https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
> n 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".
I would argue that the elements of Trump's speech on Jan 6th satisfy all the elements in the lawless action test:
- Trump gave a speech on January 6th, the same date as the insurrection.
- In this speech he directed his supporters to march on the capitol with his support.
- His supporters did actually march on the Capitol, then proceeded to violently occupy it.
Regardless of Trump's inner mind, it is clear that his followers believed that his intent was for them to march on the Capitol while the election was being certified and forcefully disrupt those proceedings.
It seems to me this is a very strong case that Trump's speech did in fact incite the violence that occurred that day, and the very short amount of time separating those events make it easy to argue that one was the immediate cause of the other.
https://fortune.com/2021/01/08/parler-violence-trump-2020-el...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/05/parler-...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/01/06/trump-riot-tw...
Based on these articles, it sure sounds to me like Parler users are openly calling for immediate violence.
Very few people seem to know the context of that ruling. That line of thought was used to justify criminal punishment of two socialists from Philadelphia for hindering the war effort in 1917. Their crime: they distributed anti-war leaflets. Elizabeth Baer spent 3 months in prison, Charles T. Schenck 10 years.
Goes to show the extent "yelling fire in a theater" can be stretched, and has been stretched from the very first case.
Now the government doesn’t even need to get their hands dirty to censor the internet, private companies enforce it themselves with with impunity.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocal...
For what it’s worth, I don’t think what Trump said was incitement, or even close to it. Irresponsible? Yes. Incitement? No.
No reasonable person could take that as incitement. So the only logical answer is anti competitive behaviour, or political manipulation/interference.
There’s no way you believe he was doing anything else. You’re basically pushing for the denialability part by pretending to be innocently surprised.
No.
The defendants will unquestionably be using the "Trump told us to" defense.
Trump violated the terms more often and worse than regular people who were removed from the platform. Thousands of regular people kicked off for violating the terms and it's Donald Fucking Trump and Parler that gets folks in an uproar? Over things that happen all the time? By long standing service agreements? What?
However, I think both his case and yours is undermined by the very, very strong circumstantial evidence that after his lawyer, Giuliani, called for "trial by combat" and he said that he would personally lead the crowd in a march on the Capitol on Jan 6th the violent insurrection actually took place is a very strong argument that he incited the uprising.
Furthermore, the fact that even as these Trump supporters were occupying the Capitol he said that he "loves them", that also undermines any argument that he did not incite sedition.
Does the crowd storming the Capitol chanting "hang Mike Pence" count? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW718KRYDtU
It has been three days.
Have you already forgotten?
I would assume that calls for the violent overthrow of the US government in order to overturn an election at the very least should be considered as equally dangerous as screaming fire in a crowded theater.