Brian Peacock wrote:Forty Two wrote:Brian Peacock wrote:...
Firstly, 'horse hockey' is called Polo, and it's a fine game balancing individual skill and teamwork.
Secondly, imo it is a general good to limit in law speech which seeks to incite others to violence or advocates differential treatment and regard for certain nominal groups.
That's all well-and-good as far as it goes, however, the Devil is in the defining of terms. I agree, if incite is used in its traditional legal sense in Anglo-American jurisprudence, where it means to encourage, urge, spur on, goad, instigate or persuade another to commit violence. It's not enough that speech be such that it pisses people off and they become violent, and it's not enough that speech be hateful about a group of people and some listeners go batshit and start getting violent. Incite involves actually calling for violence -- urging violence. And, the violence called for must be immediate, not calls for the future.
Why all the conditions? If someone publicly calls for X-group to be hounded out of town does it matter if that happens directly after the meeting, or the following day, or the next Tuesday in the month?
The carrying out of the violence need not be immediate, but the call for violence must be immediate. The distinction I was trying to make was between someone advocating a revolution which may be violent down the road, and someone calling for the audience to go out and burn things down right now. The difference is that the former is an advocacy of an idea, whereas the latter is actually inciting violent conduct.
Brian Peacock wrote:
If someone declares X-group as undesirables antithetical to the kind of society they'd advocate for themselves, or advocates that a group don't deserve to have their rights respected, and therefore shouldn't have their rights respected, does it matter if 'some listeners go batshit and start getting violent' or not?
No, the speech is free in that example, or should be, regardless of whether any of the listeners go batshit crazy or not. The reaction of the listener is not the operative feature. It's what the speaker is calling for that is important. So, if I go on a soapbox in the town square and advocate that people should not have rights respected, or should have their rights taken away, that is (a) not a call for violence and (b) not even a call for criminal action. It's advocacy of an idea that some people or another should not have rights. That's political speech.
it may be a repugnant idea, in that most people think individuals should have equal rights, but the notion that everyone should have equal rights that are equally respected is not a sacred ideal that is outside the realm of public debate. If it pisses some people off, tough shit. The response must be more speech. Violent response to the offensive speech must not be tolerated, and the machinery of the State ought not be brought to bear to silence unpopular ideas.
Brian Peacock wrote:
You can incite hatred by speech just like you can incite differential treatment and regard,
So what? People are free to hate, and people are free to advocate hatred. Some people hate Republicans. People used to march in the streets with avowed hatred of George W. Bush, and they were hanging him in effigy. Free speech. And, if someone says we should repeal the Equal Protection Clause and there should be no equal protection under the laws, and that Missourians should be given preferred rights under the law, and Floridians should be kicked out of the country, that's not inciting anything. That's making bizarre and possibly offensive points. If the speaker was calling for violence against Floridians, however, then that's another story. "Go out and hang the Floridians!" is different than "expel the Floridians from the country." The latter may piss Floridians off, but hardly any political speech fails to piss someone off.
Brian Peacock wrote:
and you can threaten and intimidate a group without ever resorting directly to violence yourself.
Sure, but it all depends what you say. If I say that white people are worthless and evil, that's not a threat or intimidation. It's an opinion. It may piss white people off, but tough shit.
Brian Peacock wrote:
The fact that you frame the actual incitement here in terms of others violently objecting to speech speaks volumes, but as you say, the devil is in the detail, in the law, in the type of society the law aspires to secure, in the intent and effect of the speech concerned, and in the law's ability to limit it for the sake of public order and decency.
I did not frame it that way. I framed it as incitement being incitement, meaning that someone is calling for violence now. What I'm saying is that there should not be a "heckler's veto" -- in other words, just because speech pisses someone off and they become violent about it ought not make the speech illegal.
Nobody has the right not to be offended. Calling for discrimination or differential treatment is free speech. It's an unpopular opinion, but so what? When I was a kid there was a poll done and like 90% of people polled said that everyone should have the right to free speech in public. However, when asked if a Communist should have the right to free speech in public, a majority of people said no, the Communist should not. Why? Because what the Communist advocates was at the time very unpopular and pissed tons of people off, was considered a breach of public order and decency, and should be prohibited. However, if one believes in free speech then the advocacy of unpopular ideas is what needs the most protection. Ideas most everyone agrees with and which are tame and well-received don't need much protection, because popular views are not going to be silenced.
If you look at the American Supreme Court Case of American Nazi Party vs. Skokie, Illinois, where the American Civil Liberties Union defended the American Nazi Party's right to march down Main Street in Skokie, Illinois (at a time when Skokie was home to many Holocaust survivors, which is why the Nazis wanted to march there), you'll understand better where I am coming from.
In the US, the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is directed to inciting, and is likely to incite, imminent lawless action. So, merely saying that a race should be treated differently or some group should be disadvantaged is not enough, because that speech is not "directed to inciting imminent lawless action."
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar