At the Select Board meeting of Jan. 28, John Platte, vice chair of the Plymouth No Place for Hate Committee, stated that many of Plymouth’s Town Meeting members recently received an email from another Town Meeting member, responding to the town manager’s direction that town employees not engage with the Plymouth Independent.
In response to that directive, Richard Nealy, Precinct 15, sent an email to Town Meeting members containing two words: “Sieg Heil!” Apart from the misspelling of the salute – Nealy wrote “S ich heil!!!” – the intended message was the same. Platte stated that an exclamation such as this has no place in modern society. I am paraphrasing and agree.
This statement, in my opinion, qualifies as hate speech. It is antisemitic, homophobic, xenophobic, racist, misogynistic, white supremacist, and is meant to instill fear in anyone who hears it. There is nothing funny, sarcastic, or acceptable about an exclamation that recalls the darkest period of human history. Go to any synagogue and make this statement. Go to any church or other place of worship and make this statement, any gathering, any community event…go to Germany and make this statement and watch the result. The fact that Nealy would write this, is more shocking. The salute uttered by the Nazis constitutes hate speech and, again, has no place in modern society.
Some think Nealy was exercising his First Amendment rights by sending this email. They and are wrong, period. The First Amendment is the right to express ideas and opinions without the fear of censorship, retaliation, or punishment; true. It guarantees the right to express oneself in the spoken and written word; true. The First Amendment also guarantees the right to symbolically express oneself through actions such as clothing, reading, and performances. The First Amendment does not guarantee the right to defame, incite riots, use obscenities, or cause disruptions; it is within the rights and privileges of the government to regulate speech when these issues present themselves. Simply put, you cannot say what you want when and how you want in the name of the First Amendment; calling it free speech when that speech, however it is expressed, causes harm.
By sending the email, Mr. Nealy has done that, causing harm. That email is traumatizing to many individuals – those who lived through the Holocaust and others who have experienced trauma because of their race, religion, orientation, gender, and sex. It is a statement meant to instill terror and has no place in civilized society, especially the government. We expect and deserve more from our elected officials.
I propose that Nealy has disqualified himself from serving as a Town Meeting member and should resign effective immediately. Not standing for re-election is not resigning. There are certain mistakes in judgment that people cannot recover from, even after an apology, regardless of what the national sentiment or realities show us – this is one of them. Nealy has lost the confidence of residents of this town by his words and actions. Accountability is an idea quickly losing traction in society, we see it daily. Perhaps Nealy did not intend his email to have the response it did. Nonetheless, it has. Words have power, use them wisely. Actions have consequences, accept them maturely. There are residents in Plymouth who disagree with the Town Meeting form of government however, it is the form of government we have and as such deserves a level of dignity.
– Robert A. Zupperoli