The far-right influencer, who once sat down for dinner with Donald Trump, made the comments at an “America First” rally.

The far-right influencer, who once sat down for dinner with Donald Trump, made the comments at an “America First” rally.

  • Arotrios@kbin.social
    0·
    1 year ago

    The GOP is now the official party of Nazi pedophiles. Even with broad leeway given by the 1st Amendment, this appears to qualify as criminal hate speech:

    Under current First Amendment jurisprudence, hate speech can only be criminalized when it directly incites imminent criminal activity or consists of specific threats of violence targeted against a person or group.

    Inciting an imminent war against Jews is a specific threat of violence.

    • admiralteal@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      Under all US law I’m aware of, hate speech can only be criminal as it relates to another criminal offense. There is no crime of hate speech, there is some other crime that is rendered more heinous by the hate speech.

      So he would need to be charged for incitement first and then the hate speech would make that charge more extreme.

      So for this kind of speech to be criminal, it has to be incitement even without the hate speech element. That is a complex legal test, but usually, you have to be fairly specific to meet it. That is, you have to be inciting a specific crime and a “holy war” is anything but specific.

      So no, what he’s saying is awful but it’s definitely protected speech.

      Now if he told people at one of his rallies to then and there take up arms and march to the nearest synagogue, that would qualify as incitement and if local statutes applied would definitely have those hate crime add-ons put to it, which would render the crime more heinous and do things like harshen the sentencing guidelines for a conviction. Because that’s how hate crime rules actually work in the US.

      Actually knowing how hate crime laws work in the US really deflates a major conservative talking point about thought crimes. Because there is no thought crime statute. There is only a criminal offense and the hate speech statutes change its application but not the fundamental and underlying crime