The E4 Mafia and Nonprofit Hate Speech
Corporal “Radar” O’Reilly, former head of the E4 Mafia.
When I heard about a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee last week, I knew right away that the E4 Mafia had struck again. It seems the Army used PowerPoint slides (see one below) to train soldiers on what terrorist organizations look like. So that soldiers won’t accidentally join or associate with a terrorist organization on their off time and end up storming the Capital or something. The slides labeled “terrorist” several nonprofits organizations with household names like PETA and National Right to Life. And it also labeled “terrorism” various types of democratic advocacy, including picketing, bumper stickers, and sidewalk advocacy. The Committee harangued a Three-star and an Assistant SECDEF because nobody could explain how and why this happened. It was the E4 Mafia, trust me.
Corporal is the rank assigned to the E-4 pay grade, and the Army keeps about 112,000 around in peace time. You are fully trained at E-4 and thereafter let loose to do most of the paperwork that gets done in the Army. Officers and NCOs don’t do the paperwork much, and everybody below E-4 is still being trained. The whole peace-time Army is dependent on 20-year-old E-4s for the paperwork. Corporals are young happy, and indispensable, yet still sometimes resentful enough of pushiness that even the officers refer to them collectively as the “E4 Mafia.” Everybody does, in recognition that if you want your paperwork done right, you probably better not mess with them even if you have higher rank. They know you need the paperwork and that you can’t get it anywhere else. Just don’t mess with them.
Everybody agrees that the listed nonprofits and activities proved no bias towards one side or the other. Republicans and Democrats expressed equal concern. The Committee members were all “who did this and how did it happen!” Eventually, they expressed incredulity that a Three-star wouldn’t say exactly. He knew, because the Army spoke to the soldier during an AR 15-6 investigation demanded earlier this summer. He just didn’t want to say it was the E4 Mafia. Even Generals need their paperwork.
I watched some of the hearing. Nobody else should bother, it’s mostly political posturing by various committee members. But the story made me think again about how tax law can prevent tax exemption’s support of terrorism. I mean in the harder cases involving hate speech. Only speech. I don’t mean the easy cases involving the support of physical terrorism. Nor do I mean that we can prohibit the speech, not even hate speech. Clearly we cannot.
I mean whether we can deny hate speech public subsidization by revoking or denying tax exemption. Of course we can, don’t believe the naysayers comfortable that its not them being hated on. Just because we have to tolerate it doesn’t mean we have to pay for it too. But even in my article, I acknowledge just how difficult it is to discern the hateful speech that should not be subsidized. That is more than a second order problem, but it does not preclude the principle’s articulation. Besides, my proposal is content neutral and decidedly biased towards broad interpretation. I [government] don’t care what “educational” groups teach, I can’t be concerned says the Constitution. But I can insist that they practice a definable pedagogy, one that precludes unmitigated hate indoctrination. We can identify hate groups by their pedagogy and then deny them tax exemption. We can do so by application of a better articulated “full and fair” exposition standard. None of the groups labeled in the Army slide would qualify as hate groups under that approach, by the way. It is an entirely workable thing and it doesn’t matter if the proposal’s broadness allows exemption for the polite or disguised haters. It is still a principle that ought to be articulated.
We should get the E4 Mafia working on it.
darryll k. jones