Justice, Labor / Employment, Racism

Law Firm Boots Partner Who Owned Neo-Nazi Record Label

Firing Nazis really shouldn't make any decent person feel bad.

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I still can’t believe Ace of Base is neo-Nazi music, but I know they I wouldn’t hire them for a bar mitzvah.

So the new thing for the free speech absolutists is to say that you can’t be fired for “bigotry” in certain states. They argue that bigotry is just one of those valid political views, and certain states protect people from retaliatory action based on political affiliation.

The weakness of this is argument is, as usual, pretending that neo-Nazis are aligned with some kind of valid political view as opposed to advocating literal death and genocide for people they meet on the street every day.

The bats**t case of Aaron Davis illustrates the problem. Davis was quickly placed on leave from the Minneapolis law firm Patterson Thuente, where he was a partner, once the firm learned that Davis owned a neo-Nazi record label. What kind of albums did “Behold Barbarity Records” produce? Here’s what Minneapolis City Pages says:

Take Deathkey, whose 2010 album is called Behead the Semite. Then there’s Aryanwulf, whose songs include “Kill the Jews” and “At the Dawn of a New Aryan Empire.” There’s also the Raunchous Brothers, whose rhyming poetics include such passages as, “You’re of no use to me, you disgraceful fucking dyke, so I’ll shove you in the oven like the glorious Third Reich.”

And… we’re done here. Should the government put Davis in jail for this kind of speech? No. Should a private employer, one that might want to employ un-beheaded Semites and people who don’t want to be shoved in ovens, fire his ass? Yes. Absolutely. Anything less is creating a hostile work environment for everybody else.

I mean, Davis wasn’t making subtle Nazi music like Ace of Base. He’s full on publishing music that talks about beheading Jews and putting gays and lesbians in ovens. This isn’t a hard call.

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Oh, I see you, you white people who barely scraped by logical reasoning on the LSAT. I know you started formulating your false equivalency to rap music as soon as you read the title. You don’t know any of the lyrics, but you’re pretty sure Half-Dollar or TwoPackman has said something that sounds to you like “white genocide,” or at least “cop genocide,” which you think is the same thing.

To which I say: (a) your inability to distinguish between musicians and Nazis using music to spread their propaganda is closely related to why AmeriKKKa is turning into a failed state, and (b) the minute Suge Knight becomes a litigation partner at Cravath is the minute you’ll know the Revolution is close at hand.

If you simply must have a rap analogy, I guess the case you’re looking for is Elonis? Anthony Elonis, you’ll recall, made threats to his ex-girlfriend in Facebook posts which he described as rap lyrics. The Supreme Court found that Elonis’s musings could not support a conviction for online threats. But you didn’t hear the Court saying that Elonis should be hired by the same company that employs his ex-girlfriend. You know? Kirkland and Ellis would not be trying to hire Anthony Elonis as a first-year associate, even if he went to law school and passed the bar.

Speaking of the bar, does Minnesota have one? If so, might this Aaron Davis guy be up for some kind of “character and fitness” review?

There are a lot of things you can do while being a neo-Nazi. You can start your own record label. You can buy tiki torches, freely and without prior restraint. But a private employer has no duty to hire you so you can menace the people you work with your genocidal views.

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Whatever, the “marketplace of ideas” will sort this out. I’m sure he’s already sent out a cover letter to Jones Day.

One Minneapolis lawyer’s neo-Nazi record label, and the fight to shut it down [City Pages]

Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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