Black Lives Matter founder: White nationalist speech isn’t protected under the First Amendment

Hot Air ^ | August 14, 2017 | Allahpundit

[2ndDivisionVet]

Actually, white nationalist speech is protected under the First Amendment, as is all “hate speech,” because there’s no such thing as “hate speech” in U.S. constitutional jurisprudence. How many primers on free-speech law need to be posted on the Internet before people absorb this very basic fact? I’m less annoyed at Patrisse Cullors, who’s obviously pushing this lie as part of a political agenda, than I am at Katy Tur, who views her profession through a heroic lens and is ostensibly there to fact-check. If someone’s spouting misinformation about the First Amendment (of all things) right in front of you, the journamalistical thing to do might be to kindly correct the record for the benefit of your audience. Does Tur not know basic 1A law despite the fact that her job depends on it? Or is she giving Cullors a pass because she supports her agenda?

Speaking of novel interpretations of First Amendment law, Hugh Hewitt has a corker of an idea about what went down in Charlottesville this weekend:

All law students taking a First Amendment course, or even a constitutional law survey course, learn the rule of Brandenburg v. Ohio, a case that grew out of a 1964 Ku Klux Klan rally near Cincinnati. The defendant, Clarence Brandenburg, was convicted under a Buckeye State statute aimed originally at criminalizing communist conduct. Five years later, when the case found its way to the Supreme Court, the per curiam opinion struck down the Ohio law, holding “that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”…

From far away in California, and after a day of air travel during which I observed the events in Charlottesville only in bits and pieces, in snatches online and two minute reports from gates, it seems to me that a great number of people are at risk of being charged with felony homicide beyond the driver of the car that killed one person during Saturday’s protests. Anyone who incited the driver, indeed anyone whose actions obliged the state troopers to be airborne in defense of the public’s safety, should lawyer up.

“Lots of people should be charged if they contributed to the mayhem that led to these deaths,” Hewitt argues. That’s … quite an expansive concept of “incitement” with potentially draconian consequences. A traditional example of incitement is when a speaker is whipping up a mob that’s assembled against some poor bastard and says, e.g., “Let’s lynch him!” Even if the speaker doesn’t participate in the lynching, he can be charged criminally under the Brandenburg test that Hewitt cites since his advocacy was aimed at inciting imminent lawless action and was likely to produce it. The First Amendment won’t protect him.

As I read Hewitt, he wants to extend that exception to virtually anyone who participated in the protests — or counter-protests! — in Charlottesville on Saturday regardless of anything specific that they might have said. He’s not drawing the line at someone whispering in James Fields’s ear that he should take out a bunch of progressives with his car. A neo-Nazi/antifa showdown contains a high enough risk of violence, he seems to be saying, that participating and saying anything that raises the antagonism between the groups may qualify as incitement — and, by extension, felony murder due to Fields’s actions. Imagine showing up at a rally to yell F-bombs at some Nazis, watching a bunch of people get run over by a crazed white supremacist, and then finding yourself facing a murder charge. Or, to take a harder example, imagine being a white nationalist who attends the rally with every intention of behaving peacefully and hoping that everyone else behaves that way too. Should that guy face a murder charge for Fields’s actions? Does it matter if he was shouting expletives at antifa? The whole point of the Brandenburg test is to make the circumstances under which someone can be legally charged with incitement very narrow. This doesn’t feel narrow. In practice, it would might amount to a de facto hate-speech exception to the First Amendment. If you’re spouting “hate” around someone who shares your attitude and goes on to commit a crime, you’re doing hard time potentially.

I don’t know what to make of the idea that people might be charged for the two police officers’ deaths in the helicopter crash either. The crash was an accident, as far as we know. They were flying around doing crowd control, watching for violence on the ground. How would you begin to go about figuring out who’s guilty of incitement and who’s not in a helicopter crash? If participants are on the hook for felony murder whenever they attend a protest that’s opposed by counter-protesters, raising the risk of violence, I don’t know how anyone could ever safely attend on either side. By showing up you’d be gambling your liberty on the hope that no crimes are committed by anyone else in attendance, whether you have anything to do with them or not.

Here’s the clip via the Free Beacon.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Another needless Twit heard from.

[SaxxonWoods]

You are not the boss of that, lady.

Bye.

[JudgemAll]

The only illegal speech in the US is that sponsored by foreign nations and our domestic subsidies... but this has not stopped BLM/Hillary/Sorros apparently as Sessions and other douches have gotten used to cave in to looks like girls

[Electric Graffiti]

lolol

[ThunderSleeps]

Exactly. The cops are saying there was no stand down order. BS. If there wasn’t, show me the dozens of arrests made, who is in jail from the violence and the riots? There very obviously was an intentional stand down. Now someone is dead. Someone who gave that order should be facing charges.

[Meet the New Boss]

They were flying around doing crowd control, watching for violence on the ground.

Um, not quite, Allahpundit. The helicopters were monitoring McAuliffe's motorcade on its way into town so he could have his photo ops denouncing the 'nazis.'

If McAuliffe wasn't such a complete d-bag he would have stayed away and let police resources be available for more important purposes.

[sauropod]

bkmk

[mrmeyer]

92% of them voted for Hillary Clinton so I don’t exactly call that leaving the plantation.

[Bodega]

Maybe our judicial system and it the speakers who defend it, like the judges, for example, might step up to the plate and explain to antifa, BLM et al exactly why they will be arrested in the future (when we find governors and police commissars who won’t ask the police to stand down).

This just makes me sick and I worry too much about the loss of this country, piece by piece.

I say arrest those looters, destroyers, jail them, charge them and pass sentences to include “If you incite sedition in jail, we will give you $10 bucks, a sleeping bag and a ticket to a Muslim country. You don’t belong here anymore as evidenced by your actions.”.

Nuts to the PCers.

[jonsie]

Now that’s just gross!

[CIB-173RDABN]

It’s already true in practice - apparently in Charlottesville, the leftist thugs were given free rein to attack and harass and douse rally-goers with chemical sprays, and did not face arrest or detention from the local cops. And like they say, ultimately, “the law is what you can get away with.”

---

The 1960s all over again with the left playing the part of Bull Connor and George Wallace.

The Civil Rights movement gained strength when images of the way blacks were treated when marching or attempting to stand up for their rights.

The Stonewall Riots gave rise to the homosexuals busting out to the closet and gaining prominence in almost every walk of life.

The Soviet Union had almost 70 years to stifle people’s belief in God and their desire to prosper from their own hard work.

Government approved violence to shut up and control people will in the end fail.

The images out of Charlotteville are horrible but we can no longer trust the media to report honestly. There is doubt if the “white supremacist” were really who they claim to be and not just paid agitators playing a part.

Regardless, if it was a group of clean cut white males standing peacefully praying, they would still have been attacked. And this is the important point to take from all this. The local (read Democrat) government allowed the attacks to take place. They choose sides, and they choose violence over peace.

The left wants to divide the country along sexual and racial lines but they forget that they are still in the minority.

[RC one]

I'm not sure that that's an entirely accurate statistic and if it is, it's 92% of a significantly decreased overall turnout which certainly didn't help her.

Clinton lost a lot of those "blue wall" states that Obama won due, in part, to decreased support for her from AA's and slightly increased support for Donald Trump as compared to Mitt Romney. The blue wall broke but by narrow margins. They need maximum participation and maximum support in 2020 to build that wall back up. That wasn't all there was to Trump's victory of course but when you're talking about a difference of 68,236 votes in Pennsylvania, 27,257 votes in Wisconsin, and 11,612 votes in Michigan every vote matters. All this current political drama is the Democrat party trying to consolidate its AA and minority base for 2020 by stirring up racial hatred. Divide and conquer. This is what they do. They're good at it.

[ealgeone]

They think if they keep repeating this lie, eventually a judge will make it true.

Per the DNC and mainstream media I think they already have.

[Dont tread and Live]

we need a new definition for BLM acronym...B for Bowel...M for Movement...can anyone come up for a good definition for the L
?

Much thanks

[zzwhale]

ok so a group GOT A PERMIT TO PROTEST...... AND ANOTHER GROUP TRIED TO STOP THEM...
then law enforcement stood by and let a riot happen...
and the driver was afraid for his life... just like the couple on the west side hwy in nyc who ran over motorcyclists and were set free...
so while your rounding up perps be sure to INCL
UDE GEORIE SCHWARTZ aka SOROS...... the cumbag behind BLM and ANTIFA
and other violent left wing TERRORISTS

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I really don’t think most people understand how dangerous these radicals are.

I don't think these radicals understand how dangerous We The People are.

[Architect of Avalon]

The majority group is stripped of its ability to act as the majority to the extent that its members view their own group identity as toxic.

[Maverick68]

If we applied the Left’s standards fairly, the koran would be banned as hate speech.

[chris37]

Lickers.