NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Wednesday, August 16, 2017, 2:50 PM

Let's get one thing straight from the start: President Trump was utterly and completely wrong to equate the white supremacists who converged on Charlottesville, Va., last weekend with the counter-protesters who challenged them.

By saying that there were "bad people" in both groups, he implicitly placed them on the same moral plane. And by repeatedly emphasizing that "both sides" engaged in violence, he ignored the obvious fact that only one side the white supremacists counted a murderer among their numbers.

I'm talking about James Alex Fields, Jr., of course, the reported neo-Nazi who killed paralegal Heather Heyer and injured 19 others by driving his car into a crowd. There was nothing even close to that on the other side.

But the counter-protesters did engage in violence, wielding fists and sticks to attack some of the white supremacists. It was small potatoes, by comparison, but it has big implications for free speech. Across the political spectrum, a growing number of Americans want to deny that right to people they detest. And once you do that, you can visit any wrong upon them.

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Witness the assault on Jason Kessler, one of the key organizers of the white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville. When he tried to speak at a press conference on Saturday, a pair of men charged at him; one of them shouted an obscenity, and the other said, "Indict for murder now."

As Kessler scurried away from the podium, a man identified as Jeff Winder punched him. "Jason Kessler has been bringing hate to our town for months and has been endangering the lives of people of color," Winder said. "Free speech does not protect hate speech."

Actually, it does. For the past 50 years, the Supreme Court has upheld the right of Americans to say pretty much anything they want. The lone exception is for "fighting words," personal threats that pose an immediate danger of physical harm to somebody else.

Did Kessler's words pose that kind of peril? Of course not. Instead, they provoked a violent reaction against him, by people who took it upon themselves to decide what he should and shouldn't be allowed to say.

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And if you think that's OK, how can you object when other people try to muzzle speech that you might approve, but which they find abhorrent? I'm thinking especially of Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour, whose selection as a commencement speaker at the City University of New York School of Public Health last spring provoked protests outside the university and death threats against Sarsour.

Calling Sarsour a supporter of terrorism, which she resolutely denied, critics urged Gov. Cuomo to cancel her speech. He refused, fortunately, and Sarsour delivered her address without incident. But she also had to hire two private bodyguards to accompany her to public events.

I'm not equating Sarsour with Jason Kessler. My point is simply that "hate speech" is in the eye of the beholder. That's why we need to protect it, no matter how vile or offensive it seems.

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The alternative is to have the government define and delimit hate speech, via laws and regulations. Every federal court who has examined such rules including campus speech codes has struck them down. And thank heavens for that, because our own government is now led by one Donald J. Trump.

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At every turn, Trump has shown himself to be an enemy of free speech. During his campaign, he openly wished for the demise of newspapers that criticized him. He encouraged supporters to attack protesters at his rallies, even offering to pay the resulting legal bills. Do you really want this guy deciding what you can and can't say? I didn't think so.

And that's one of the sad ironies of our current moment. The last few days have witnessed a surge of disgust for President Trump, who has openly defended racists and white supremacists. But we have also seen attacks on free speech, including a tweetstorm against the American Civil Liberties Union for upholding the rights of these same white supremacists.

That plays right into Trump's hands. At this delicate juncture, the last thing we should be doing is restricting freedom of speech. In America, everyone should have their say. And if you say otherwise, watch out! He might be coming for you next.

Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author (with Emily Robertson) of The Case for Contention: Teaching Controversial Issues in American Schools.

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In Charlottesville, some on the left attacked free speech ...