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by jcranmer 775 days ago
> You can not. Inciting violence and calls for criminal action is a well establish limit of the First Amendment, but that is not what they are doing from what I gathered in this thread.

Brandenburg v Ohio (the current standard for what constitutes incitement) literally says your free speech rights run up to and include advocacy for violent overthrow of the government. The limitation it establishes is "incitement to imminent lawless action", with heavy emphasis on "imminent".

4 comments

This is the correct answer. I think people are approaching this emotionally. The problem is if you start infringing on it there simply is no end.
kind of makes sense for americans. I feel like "over throw the government" is a core part of american history and culture.

I'd hope this only applies to the government though and not towards groups of people or ethnicity.

Learned something new. Thank you.
There is still a question of whether that is the correct limit. Many people think it is. Obviously Israel disagrees. We can’t use the First Amendment and SCOTUS precedent to uncover aughts, especially to another country.

However, if you agree that Brandenburg set the correct limit, you can conditionalize aid on it. It’s just not a first principles approach.