How can we know the difference between speech that insights real violence and mere hurtful language? I fully admit I lost the thread on what any of this is about years ago, and that's why I only have questions now. I don't really expect that to change either, but maybe one day I'll learn enough to start asking the right questions at least.

Case by case. Generally, if they commit to no violence then they should be supported, even protected by police. Uncomfortable conversations should be allowed to happen.

For speech to be illegal, the legal standard is that it needs to incite specific lawless action and be likely to succeed.

For instance, Indiana locked up an anti-war protestor:

>The case involved an antiwar protest on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington. Between 100 and 150 protesters were in the streets. The sheriff and his deputies then proceeded to clear the streets of the protestors. As the sheriff was passing Gregory Hess, one of the members of the crowd, Hess uttered, "We'll take the fucking street later" or "We'll take the fucking street again." Hess was convicted in Indiana state court of disorderly conduct.

The Supreme Court reversed Hess's conviction because Hess' statement, at worst, "amounted to nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time."

In addition, Hess' speech was not directed at any particular person or group. As a result, "it cannot be said that he was advocating, in the normal sense, any action."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hess_v._Indiana

In Supreme Court terms, 1973 is eons ago - there has been a consistent and very fruitful effort to change its thinking on a range of subjects since then, and as a result, I no longer really understand much of their previous rulings as having much relevance today.

You asked about drawing a line between speech and violence, not whether the supreme court's ruling is legally relevant today. The only relevant question is whether the argument the OP described clarifies your confusion on where and how to draw that line, ethically, not legally.

Ethically speaking, I think there are all sorts of things that just shouldn't be said, regardless of legality. I'm not sure if my personal sense of ethics is relevant though?

Firstly, "things that shouldn't be said" include matters of etiquette and not just ethics, so just be clear about the line between being a good/ethical person vs. being a polite person.

Secondly, your personal ethics are absolutely relevant because ethics advances by persuasion in rational debate. Everyone's views on such matters are relevant, if not persuasive.

Well, personally, if I attended or worked at MIT, I would not want Nazis on campus and would accept banning them.

Great, you're free to not want them, but everyone has to justify their actions, so an action like banning a group still requires justification. If that justification is sound and based on accepted ethical principles, it should arguably become an ethical rule. I personally haven't seen an argument that satisfies the requirements.

I don't think I've ever met a human who was incapable of justifying their actions.

They're all capable of attempting to justify their actions, but rarely is that justification sound. "Justification" here means a deductive argument from principles, sort of like what you'd find in a court of law based on except based on ethical rather than legal principles.

Not just inciting violence, but a credible and immediate incitement to violence. "Hurtful" describes a feeling felt by the listener. Would people have felt hurt by someone opposing racial preferences in admissions [1]? Maybe: their feelings are their own, and I'm not going to tell someone their feelings are wrong. But it's unambiguously not a credible and specific incitement to violence. The questions to ask are: is the speech calling for an immediate act of violence [2]? And is the speech calling for violence against a specific identifiable person or group?

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/us/dorian-abbot-mit.html

2. Sometimes people will try to argue for an indirect threat of violence. E.g. that opposing trans men in female sports amounts to a call of violence because it reduces respect for trans people, which in turn increases likelihood of violence perpetrated against them. But this is a very indirect relationship. As a general rule of thumb, if someone is making a claim that some speech is probabilistically increasing violence, it's not a incitement to violence.

Are there examples of such speech, incitement to violence, that you see as appropriately prosecuted?

On a side note, since it seems to be the question of our era, what do you think the appropriate sports league for trans men would look like?

I don't know of any off the top of my head, but you can dig into the case history: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action

What I think is going to inevitably happen in sports is that the gender segregated (but not sex segregated) women's leagues will become dominated by trans women, and cis women will leave and form their own female-only league.

Another alternative is for women to refuse to participate in such competitions en masse, or to threaten to. Basically taking strike action against unfair conditions.

It came close to this in a British cycling race back in March: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/mar/30/trans-cyclist-...

"The UCI's decision came amid a growing backlash from within the sport, with the Guardian understanding that a number of female riders were talking about boycotting the event in Derby because they felt that Bridges, who was on the Great Britain Academy programme as a male rider until being dropped in 2020, had an unfair advantage."

> Are there examples of such speech, incitement to violence, that you see as appropriately prosecuted?

Yes, but Americans often don’t like them very much. In Germany, we routinely punish people for wanting to forcibly overthrow our government.

> How can we know the difference between speech that incites real violence and mere hurtful language

Easy. Speech that is hurtful aims at portraying someone as lesser compared to other people, speech that incites actual violence tells you to do something about it.

Me disagreeing with gay marriage (I would never, but let’s entertain that notion) is very different from me saying we need to forcibly imprison homosexuals as criminals.