magnet
5047
There is a difference between offensive speech and “fighting words”. The latter involves personal abuse delivered face to face. “Kill all fascists” does not qualify, but “You are a damned fascist” might.
Basically, it’s a way to charge a jackass with disorderly conduct for walking up to strangers and insulting them. It’s definitely not going to stop someone from carrying an offensive sign or marching for an offensive idea.
Noman
5048
I agree with ShivaX here. Being a dual citizen (US and Pakistan), I truly appreciate the freedom of speech in US. It’s a constitutional right unlike any other in any country. Once we go down the path of calling certain speech not covered under this protection, then it becomes a matter of debate, whether any other argument or point of view can also be included in the exception.
As for Timex’ view of certain beliefs being outside umbrella of societal protection, I’d say that the reaction by the society for such views has always been built in to this issue. Lots of marchers in this recent rally have faced social consequences (father disavowing son, companies firing people as the views go against their internal policies).
vyshka
5049
I’m not sure that captures the magnitude of it.
Timex
5050
To be clear, I’m genearlly pretty libertarian. I am a huge advocate for free speech.
I’m just starting to question whether or not the speech of people who are literally advocating stripping all rights away from everyone else, should legitimately be protected by freedom of speech.
Rights generally come with responsibilities… In order to enjoy rights provided by society, I think maybe you need to also accept those rights going to others. This is the ultimate basis of the rule of law. You lose your right to freedom if you violate the freedom other others.
There’s a tendency for us to reduce Nazi speech to just that, speech. That “it’s just talking”, so it’s ok. But I think that maybe it’s more. It’s a very real step towards a goal which is the complete disregard of rights for millions of humans. That’s where their speech is intended to go. Note, I’m not merely stating my opinion of where their speech leads, I’m citing what their stated intention is. This does not apply equally to an arbitrarily offensive thing. Saying that God hates gay people, for instance, does not do this same thing. Now, if I said “God hates gay people, so we should kill all the gay people.” then THAT would be equivalent.
I’m not sure if we should be sitting around, allowing Nazis to grow their strength in public view, waiting for the day when they act upon those things they’ve been talking about.
We’ve seen that happen. We’ve seen Nazis try to take over the world, murdering millions, leading to the deaths of tens of millions.
I would never want to take a step which can be used to curtail freedom of speech broadly… Such a loss of a fundamental right is horrific. But making a very narrow restriction, that says, “You can’t advocate for stripping the rights from other people.” may be narrow enough to achieve a beneficial end without leading to any real reduction of freedom of speech for anyone other than Nazis.
Censorship is a slippery slope that might as well be used against you as ‘for’ you.
Redefining what is said under ‘free speech’ justt so you can use some law against it, I guess is an option, surely then you no longer have free speech – but might claim you still have.
Either way, surely a voting ‘majority’ ultimately gets their way and the society they want/deserve, if only to have it overturned 4-8 years later.
Here’s the thing about Free Speech…it has to be universal or it doesn’t work.
That means that as much as I absolutely hate Nazi white supremacist mother-fuckers, if they want to dress themselves up in the symbols of the most evil and vile ideology to exist in modern times, and march through the streets of wherever shouting their filth and jeering…they should be allowed to do exactly that.
If reasonable people want to line the streets to either side, mock them and shout back while taking the picture of every single Nazi piece of garbage that walks by with the sole intent of getting them fired from their jobs, denounced by their families or shunned by society…they should be allowed to do exactly that.
HOWEVER…when said Nazi white supremacist mother-fuckers show up for said Free Speech protected march in full body armor wielding clubs and shields and packing heat…that has crossed the line from Free Speech to Intimidation. When they then use said weapons to attack opposition protestors, they’ve crossed the line from Free Speech to Assault. When they ram their car into a crowd of opposition protestors they’ve crossed the line from Free Speech to Domestic Terrorism. The crossing of any of those lines should be grounds for immediate punching of Nazis, from whomever is closest at hand and capable, be that police or civilians.
Nesrie
5053
The fact they showed up armed to the teeth and one of them mowed down a protestor with very little police interference, and the other protests had primarily unarmed protesters and a heavy police presence and response… there’s only freedom of speech for some groups in this country. Maybe that’s why some of those groups don’t see Freedom of Speech the same way. We don’t have it already.
But it’s not universal in the US; we’ve had exceptions for quite some time and they’re quite reasonable ones - you can be convicted for slander or libel, for instance (apparently unless you work for Fox News). Threats of violence are also likewise not protected. The real question is where we draw the lines for these exceptions.
IANAL, but I can see at least a common sense extension to cover explicit aspects of a NAZI (this is not the same as Alt Right) agenda as they’re inherently threatening violence to classes of people. But that does seem like quite the dicey proposition, because at what point does advocating genocide slide into threatening the same? It’s the perception of a threat which seems important in this kind of situation.
magnet
5055
It’s not really a question, though. Exceptions to the first amendment are categorized and very well defined, and at this point it’s very unlikely that any new categories will be added. Offensive political speech simply does not qualify, this has been established again and again by the courts.
Nesrie
5056
I believe their poster boy, Trump, has been pushing against that. Wants to sue everyone and the media when they say something he thinks is fake which is almost everything. They want it both ways.
I apologize for imprecise language; there is a question of interpretation on those limits, and this will always be a question.
For instance, if someone shows up and says “You should all die!” while carrying weapons that could reasonably carry out such an act, that’s going to be more than likely deemed a threat and therefore not protected. However, there’s that interpretation and judgment of actions and words that needs to take place. First by the potentially arresting officer, and then by the judge and jury.
magnet
5058
Incitement to crime is one of the exceptions to the first amendment. The standard for incitement is that the speaker intends imminent lawless action. That’s a lot of necessary conditions crammed into five words.
“You should all die!” is not incitement. By itself it is an opinion, not a crime. It would take some other action (pointing a gun at someone or physically menacing them) to constitute a threat.
“I am going to kill you!” is a criminal threat, if a reasonable person would take it seriously. Note that most of the time when those words are used, a reasonable person would not take them seriously.
“You should kill that guy!” is criminal incitement, if the speaker intends the audience to act immediately.
“Some day you should kill that guy!” is not incitement, because there is no expectation of imminent action. The same is true for “Some day we are going to kill all the Jews!”
I agree, it has to be universal or it doesn’t work. You just gave some great examples of how it’s NOT working properly right now. State Police in Virginia could have and should have done more to keep those groups separate. Police at other protests have gone too far in their response to non-violent protesters. While it’s obviously not an exact science and situations are all different and fluid, it has to be handled better than it has been so far. This has gone beyond any one group of protestors or any one political agenda…it’s becoming epidemic. We’re on the brink of Tammany Hall style political gang wars in the streets.
It’s also important to remember that while free speech is protected, violence and intimidation are not. In Charlottesville…on Friday night, the asshats marching with their tiki torches chanting their shitty slogans are 100% protected free speech, as are the brave students who came out to stand up to them and protest their presence on campus. At that point the police presence should have been squarely in-between the students and the asshats. Then nobody gets hit with a tiki torch, or if they do, it instantly dissolves any notion of protected speech and that asshat gets arrested for assault on the spot.
Nesrie
5060
You look at BLM, a favorite comparison, and you see the primarily black groups coming up against the police… there were no counter protesters for the police to really keep apart. So they showed up to confront the protesters, presumably to keep the peace but that’s not what happened. I don’t think it’s irrelevant that one group was largely unharmed blacks and the other was armed whites and that’s how the response turned out.
BLM vs Nazis is literally Equality vs. Superiority but the false-equivalence, both-sides narrative gains traction because apparently the logic of that is too complex or grown-up for many Americans to process.
Maybe it’s time to institute a mandatory Live in a Big City for 3 Years federal statute so all citizens can see minorities as fellow humans instead of something to fear like Fox News done said.
If you wield military looking rifles and wear body armor is it still speech? Is it still peaceable assembly?
It’s difficult to say. I mean, sure, in a state with open carry laws you could show up at the courthouse with your rifle slung over your back, speak your piece in a calm and orderly fashion, and disperse, and you’d still be a textbook example of Free Speech. But watching those Unite the Right folks in Charlottesville, they came armed for conflict, not protest, and police should have done more to keep them apart from the other protesters, and probably outright arrested the more aggressive ones, if only to remove them from the scene.
You may want to consider employment at the NRA; they feel much as you do.
I know it wasn’t Nesrie’s main point, but the police respose to these things is a little more complex than the headlines would indicate. This WaPo story lays out the events in a fairly clear way.
There wasn’t any significant police presence for the car-murder because the Antifa folks there were moving away from the Nazis, who were moving in the other direction; the cops weren’t too concerned with the Antifa people rioting or looting, so they were concentrating their man-power on montoring the Nazis and the heavily-armed (but still legal) “militia” idiots.
Not stepping in between the alt-reich people and the counter-protesters earlier in the day is not as easy to defend; the cops explain it as the Nazis ignoring their march-assembly plans, but you’d think that the cops should have been more than ready for that.
rowe33
5065
Well, yeah, if you’re white. I wonder how far a black guy with a rifle would get before being stopped in a hail of bullets.
I think there’s some merit to letting assjangles display exactly what they are out in the open, so we can be wary of them.
I’ve always said I’d defend people’s rights to say things I didn’t agree with, and I still believe that. However, as you allude to, when what one person does or says starts to threaten the rights of others, it becomes a problem. While I’d argue that in our society people have come to believe they have a right not to be offended, and that this is a problem, there has to be a line we can draw somewhere.
I think @Nesrie also brings up an excellent point re:weapons. Presence of weapons and the right to “peaceably assemble” are in conflict with one another. The presence of weapons is to intimidate, not to protect themselves. When one side is intimidating the other, then at least in some sense, that is no longer a peaceful protest.
