[readthenotes1]

The 1st amendment of the US Constitution may have been informed by previous government censorship and fear of totalitarianism.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. "

[happytoexplain]

IANAL, but isn't it illegal to call for mass killing in the US? I don't know what the particular law is, or what the specifics are, i.e. how hard it is to establish in court.

Of course the severity of this sentence is another story.

[cryptonector]

As u/pseudo0, there is a required element of imminence, and the precedents are fairly clear. The tweet in question would not have resulted in prosecution in the U.S. For example it's quite common for U.S. presidents to get death threats like this even, and the secret service will go and interview those who do that, but then if it turns out they didn't have a plan, means, or real intent, then they do not prosecute them. In the U.S. you can chant "death to [fill in the blank]" all day every day if you like, and it's not a crime until you're chanting that at the head of a mob, and then it's a very serious crime with stiff jail time.

[pseudo0]

It's a pretty high bar, the tweet described in the article probably would not qualify.

Brandenburg v. Ohio and Hess v. Indiana are the key SCOTUS cases that established and clarified the imminent lawless action test. Generally it's pretty hard to demonstrate imminence when it's just someone ranting on the internet.

[kingforaday]

You are absolutely right. It's referred to as Incitement to Imminent Lawless Action.

[happytoexplain]

I feel like there's a lot of room in "imminent" - I wonder what precedent has to say.

E.g. probably if two guys are arguing in physical proximity and you're shouting for guy A to shoot guy B, that counts.

But maybe if you tweet, "hey everybody, go kill that guy", it's not imminent/directed enough?

I only say this because I feel like I'm pretty often surprised by how high the standards are for applying some laws, despite the title/brief description of the law (of course as a rule, high standards are good here, but sometimes they can feel so high that the law has no teeth).

[cryptonector]

> But maybe if you tweet, "hey everybody, go kill that guy", it's not imminent/directed enough?

IANAL, but imminence I believe has to do with speech in a context where people nearby are inflamed and ready to commit violence. E.g., pro-genocide speech in Rwanda in 1994 by people carrying machetes would absolutely count. But a speech calling for violence on the Washington mall in front of a huge crowd wouldn't count unless the speech also included exhortations to said crowd to commit violence immediately. If you went up to a crowd of elementary school children and started exhorting them to kill their teachers that might not count because no one would believe the kids would do it. It's tricky.

The point is that the First Amendment protects speech that calls for violence but without imminence for a reason: if that were not the case then any administration (including state administrations) could punish speech they don't like by exaggerating the speech as calling for violence. By insisting on such a high bar the courts have made it difficult to lower the bar to a point that many might view as tyrannical.

[tarboreus]

Yes, the imminent is a high bar.

[bdangubic]

this is why lawyers charge $500+/hr :)

[readthenotes1]

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

"The three distinct elements of this test (intent to speak, imminence of lawlessness, and likelihood of lawlessness) ..."

The random tweet from a random person fails 2 of the 3.

It's how Kathy Griffin can show the photo of a decapitated Trump.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/05/31/did-ka...