Ban a Group? Let’s Start with American Nazis

As part of my research on white identity groups in the workplace, I’m examining criminal convictions of American Nazis. What’s the connection? It’s communication. American Nazi’s communicate race hatred with a detailed set of body tattoos that are earned by killing or seriously injuring immigrants, blacks, Jews, and gays and lesbians.

My argument is that tattoos that express racial hatred should not be treated as grounds of protected speech in the workplace, even assuming an employee has not harmed or threatened anyone at work.

I’ll post more information later. For now, here are two typical cases:

People v. Wagner & People v. Slavin (N.Y.App. 2004):

“White supremacist tattoos were relevant as to motive and intent to commit aggravated harassment in the second degree. Although the tattoos “may have reflected [the] defendant's inner thoughts, the People did not compel him to create them in the first place.”

In the early morning hours of September 17, 2000, defendant and an accomplice lured two Mexican “day laborers” into a car with the false promise of work, and  drove them to an abandoned building in Suffolk County on Long Island. During the drive, defendant asked the two men whether they were Mexicans. Almost immediately after arriving at the building, defendant and his accomplice launched an unprovoked and brutal attack on their two unsuspecting victims. Defendant struck both men in the head with a metal post-hole digger, while his accomplice stabbed one of them several times. The two victims, one of whom was bleeding profusely, contrived to escape their assailants by fleeing onto the Long Island Expressway. There, a passing motorist rescued them.

....

People v. Kennell, (Cal. App 2005), 2005 WL 1367808.

Jose Cisneros (Victim) was attacked and severely beaten. James Grlicky and Waylon Kennell were charged for the attack and were jointly tried with separate juries. Grlicky's jury found him guilty of attempted murder, robbery, assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury, battery with serious bodily injury, and conspiracy to commit the latter three offenses.

…

Keith Akins, an expert on white supremacist activities, testified that white supremacists, or “skinheads,” wear black and red shoelaces to show they shed someone's blood for their cause. During the second interview, Grlicky told Henry that he, Kennell and Smith watched the movie “Romper Stomper,” which Kennell brought to Grlicky's house about six months earlier.

Grlicky knew what “curbing” is, describing it as putting “somebody's face down on the ground and you stomp the back of their head to hurt them.”