Newark Minutemen As Americans, we are free to give and receive ideas in books, art, films, music and information. But free speech was never meant to be without boundaries. There are checks that protect order, general welfare, and the persecution of citizens based on their race, religion or gender. Where is the line?

The challenge with free speech is that everyone weighs in with their own moral and religious perspectives. Free expression has had its share of revision from labor, gender, political, race and national security debates. Often context is forgotten and media opens a floodgate for every view imaginable. For instance, schools will challenge “offensive or dangerous” material that was written decades prior.

Today, "to be or not to be a public soapbox" for political viewpoints is weighing on social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook. Because these companies are private, they can restrict their customer’s content. Some companies are deleting messages and then being smacked with lawsuits for doing so. Recent bills have been passed banning social media companies from censoring posts.

It’s not the first time in history that a corporation’s speech rights have been questioned. A timely historical novel called NEWARK MINUTEMEN https://newarkminutemen.com reminds us of a divided era when the German-American Bund, a private company protected under the first amendment, threatened national security.

During the 1930s, Hitler was harvesting a colony in America for his Nazi empire under the private corporate structure of the German-American Bund. At the helm of this organization that mimicked the administrative hierarchy of the Nazi party and created a blueprint for mobilization, Fuhrer Fritz Kuhn served as CEO. The Bund claimed to show loyalty to America by displaying the US flag side by side with the German swastika flag
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Kuhn organized six divisions under the banner including a German propaganda newspaper, a nationwide militia that marched tens of thousands of Nazi-uniformed soldiers with arms in the air down American streets, held rallies to attack the Roosevelt administration and groups with differing views, fought boycotts of German goods, stockpiled weapons and created a real estate company that built twenty-five Hitler youth camps across America to indoctrinate children with Nazi ideals and raised millions of dollars that flowed back to a Germany arming for war.
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There was an ominous threat to America, yet nothing could be done- Even when Kuhn turned the iconic Madison Square Garden into a Nuremberg-like rally on Washington’s birthday in 1939. Why? Any American child could tell you the answer —First amendment rights protected freedom of speech and assembly. The government’s hands were tied and with a split Supreme Court, challenges were chilled.

Finally, the government approached the Jewish mafia who had the acumen to recognize injustice and the resources to stop it. They created a resistance of Jewish boxers called the Newark Minutemen (NewarkMinutemen.com) who fought against and thwarted the German-American Nazi protesters and raised awareness. With heightened awareness, public opinion pressured the law to block corporations from free speech. Even though the Bund ignored the law, resistance became legal.

What this meant for corporations at large was under freedom of press, a fictionalized 1930s Twitter, for instance, could choose to post or not post views of fascists, communists, socialists and capitalists. Then the government could censor the posted messages and perhaps even force the unposted.

In 2010, that changed and corporations gained freedom of speech rights as a result of a political campaign-spending debate. In Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, the ruling turned to the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo case that ruled political spending is protected under first amendment freedom of speech rights. Citizens United held that “corporations have a First Amendment right to free speech because they are "associations of citizens" and hold the collected rights of the individual citizens who constitute them.”

While fictional 1930s Twitter message could be censored by government, after the 2010 law change, a social media company such as Twitter had the choice to post all or none of their posts. without government censorship.

While the first amendment allows this, other democracies were shocked. Both the German Chancellor and French Finance Minister insisted that lawmakers, not CEOs of social media companies should determine speech. Given Americans are known to trust their government less than Europeans, this inevitably influences the definition of free expression. But not every EU country agreed. Right after Twitter removed then-President Trump’s account. Poland changed their laws to only allow "illegal" content to be removed.

Under US law, should corporations have freedom of speech rights or not? Should social media have a different classification than other corporations? To date, newspaper, television and radio still retain freedom of speech rights and government cannot intervene. Should these media hold different standards than social media?

Free expression is one of democracy’s most important rights. But it begs the question of who should be protected from government censorship?—should it be only private citizens or also corporations who are presently defined as collective citizens. Should free speech include only legal speech, or should it also include grey speech that might be dangerous?

The original purpose of freedom of speech came from the argument that truth will prevail when ideas can be freely expressed. History such as the 1930s propaganda that incited race, color and religious hatred reminds us there is a dangerous, even deadly line. Regardless of the message, how do we decide when freedom of speech rights threaten other human rights?