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Contrary to what a naïve reading of the First Amendment might suggest, the federal government has never been especially keen on respecting the right to free speech.

In real life, people can be found guilty of conspiring with people with whom they have never been in the same room, or with whom the “conspirator” expressed any actual violent intent.

https://mises.org/podcasts/censorship-and-official-lies-end-truth-america/seditious-conspiracy-fake-crime-and-danger-free-speech

Ryan McMaken

A presentation from “Censorship and Official Lies: The End of Truth in America?” This event was co-hosted by the Mises Institute and the Ron Paul Institute, and recorded in Lake Jackson, Texas, on April 13, 2024.

Full Written Text (Audio link is above): 

Over the past three years, the word “sedition” has again become popular among regime agents and their friends in the media. It’s certainly not the first time the word has enjoyed a renaissance. It’s frequently employed whenever the ruling class wishes us to become hysterical about various real and imagined enemies, both domestic and foreign.

This time, the regime’s paranoia about sedition was prompted by the Capitol Riot in January 2021, when we were told that Trump supporters nearly carried out a coup d’etat. Since then, regime operatives have frequently referred to Trump supporters and Trump himself as seditionists.

Yet, out of the approximately 850 people charged with crimes of various sorts, only a very small number have been charged with anything even close to treason or insurrection. Rather, most charges are various forms of infractions related to vandalism and trespassing. However, because these charges have to do with the regime’s sacred office buildings, the penalties are outrageously harsh compared to similar acts, were they to occur on private property.

For a small handful of defendants, however—the ones the Justice Department has most enthusiastically targeted—the federal prosecutors have brought the charge of “seditious conspiracy.”

Why not charges of treason, rebellion or insurrection? Well, if federal prosecutors though they could get a conviction for actual rebellion, insurrection, or treason for the January 6 riot, they would have brought those charges.

But they didn’t.

What they did do is turn to seditious conspiracy, which is far easier to prove in court, and is—like all conspiracy charges in American law—essentially a thought crime and a speech crime. Seditious conspiracy is not actual sedition, or rebellion, or insurrection. That is, there is no overt act necessary, nor is it necessary that the alleged sedition or insurrection actually take place or be executed. What really matters is that two or more people said things that prosecutors could later claim were part of a conspiracy to do something that may or may not have ever happened.

Moreover, the regime now routinely employs other types of conspiracy charges for prosecuting Americans supposedly guilty for various crimes against the state. At the moment, for example, Donald Trump faces three different conspiracy charges for saying that the 2020 election was illegitimate.

As we shall see, purported crimes like seditious conspiracy are crimes based largely on things people have said. They are a type of speech crime.  

Now, some may ask how that is even possible if there is freedom of speech in this country.

Contrary to what a naïve reading of the First Amendment might suggest, the federal government has never been especially keen on respecting the right to free speech.

See the rest here

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