Violence / Threats
Professors fearing for their lives as they receive death threats. Shattered storefronts in Washington, D.C., blocks away from a presidential inauguration. Bedlam in Charlottesville, Virginia, as a self-avowed neo-Nazi drives into a crowd of counterprotesters. The link between violence or threats thereof and Free Speech only seems to be getting closer in the United States, and it seems to defy all reason that these incidents continue to occur when the highest court has historically held that speech that incites or directly leads to violence can be restricted.
Reflection Questions
- Do the last 100 years of Supreme Court jurisprudence provide adequate guidance in distinguishing between annoying speech and dangerous speech?
- Is it easy to imagine circumstances in which one person’s assertion of principle or belief is perceived by another as a threat?
- Can words do harm, or only credible threats of physical violence?
Context
Free Speech or Violence?: How White Supremacists Target the First Amendment
HuffPost- Is Violent Speech a Right?
The American Prospect (Summer 1995)