Daily Stormer The Most Censored Publication in History
Kyle Bristow
Occidental Observer
August 23, 2015
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” The Constitution of Michigan, likewise, holds free speech to be sacrosanct: “Every person may freely speak, write, express and publish his views on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of such right; and no law shall be enacted to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the press” (Const 1963, art I, § 5).
I only quote the United States and Michigan Constitutions because I swore to defend both when I became a licensed Michigan attorney and an attorney admitted to practice before numerous federal courts, respectively. It appears, however, that not all attorneys revere the freedoms enshrined in these documents to the same extent that I do.
Every year for the previous eight years, the State Bar of Michigan conducted an annual fictional short story contest for licensed Michigan attorneys, and each year the top stories were published in the Michigan Bar Journal and on the State Bar’s website. This year, thirty-one licensed attorneys submitted such short stories for the contest, and I was one such author. The contestants anonymously submitted their stories, and a panel of five judges selected the best ones; after the selections were made, the authors’ identities were matched with the stories and announcements of winners were made. This way the stories were judged on merit alone.
In the August 2015 edition of the Michigan Bar Journal, it was reported that my story, Post-Conviction Relief, received an “honorable mention” for being one of the best stories submitted this year. What was not mentioned was that my story earned fifth place and that the State Bar made a donation of three hundred dollars to a legal aid organization in my honor.
Post-Conviction Relief is a fictionalized account of violent crime ruining a formerly liberal attorney’s life, which caused that attorney to seek vigilante justice after he acquired a newfound appreciation for the Western legal tradition’s historical goal of pursuing retributive justice for criminals in contrast to modernity’s desire to rehabilitate those who commit heinous acts. The story invoked the legal musings of Justinian, Hammurabi, Aristotle, and Kant, as well as the law of the American colonies, Anglo-Saxon law, and Nordic-Germanic law. Additionally, the tale critiqued Michigan for not having the death penalty, which prevents justice from being realized.
Due to me having favorably invoked philosophy and substantive law that represents the legal foundation of the Occident in a story that delves into how depraved crime is especially abhorrent and harmful to law-abiding people and should be punished severely as justice requires, interlopers—as usual—whined to the State Bar. On August 19, 2015, the State Bar published a press release on their website that captures the gist of its subject matter in its title: “State Bar of Michigan Condemns Short Story, Withdraws Award, Ends Short Story Contest.”
The State Bar’s Executive Committee unanimously decided to condemn the fictional story that the State Bar’s press release claims is “embedded with racist cues and symbolism,” withdraw the honorable mention bestowed upon the story by the State Bar’s five judges, and outright forever cancel the short story contest that was otherwise “popular with many members.”
As I opined when interviewed by The Lansing State Journal, “If the State Bar officials are now getting their panties in a bunch over a mere fictional story, then I submit that it is probably a good idea that they cancelled the annual contest so that they are not triggered in the future by politically incorrect thought-crimes.”
In essence, the State Bar notes that my writing proficiency bested that of twenty-six of thirty other licensed attorneys, that I apparently am smart enough to sneak politically verboten messages past their learned judges, and that they would rather end the contest outright that many attorneys enjoyed than to risk a similar short story sneaking its way into receiving an award in the future.
In Post-Conviction Relief, the protagonist—a vigilante Michigan lawyer—kills a convict who murdered the protagonist’s daughter; the guilt and depravity of the convict was not at issue in the story and the race of the characters is not explicitly stated. This story was publicly condemned by the State Bar, put an end to the State Bar’s annual short story contest, and resulted in an absolute fiasco in which major newspapers and the Associated Press wrote about the contrived controversy and leftist entities—like the Southern Poverty Law Center—saw fit to put in their own two cents.
In The Last Bullet, however, the protagonist—a Jewish-vigilante Michigan lawyer—kills in his jail cell a senile old man accused of being a Nazi war criminal; the guilt of the detainee is very much at issue in the story. This submission, however, was not publicly condemned by the State Bar and received second place in the contest this year instead of a mere “honorable mention.”
Political correctness is rather farcical: in our Modern Era, one apparently cannot even write about fictionalized Black-on-White crime in coded language for an organization whose members swear to uphold a legal document that codifies free speech as a right, even though one can write for the same organization about fictionalized vigilante justice being meted out to an old White man who may even be innocent of his purported crimes.
Although Post-Conviction Relief was removed from the State Bar’s website—it was struck from the record, if you will—it was republished on the website of The Occidental Observer.
