Because WaPo weren't encouraging people to go and "riot".
The police already have the power to deal with things like that, the vast majority of it was people protesting.
The police already have the power to deal with things like that, the vast majority of it was people protesting.
Maybe WaPo wasn't (although I doubt it). Other media certainly were: https://twitter.com/slate/status/1268415955937513473?lang=en
Or will we keep justifying direct justifications of violence, while ignoring the calls to peace spoken and written by Trump.
Honestly, I'm done at this point. I hope people like you keep saying what you're saying. You'll just convince more people, just like y'all have convinced me.
EDIT: more justifications of violence:
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178...
Here's vice interviewing a man who just shot a trump supporter and killed him. They did this after he had done so, but before he was turned over to police. Harboring a criminal is illegal: https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7g8vb/man-linked-to-killing...
EDIT: and just like I thought, from the downvotes, people actually agree with the direct calls to violence issued by these mainstream outlets that led to over 30 deaths this summr]er, and $2billion in damages, mainly to small businesses all over america. The lack of moral convictions on this forum is pathetic.
https://www.nbcnews.com/video/trump-encourages-those-at-his-...
They went straight from his rally to Capitol hill. Ultimately his MO is edging very close to unacceptable and saying the right things to the right people to please his ego.
IMO he should've been banned from Twitter on the spot after he retweeted a video of a gut shouting white power at a bunch of black people
Did he explicitly say “Go riot!”, or “Go forth and <enumeration of elements of some crime>.” Probably not.
Did he say things which had the intent and effect of inciting riot and insurrection? I think the answer is pretty clearly yes.
First, what Trump actually told the protestors on the 6th was to go peacefully. His plain language has been analyzed by qualified legal scholars and they conclude it does not meet the very high threshold of “fighting words”. [1]
Second, as we can clearly see, the attacks on the capital were planned well in advance of Trump’s speech and therefore could not have been incited by that speech in the first place.
Third, the violent protesters had already started breaching the capital while Trump was still speaking a mile away.
So I think there are important facts on the ground that do not support the allegation that Trump’s speech on the 6th incited a spontaneous mob.
I think you could argue that denial of the election result and false claims of election fraud — over many weeks and by many people including Trump — led in part to certain people to plan for violence on the 6th.
The people that planned and executed the violence should be charged with crimes and face a jury of their peers.
My understanding is that the laws against inciteful speech require the speech to result in imminent lawless action. If I listen to a podcast on Monday and decide to violently protest next week, the podcast would not be illegal speech.
[1] - https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/01/11/democr...
None of the major tests of whether speech is protected apply to the decontextualized plain language of the utterance in isolation, and the “fighting words” test is particularly non-germane here in any case, since it is a test that specifically relates to provocation of an audience hostile to one’s ideas, so you'd have to be either grossly incompetent or intensely dishonest to measure something suggested to be incitement of a friendly crowd to violence against a common enemy against it.
> Second, as we can clearly see, the attacks on the capital were planned well in advance of Trump’s speech and therefore could not have been incited by that speech in the first place.
That's...not how incitement works. It is not the case that once a a breach of the peace has been planned, encouragement immediately proximate to the planned breach to steal the nerves of either those who were in on the plan, or to fire up other susceptible persons in the area to join in, is no longer incitement. That's nonsense.
The only relevance that the prior planning has to incitement is that, if Trump knew about that planning, assessment of intent and reasonably forseeable effect of his words would have to be made in light of that knowledge.
> Third, the violent protesters had already started breaching the capital while Trump was still speaking a mile away.
Again, that's not how incitement works. The fact that a riot or other ongoing breach of the peace has begun doesn't make further immediate encouragement not incitement.
As with the last point, this is only relevant at all to the extent that, if Trump knew of it, assessment of his intent and the reasonably forseeable consequences of his action must be made with that knowledge in mind.
> The people that planned and executed the violence should be charged with crimes and face a jury of their peers.
Sure. That's not exclusive of accountability for incitement, whether by Trump or others.
> So I think there are important facts on the ground that do not support the allegation that Trump’s speech on the 6th incited a spontaneous mob.
No one made the allegation that Trump incited a spontaneous mob.
> Saying things that foreseeably move some audience members to act illegally isn’t enough,” notes Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment specialist at UCLA Law School. “Speaking recklessly isn’t enough. The Court was well aware that speech supporting many movements — left, right, or otherwise — that merely moves the majority to political action may also lead a minority of the movement to rioting or worse. It deliberately created a speech-protective test that was very hard to satisfy.” [1]
If someone is already causing a pre-planned disturbance a mile away while you are speaking, it’s impossible to argue that the words were an incitement to imminent lawless action in that case. I’m not sure how you get around the fact that an imminent cause-effect relationship is a necessary component of this form of unprotected speech.
If the question is whether a political speech falls into the unprotected category of incitement to imminent lawless action, it’s highly probative to that specific charge if the lawless action was pre-planned and already occurring when you spoke.
An additional necessary element for incitement is intent. You would have to prove that Trump intended for his supporters to try to actually carry out a riot on that day, despite his calls for them to be peaceful, and how much he stood to lose (did lose) if (when) they were not.
To throw another question into the mix, if someone makes a rousing speech which rallies up a crowd, and then after the crowd takes a mile long walk they encounter an existing volatile situation like an ongoing riot, I’d be pretty surprised if the earlier speech can suddenly become illegal unprotected speech based on some true incitement to violence which happens later.
I certainly have never heard of any such case of speech that “got the ball rolling” but didn’t actually directly instruct a person or crowd to commit a specific illegal act.
[1] - https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/07/incitement-ordinary-spe...
Its not if people hearing your words join in the disturbance. (There’s other ways it could, as well.) Again, the fact that a disturbance is under way does not make it impossible for someone to commit incitement with regard to that disturbance. Repeating the same false claim doesn’t make it any less false.
1. Language doesn't have to be illegal for it to break Twitter's TOS.
2. Language requires context. When Michael Corleone says "I don't want anything to happen to him while my mother's alive" everyone listening to those words understand exactly what they mean - that his brother's a few weeks away from ending up with a bullet in his head.
The context in this case has been weeks of crying from the rooftops about how the deep state is stealing the election from you, and that your boys should go to Capitol and do something about it. Meanwhile, your lawyer is shouting about how it's time for 'Trial by combat.'
In the context of a court of law, if we’re speaking about the actual limits of free speech in America, I think Trump’s speech does not meet the threshold.
So I’m not trying to make a political point, but I think there’s an interesting legal discussion to really understand that just because violence happens after a speech, or in this case concomitant to a speech, there’s still a very high bar - very direct language that has to be used for that person to be guilty of incitement in a court of law.
I completely agree it’s totally up to Twitter to decide to ban Trump from their platform. They likely don’t even have to give you a specific reason under their ToS. I wasn’t speaking about the Twitter ban in this case.
Lastly, I’d agree completely that context matters. Interestingly, the context of Giuliani’s “trial by combat” statement was discussing some hypothetical investigation that was supposed to happen over the next 10 days that they were going to “stake their reputation” on;
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1346847382768676864?s=20
Again, this is a kind of statement that politicians make all the time, and is not illegal.
I don’t think you can, but, so what?
> This is a ridiculous standard.
It’s basically (stated informally, sure) the legal standard.
The aim of propaganda is to elicit an emotional reaction. WaPo and other media did a great job at inciting violent reaction, riots that lasted for months, fed primarily by the media and amplified by facebook and Twitter.
Asking for an end to qualified immunity isn't indicting all police officers.
I find the ACAB movement unhelpful, to be clear.
In the US (pop 330M), law enforcement kills about 1000 people per year (about 34 people per 10M pop per year). [0]
In Honduras (pop 9.1M), law enforcement kills about 40 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In the Dominican Republic (pop 10.7M), law enforcement kills about 130 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In Brazil (pop 210M), law enforcement kills about 275 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In Jamaica (pop 2.9M), law enforcement kills about 470 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In Nicaragua (pop 6.2M), law enforcement kills about 530 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In El Salvador (pop 6.4M), law enforcement kills about 950 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In Venezuela (pop 29M), law enforcement kills about 1830 people per 10M pop per year [1]
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
Wikipedia's does not.[1]
Also from the info you provided, it seems like US police are only 20% less violent than Honduran police. This is despite Honduras having the 5th highest murder rate in the world - which presumably means Honduran police deal with violent criminals far more often than American police.[2] That's pretty wild!
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
No
That being said, somehow the Newark Police Department(in Newark, New Jersey's biggest city, and about 50 homicides per year) went all of 2020 without any of any officers firing a single shot (outside of training and firearm qualification contexts, I assume) [0].
[0] https://bronx.news12.com/newark-police-no-officer-fired-a-si...
Forgive me for believing that law enforcement protecting family businesses is 1000x more important than law enforcement protecting politicians.
EDIT: love the downvotes from people who believe torching family businesses, often immigrant ones, is cool! I'm telling you guys keep downvoting. You really look like the good guys.
Holding police accountable is something we should all get behind. Whatever it is you think the "other side" supports sounds like something you picked up from Breitbart. Get real man.
When they started destroying local businesses, I didn't support them. I posted once on my next door to please let's all remain peaceful and stop the destruction of local small businesses, and was met with immediate condemnations of being racist. I got so many hate messages, despite being brown myself, that I eventually left next door, out of fear of doxxing.
When BLM then went and tagged Pelosi and McConnell's homes, I cheered them on. I don't mind seeing people harass politicians. I just don't want them destroying private citizen's stuff, or killing them when they defend it.
And I don't read Breitbart. I read Mother Jones and the New Yorker, and sometimes I read Breitbart when left wing people get outraged by their articles.