including your
humble host) who post disparaging comments about trump or the far-reich wing in
general.
According to ProPublica, Heidi Beirich, the director
of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said she’d been
pressing Facebook to pursue secret groups like 10-15 and hidden hate speech for
years. Facebook, she said, “can use their AI or their people to identify these
groups, and with the horrible language in there, they should have been finding
these people.”[5]
Since Facebook has been able to identify, and suspend, liberals referring to
conservatives as “trailer trash,” it seems disingenuous for Facebook to claim they
cannot identify hate speech in the extremist groups.
What is becoming clear, moreover, is Facebook’s apparent
dedication to protecting the far-right extremists on their platform. Whether
from a misguided sense of “fair play” for “the underdog,” or outright support
for their hatred and loathing, Facebook is rapidly becoming the “safe space”
for the far right, a place where they can post their hate and misogyny and supremacy and homophobia and xenophobia without fear of reprisal, while knowing that the “libtards” will be
severely punished for hurting their feelings. And yet they have the nerve to
call us “snowflakes.”
[1] I have seen
“floaters this clean.” If a drowning victim is found within a day or two, there
has not been an opportunity for decomposition to set in. Floaters achieve their
gruesome appearance over a period of weeks or months, during which a process
called “saponification” allows anaerobic bacterial hydrolysis of fat tissue,
resulting in the formation of “adipocere,” a soapy or waxy substance (see,
e.g., Kahana, T., et al., “Marine Taphonomy: Adipocere Formation in a
Series of Bodies Recovered from a Single Shipwreck,’ Journal of Forensic
Sciences, Vol. 44, No. 5, 1999, pp. 897-901) . Óscar and Valeria
were found the morning after they vanished.
[2] Pickering v. Board of
Education, 391 U.S. 563 (1968)
[3] http://www.firelawblog.com/2019/07/04/nc-facebook-post-results-in-two-cybercasualties/,
07-04-2019, retrieved 07-13-2019
[4] Ibid.
[5] https://www.propublica.org/article/investigation-of-secret-border-patrol-group-launched-as-new-degrading-facebook-posts-surface,
07-01-2019, retrieved 07-13-2019
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