[EA-3167]

If that KKK leader then handed out a list of people a list of people to kill, I suspect it would be a VERY different situation than vague and non-specific talk of vengeance. Specifying targets, especially in the wake of a highly publicized assassination, is not abstract.

Adding in what Idlewords posted below:

"The guy also posted "the CEO must die" to his Instagram."

Provisioning a hit-list in the context of a call to murder the people described isn't abstract or vague either. At best it's a terroristic threat.

[vueko]

I don't think that it being a specific list makes any difference, because the lawless action theoretically incited by this speech is still not imminent; it's abstract in the sense that there's not a direct link between the actor and the speaker. The guy making these cards doesn't know that someone will see them and choose go kill the named CEO. It's possible, sure, but that's not the standard (and if it was, saying something like "Trump is a threat to democracy" would be incitement - it's naming a specific individual target, and it's entirely possible some deranged individual would take that statement as an instruction to carry out an assassination). The Brandenburg test requires that the speaker hold specific knowledge that their speech will result in lawless action; merely knowing that it is possible that the speech inspires lawless action isn't enough. If the guy were handing the cards out to a squad of hitmen, then that wouldn't be protected - such an act would be specific instruction to commit lawless action, not just inspiration as we see here.

And actually, regarding the Brandenburg case itself, this is what was said:

> We're not a revengent organization, but if our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race, it's possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken.

So, actually, the speech was specifically directed against a named group of individuals - "our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court" - but is still protected because of the lack of imminence. I'll note that there is a distinction between "the President should be killed" and "I will kill the President" - the latter is a true threat, the former is not.

As the ruling says: "the mere abstract teaching . . . of the moral propriety or even moral necessity for a resort to force and violence is not the same as preparing a group for violent action and steeling it to such action."

[EA-3167]

That's the standard the government needs to meet before it regulates your speech, not the standard a platform needs to reasonably infer that you're calling for murder and terrorism. I should probably have ignored the 1st amendment bait and focused on that.