What Happened to the ACLU?

Glenn Greenwald writes about the bizarre case of an ACLU lawyer coming out in favor of book censorship. So it’s fair to ask what the fuck happened to the ACLU.

I used to work at the ACLU and their national legal director was my law professor. The name obviously carries a lot of cachet among self-identified civil libertarians. The proxy allies knew that the ACLU would go their own way on a variety of issues. For example, while extremely pro-choice on abortion, the ACLU I worked at refused to sign-off on condemning or suing "crisis pregnancy centers" on 1A grounds. The abortion rights organizations grumbled but ultimately understood and never pressed the issue. It's a tiny, almost meaningless gesture, but I just cite it as one example where they stood their ground on principle.

The people that work there are almost exactly what you'd expect. It's obviously a ton of younger SJW types, long-time civil libertarians, and libertarians in hiding. I gather that what happened over the years is that nothing truly caused anyone to question their allegiance to the ACLU, because at that point it has been decades since "taking a stand on principle" meant anything controversial (i.e. Skokie). So the short-hand heuristic on the ACLU among city liberals is "they're the good guys" instead of "they defend Nazi's right to March".

Charlottesville was the scissor event that split this ripe tangerine. This is based on personal knowledge of people involved, but the folks who were lulled into a false sense of camaraderie by virtue of being with the ACLU (the good guys!) had a rude wake-up call when they realized that when the ACLU says "free speech for all", they really mean the "all" part. So there was a sort of mini-revolution within the local affiliates and among the staff. And some of them signed onto to an open letter condemning the fact that the ACLU affiliate helped the right-wingers secure their right to protest.

So you end up with a completely incoherent public-facing message. You have the old school types who are still in the leadership, trying to put on a brave face and affirm that they're still committed to the same principles they held. But then the younger staff, who joined largely ignorant or blind to the principles behind the organization, are throwing a tantrum. The problem is there is no clean divorce here. About 50% of the staff is aghast that the ACLU would ever deign to defend anyone right of center, but that faction is so thoroughly enmeshed within the organization that it's too late to get rid of them.

That's probably how you get the ridiculous ACLU Twitter account, and social media buffoons like Chase Strangio (without Greenwald's praise of his skills as an attorney, I had always assumed that was someone incompetent who failed upwards within a sympathetic organization). The Trump presidency was a fundraising bonanza for the ACLU (especially the Muslim Travel ban stuff), so the organization is also keenly aware of the financials of joining the culture war as irregular troops. They remain a powerhouse of an organization on the legal front (they consistently would get highly experienced attorneys giving up their cushy big-law position to work at the ACLU for peanuts) because they have a good track record of delivering actual result. But the last few years have shown a tempting and potentially far more lucrative path towards sustainability.