Talib Kweli Calls Out White Nationalists Using Free Speech 'To Advocate For Hate' In Op-Ed

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Following his canceling of a show at a venue that booked a metal band accused of being racist, Talib Kweli has now penned an op-ed on white nationalists and free speech.

READ: Talib Kweli Cancels Concert After Venue Books A Racist Metal Band

Titled "Free Speech or Die?" The Black Star MC offers his thoughts on the alt-right movement and how "today's right-wing free speech advocates are truly advocating is for Nazis, the KKK, and other white supremacist organizations and sympathizers to have additional, special rights the rest of us do not have: the right to say whatever they want without dissent, argument, pushback, or consequence."

"What the right-wing defenders of freedom of speech fail to acknowledge is how the rhetoric of racist or fascist propaganda leads to violence, whether psychological or physical," Kweli writes. "Even if we put aside the glaring examples of violent right-wing extremists like Jeremy Christian and Lane Davis, giving a white supremacist like Bell Curve author Charles Murray a platform to say that black people have, on average, naturally low IQs empowers supporters of eugenics, a widely debunked pseudoscience that Nazis used to justify genocide. Those who believe in ethno-states and are anti-diversity are, frankly, anti-human. The sole way to achieve that goal is through violence and extermination of others. It doesn’t matter if the speaker who supports ethno-states and hates diversity is polite. It doesn’t matter how nicely someone dresses when they claim that diversity is the cause of some imagined white genocide. These are Nazi ideals, and we have already seen what happens when Nazi ideals are normalized and given a platform. Hating a person for how they were born is illogical and hateful, and hate does not always deserve a debate."

"There are places in the world where free speech is truly being suppressed," the rapper concludes with. "Your Twitter account is not one of them. Your college campus is not one of them. Use your free speech to show solidarity with those who are actually being oppressed instead."

Read the rest of the op-ed here.