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Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

Speech is considered violence by some people.

Some people consider a lot of speech violence but nearly everyone considers a small amount of speech violence or some equivalent. Telling someone to grab a electrified wire is violence by nearly everyone's standard. A mafioso directing a hit man to kill is nearly everyone's standard. The famous "shouting fire in a crowded theater" is mostly violence etc.

So you can't say the situation is "free speech or not". The situation is always where the boundary is. Of course, the question of where quickly spreading slander on the eve of an elections is on the spectrum of protected speech is a complicated question. But it's a bit different than the question of whether a given dogma can be challenged.

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Right when there is a clear and imminent danger has been the judicial limit on speech. I think nearly everyone finds this reasonable.

To my point though there is the idea that “silence is violence” which implies if you don’t actively work towards a certain groups objective then you are in fact committing violence.

Does this mean that when their social revolution is complete I will hang from the gallows pole because my named social media accounts do not account for me actively promoting their cause? After all my silence on the matter was a hostile act. Maybe I’ll just get a struggle session and be re-educated. Lifelong ban from participating in society but alive at least. If I’m lucky.

> Right when there is a clear and imminent danger has been the judicial limit on speech.

Are you thinking of “clear and present danger”? That used to be the test in the United States, but since the 1960s it is “imminent lawless action.”

> I think nearly everyone finds this reasonable.

I don’t know about that. From what I can tell, the US legal system is extremely accepting of speech that incites violence relative to many other democratic governments. I think the current test is unreasonably lenient and likely allows a lot of speech that directly advocates and incites violence.

To my point though there is the idea that “silence is violence” which implies if you don’t actively work towards a certain groups objective then you are in fact committing violence.

Yeah, certain kind of leftists are prone to over-the-top rhetoric. What does it mean? Not a lot given these aren't organized group, not even ineffective organized group but just individuals seeking attention for themselves.

"Does this mean that when their social revolution is complete I will hang from the gallows pole because my named social media accounts do not account for me actively promoting their cause?" Yes, it does mean that. They're saying so explicitly.

And I think it’s important to highlight as you have. People will say “well they don’t really _mean_ that”, etc. but they should be taken at their word. They do.

>And I think it’s important to highlight as you have. People will say “well they don’t really _mean_ that”, etc. but they should be taken at their word. They do.

And who is "they"? Specifically. Not some amorphous "group" like "progressives" or "the left" or "SJWs".

I'm not being snarky here. It seems to me that one of the most damaging trends we're seeing is equating a hundred million (and more) people with the loudest, most obnoxious and nasty .01%.

Painting folks with such a broad brush is a recipe for division, conflict and mayhem.

Assuming that someone with a Trump bumper sticker is a dyed-in-the-wool racist and white supremacist fascist is stupid in the extreme. And so is assuming that someone with a Biden bumper sticker is a totalitarian monster bent on total mind control.

People are individuals and should be assessed and measured as such.

It's intellectually lazy to just stick anyone who doesn't share your beliefs about Trump or Biden or abortion or gun rights or any of a hundred other contentious issues into a big box called "enemies."

And when you do so, you play right into the hands of the tiny group of folks who want to profit (politically, economically or both) from dividing us.

You have the choice not to do so. It's up to you and me and everyone else to step up and judge people on their individual actions, not some invented "in" or "out" group.

The infamous "shouting fire in a crowded theater" was mentioned by Holmes in U.S. v. Schenck which had nothing to do with fires or theaters. The case involved whether Schenck could be convicted under the Espionage Act for the crime of writing and distributing a pamphlet that expressed his opposition to the draft. That is the dangerous idea that sent a person to prison.

>...In 1969, the Supreme Court's decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio effectively overturned Schenck and any authority the case still carried. There, the Court held that inflammatory speech--and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan--is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action"

Even Holmes seemed to quickly realize that the Schenck decision was odious since in the same term, he also wrote:

>...In what would become his second most famous phrase, Holmes wrote in Abrams that the marketplace of ideas offered the best solution for tamping down offensive speech: "The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out."

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...

Telling someone to grab an electric fence is not violence by anyone’s standard. Nor is shouting fire. As a society, we have never considered those utterances to be violent crime.

You are incorrect here. "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is one litmus test for speech not protected by the 1st Amendment. And telling someone to grab a wire that you know is electrified and they don't is pretty violent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...

How many times do we have to go over the fact that the fire issue is actually proves the point. It was a bad ruling used to silence Yiddish WW1 protestors that referenced that hypothetical in the first place! So tired of seeing this regurgitated so much.

You seem to be equating unprotected speech with violence. Perjury is also not protected under the 1st Amendment but there's nothing violent about it.

The only speech I would consider to even approach violence is a direct threat. And even that isn't really violence - it's the threat of violence.

>The only speech I would consider to even approach violence is a direct threat. And even that isn't really violence - it's the threat of violence.

And credible threats of violence aren't protected speech either.

You seem to be agreeing with me. Replied to wrong comment? We’re saying the same thing.

Your syllogism goes something like this:

Shouting fire is speech. Shouting fire is illegal Violence is illegal. Therefore spec is violence.

I don't even know where to begin picking it apart. It has the -form- of an argument, but...

These are strange times.

You are incorrect here. "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is one litmus test for speech not protected by the 1st Amendment.

How does this contradict anything I said? I said it was not violent. It isn’t.

>"Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is one litmus test

Nitpick: It's not "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" it's "Falsely Shouting fire in a crowded theater"

If there were a fire, I'd certainly want to know about it, wouldn't you?

again. wrong.

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