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by thefucnjosh 1987 days ago
And that grey area is admittedly harder to give context to when the medium for it is text....but since he's the president and he's been physically SAYING falsehoods that lead to this situation, he should have been banned sooner.
2 comments

“Statements that are false” are an entirely different ballpark of discussion than “statement that incite violence”. Likely, some of the statements that incited these crowds weren’t even false statements at all, but imperative directions (be strong, go to capital) or predictions that turned out to be completely true. (Going to be wild!)
> “Statements that are false” are an entirely different ballpark of discussion than “statement that incite violence”.

No they're not, instead they have a massive overlap. If I lie to my neighbor "Hey, Bob across the street has been stealing your mail", and my neighbor punches Bob in the face, my "statement that was false" led to violence and it can be argued that was my intention the whole time.

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”[0]

While King Henry II didn’t directly ask for the priest to be killed, it’s pretty clear that was the intention.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...

The root of all this were the lies he has been spreading to undermine election security and this confidence in the results since long before election day.
So any politician that states a falsehood on Twitter should be banned? Or just U.S. presidents?
The amount of harm caused by a lie is proportional to the size of the audience who hears it
As well as the authority of the person spreading it. The fact that we've decided the President is above libel, slander, and felony charges is a new thing. Thank god people stopped this nonsense when he started advocating terrorism. Equality under the law, implies MORE scrutiny for the powerful. Unfortunately, up until this point we have normalized the opposite.
It seems like most societies have some kind of a reflex towards monarchy. We elect our leaders but still treat them in many ways like monarchs who need to be revered rather than like people we hired to do a job for us.
Falsehoods that lead to this situation. People who post beheadings on Twitter should be banned. People who incite violence should be banned. Nothing was said about U.S. Presidents.