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IANAL either, but my understanding is that only speech that presents "imminent lawless action" is illegal [1]. The unlawful action being advocated must be both imminent and likely in order for the speech to be unlawful. > If I'm talking to others, and I say "Go kill all the X" (or "Let's go kill all the X"), that's incitement to violence, but I'm still not sure that's a threat. So in this case, there would need to be evidence that you are advocating to take that action on some kind of timeline (i.e. tomorrow, or next week, or next month) as well as evidence that it's likely to actually happen as a result of your speech. This probably wouldn't be prohibited because it's unlikely to actually happen. Lots of people spew some kind of discriminatory comments like this, but they're protected because they can reasonably claim that they thought it was unlikely anyone would actually do anything. > If I say "I'm going to kill you, you X", that's a threat. This is actually grey-er than you might think. There would be a big legal debate about whether this threat is "imminent" or not. I would guess it was deemed a threat, though. Now if you had said "I'm going to kill you one of these days, X", that would be protected because the threat isn't imminent. It's remarkably similar to the case that set the precedent, Hess v. Indiana [2]. TLDR; Vietnam War protesters were told to get off of a street, Hess uttered "We'll take the fucking street later" and was arrested. The court held that the speech was protected because although it advocated unlawful action, the threat of unlawful action was not imminent. If Hess had said "We'll take the street back tomorrow", it would not have been protected, because the threat was imminent. I too would love input from someone more knowledgeable than me, though. As an aside, I find it maddening that we need lawyers to figure out whether a particular action is actually illegal. Well, technically, it's worse than that, you actually need the Supreme Court to weigh in before you have a definitive answer. Lawyers can be wrong, and lower court judges can be overruled. I just can't fathom how we seem to be okay with not knowing whether a particular action is illegal unless someone has already done it, or you can somehow convince the Supreme Court to answer your hypothetical. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hess_v._Indiana |
I think there's a difference between the "true threats" and "imminent lawless action" issues: that is, I think true threats are unprotected even if they aren't imminent. I think the imminent lawless action issue relates more to incitement issues, while the true threats issue relates more to, well, threats to harm specific people. But
> I too would love input from someone more knowledgeable than me, though.
... same here!