Comment by csdreamer7 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by csdreamer7 | Hacker News Reader

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> Can you openly call for the murder of <enter ethnic group> in the US under the protection of the first amendment ?

You can not. Inciting violence and calls for criminal action is a well establish limit of the First Amendment, but that is not what they are doing from what I gathered in this thread.

From the poster a few levels above:

> In the case of Israel, the Middle-Eastern unit were literally showing videos demanding further uprising against Israel across the region directly from Hamas. Also the entire point of Al Jazeera was for Qatar to provide political influence through media, not as an unbiased news agency.

Showing a video of an enemy of the country calling for genocide of that country is a newsworthy event that is part of journalistic practice. The American media showed Osama Bin Laden videos calling for the death of Americans, to report on him.

Please learn the difference of showing a video of a terrorist calling for genocide to report on him vs the news anchor/owner of that news company agreeing with that terrorist and joining that call for genocide.

America has other limits on free speech. Foreign control of media for example which I am not familiar with.

> You can not. Inciting violence and calls for criminal action is a well establish limit of the First Amendment, but that is not what they are doing from what I gathered in this thread.

Brandenburg v Ohio (the current standard for what constitutes incitement) literally says your free speech rights run up to and include advocacy for violent overthrow of the government. The limitation it establishes is "incitement to imminent lawless action", with heavy emphasis on "imminent".

This is the correct answer. I think people are approaching this emotionally. The problem is if you start infringing on it there simply is no end.

kind of makes sense for americans. I feel like "over throw the government" is a core part of american history and culture.

I'd hope this only applies to the government though and not towards groups of people or ethnicity.

Learned something new. Thank you.

There is still a question of whether that is the correct limit. Many people think it is. Obviously Israel disagrees. We can’t use the First Amendment and SCOTUS precedent to uncover aughts, especially to another country.

However, if you agree that Brandenburg set the correct limit, you can conditionalize aid on it. It’s just not a first principles approach.

> You can not. Inciting violence and calls for criminal action is a well establish limit of the First Amendment, but that is not what they are doing from what I gathered in this thread.

Saying "ethnic group XXX should be exterminated" does not meet the standard for incitement. I don't know why the debate has become about US law but I'm even more puzzled about so many people confidently stating, wrongly, that the US bans hate speech. The US has frequently been criticized by Europeans for this exact reason -- in their view, the US stance permitting hate speech is irresponsible.

>You can not

There is more to it than that. The Supreme Court has held that “advocacy of the use of force” is only unprotected when it is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and is “likely to incite or produce such action.”

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