Violence is never justified for any reason. There is no exception to this rule. Sometimes you must use force to protect life or avoid serious harm as the lesser of two evils. But that is not at all the same thing. And some people don't realize, threatening words, sometimes just hurtful words, are their own form of violence. Because they do harm. Often a lot more than action. Because they are easier to get away with and we often don't see the harm they did. Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said that “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” He meant causing a clear and present danger, or any danger that was open and obvious at that moment. Or, as I once heard, saying of your school "Burn it down!" Because just saying you wouldn't mind if you're school was burned down just expresses an opinion, and has never been illegal. A lawyer friend of mine told me a while back though, it goes much further than just causing a stampede that leads to injury in a theater. It could be yelling "I have a bomb!" on an airplane. That wouldn't cause a dangerous stampede. Because people would have no place to go. But people would feel in great danger. Those are called fighting words, after Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 1942. Because to start a fight, you don't have to throw the first punch to have started it. But fighting words don't have to just involve a fist fight to not be protected speech. And my law dictionary says ultimately, and in more serious cases, it doesn't even matter if your threatening words were just a joke even. For example, if you walked into a bank laughing, and told the teller give me all your money or I'll shoot you. It wouldn't matter if it was a joke. It wouldn't matter even if she actually gave you the money. Since it was a joke, you would just give it back anyways obviously. But if you made her fear for her life because of your reckless joke, that is all the authorities would need. Need to charge you with armed robbery that is. Because the judge would later explain to you, that was not funny. It never is, to do something like that. And after 9-11, two young men thought it would be funny to sit in their seats on an airplane and pretend that they were discussing hijacking the plane and blowing it up. They were laughing, and pretending they didn't want to be overheard. But it was after 9-11 and people took it very seriously. So they still got arrested and charged with a crime when the plane landed. There are limits though to the idea of what words cause a breach of peace. In Texas v. Johnson, 1989, the state of Texas said that flag burning should be illegal. Because this is Texas, and when we see people do that, we feel like beating them up. The Supreme Court said that really is not the same thing as causing a breach of peace. Because if people want to beat you up for that reason, they're the ones with the problem. Also, where I live, a while back, a hate group wanted to give a speech on a college campus. But a peaceful one. The students said if might lead to violence. But a court disagreed. So a bunch of students showed up, and started causing trouble, some violence in other words. I never supported hate speech. But I have always supported free speech. Because showing up and causing violence to prove your point doesn't prove your point. It actually discredits you. Because like Justice Harlan said in Cohen v. California, 1971, writing for the majority, “The argument amounts to little more than the self-defeating proposition that to avoid physical censorship of one who has not sought to provoke such a response by a hypothetical coterie of the violent and lawless, the States may more appropriately effectuate that censorship themselves.”
Counties that hosted Trump rallies in 2016 saw a 226% increase in hate crimes over comparable counties that did not host such a rally in subsequent months. Words matter. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/22/trumps-rhetoric-does-inspire-more-hate-crimes/
Despite years of falling crime rates, there's been an 84% increase in anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes in two years due to Reich-Wing scapegoating and demagoguery. With their constant demonizing of Trans folk, gender-identity based hate crimes are up 78%. Hate Crimes Are Up, Especially Against LGBTQ People. Advocates Blame the GOP.
