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Incitement Is Not a Real Crime | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on February 5, 2021

The first reason is that the impeachment proceedings aren’t a criminal trial, so even conviction wouldn’t establish guilt the way an actual criminal court might. Contrary to what much of the public thinks, and what the media is happy to imply, impeachment is properly understood as strictly a political process that does nothing more than remove a person from office.

In practice, laws against incitement and defamation are very dangerous to basic human rights, and both place nonviolent people in legal jeopardy merely for the “crime” of expressing opinions. These laws are direct attacks on the right to free speech. In the case of Trump and “incitement,” he expressed an opinion about the election and encouraged people to “fight like hell” in a vague, nonspecific way. If this sort of thing is “criminal” then anyone who expresses an opinion that people should “resist” or “fight” against the regime—or even suggest that the regime is illegitimate or worthy of contempt—is likely to find himself on trial any time one of his social media “friends” decides to deface a government building or throw a rock at a cop. 

https://mises.org/wire/incitement-not-real-crime

Ryan McMaken

Former president Donald Trump has been impeached for “incitement to insurrection.” The House Democrats’ claim is that Trump made an inflammatory speech which—a week later—led to the Capitol riot of January 6.

The Senate is now considering whether or not to convict Trump of this “crime.”

I put “crime” in scare quotes for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is that the impeachment proceedings aren’t a criminal trial, so even conviction wouldn’t establish guilt the way an actual criminal court might. Contrary to what much of the public thinks, and what the media is happy to imply, impeachment is properly understood as strictly a political process that does nothing more than remove a person from office. 

Moreover, it’s already clear that if Trump were being tried in an actual criminal court, it is extremely unlikely a prosecutor could get a conviction. Trump’s alleged incitement doesn’t meet the legal requirements for such a charge as set out by the US Supreme Court back in 1969. An incitement conviction would require prosecutors to show there was an imminent threat of violence from the inflammatory remarks. Clearly, the Capitol riot, occurring a week later, was not “imminent,” and in a criminal case, it would be nearly impossible to prove this was directly connected to a political speech made days earlier.

The second reason “crime” needs to be in scare quotes is because incitement isn’t a real crime at all. It assumes that the person committing the “incitement” is simply passing down orders to blank-slate automatons who then turn around and do whatever their “leader” says.

In fact, the only people guilty of rioting are the rioters.

Rothbard spelled this out several times.

For instance, in an essay written for a small newspaper in the late 1960s, Rothbard explains the problem with claiming incitement is a real crime:

Suppose that Mr. A tells Mr. B: “Go out and shoot the mayor.” Suppose, then, that Mr. B, pondering this suggestion, decides it’s a darn good idea and goes out and shoots the mayor. Now obviously B is responsible for the shooting. But in what sense can A be held responsible? A did not do the shooting, and didn’t take part, we will assume, in any of the planning or executing of the act itself. The very fact that he made that suggestion cannot really mean that A should be held responsible. For does not B have free will? Is he not a free agent? And if he is, then B and B alone is responsible for the shooting.

If we attribute any responsibility at all to A, we have fallen into the trap of determinism. We are then assuming that B has no will of his own, that he is then only a tool in some way manipulated by A.

Now, if Person A participated in the planning of a riot or a murder, then Person A is guilty of conspiracy, not incitement. But Person A is not guilty of anything for have merely suggested to Person B that he shoot the mayor. Person B, after all, is responsible for his own actions.

Rothbard continues:

[I]f the will is free, then no man is determined by another; then just because somebody shouts “burn, baby, burn,” no one hearing this advice is thereby compelled or determined to go and carry the suggestion out. Anybody who does carry out the advice is responsible for his own actions, and solely responsible. Therefore, the “inciter” cannot be held in any way responsible. In the nature of man and morality, there is no such crime as “incitement to riot,” and therefore the very concept of such a “crime” should be stricken from the statute books.

Finally, Rothbard notes that incitement laws are also damaging because they are a direct attack on the natural right to free speech:

Cracking down on “incitement to riot,” then, is simply and purely cracking down on one’s natural and crucial right to freedom of speech. Speech is not a crime. And hence the injustice, not only of the crime of incitement, but also of such other “crimes” as “criminal sedition” (sharp criticism of the government), or “conspiracy to advocate overthrow of the government”—in other words, planning someday to exercise one’s basic and natural right to freedom of speech and advocacy.

A decade later, Rothbard emphasized the importance of rejecting the notion of incitement as a crime in his book For a New Liberty. Under the section titled “Freedom of Speech,” he writes:

What, for example, of “incitement to riot,” in which the speaker is held guilty of a crime for whipping up a mob, which then riots and commits various actions and crimes against person and property? In our view, “incitement” can only be considered a crime if we deny every man’s freedom of will and of choice, and assume that if tells and C: “You and him go ahead and riot!” that somehow and are then helplessly determined to proceed and commit the wrongful act. But the libertarian, who believes in freedom of the will, must insist that while it might be immoral or unfortunate for to advocate a riot, that this is strictly in the realm of advocacy and should not be subject to legal penalty.

Later, in his book The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard again makes very similar remarks:

Suppose that Green exhorts a crowd: “Go! Burn! Loot! Kill!” and the mob proceeds to do just that, with Green having nothing further to do with these criminal activities. Since every man is free to adopt or not adopt any course of action he wishes, we cannot say that in some way Green determined the members of the mob to their criminal activities; we cannot make him, because of his exhortation, at all responsible for their crimes. “Inciting to riot,” therefore, is a pure exercise of a man’s right to speak without being thereby implicated in crime. On the other hand, it is obvious that if Green happened to be involved in a plan or conspiracy with others to commit various crimes, and that then Green told them to proceed, he would then be just as implicated in the crimes as are the others—more so, if he were the mastermind who headed the criminal gang. This is a seemingly subtle distinction which in practice is clearcut—there is a world of difference between the head of a criminal gang and a soap-box orator during a riot; the former is not, properly, to be charged simply with “incitement.”

This problem is related to a similar problem: making noncrimes like slander (i.e., defamation) into prosecutable offenses. A “slanderer” can say all sorts of things. And, indeed, a respect for freedom of speech dictates that we allow him to do so. After all, the people who hear what he has to say remain completely free to come to their own conclusions about what to do with that information. Just because some person says “your sister is a whore,” doesn’t mean we are required to believe him or act on those words in any particular way. 

[Read More: “The Dangers of Defamation Laws” by Ryan McMaken]

In practice, laws against incitement and defamation are very dangerous to basic human rights, and both place nonviolent people in legal jeopardy merely for the “crime” of expressing opinions. These laws are direct attacks on the right to free speech. In the case of Trump and “incitement,” he expressed an opinion about the election and encouraged people to “fight like hell” in a vague, nonspecific way. If this sort of thing is “criminal” then anyone who expresses an opinion that people should “resist” or “fight” against the regime—or even suggest that the regime is illegitimate or worthy of contempt—is likely to find himself on trial any time one of his social media “friends” decides to deface a government building or throw a rock at a cop.  Author:

Contact Ryan McMaken

Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and The Austrian, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado and was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

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Democrats and Republicans Agree: It’s Time to Throw White People In Gulags, by Eric Striker – The Unz Review

Posted by M. C. on March 2, 2020

The truth is, as Tucker Carlson has remarked, that “white terrorism” alarmism is nothing more than a politically motivated hoax comparable to the “8 intelligence agencies” claiming Russia stole the 2016 election for Donald Trump.

In it, the FBI admits to playing a prominent role in influencing social media companies in their decisions on who can and cannot use their platforms: 

They assure the public that they are protecting First Amendment speech and privacy, but do not detail how. They expect us to take their word for it.

https://www.unz.com/estriker/democrats-and-republicans-agree-its-time-to-throw-white-people-in-gulags/

Yesterday, the FBI made a big show of arresting multiple alleged members of a “white supremacist” group they have designated as a national security threat equivalent to ISIS.

Federal prosecutors have charged black metal fan Cameron Denton, the Nazi Al-Baghdadi, with telling the police to send SWAT teams after a journalist and a politician as a childish prank.

Four other cohorts in “AtomWaffen,” mostly young Chan trolls, were also taken into custody in the multi-state terror raid over mailing the Israeli lobbyists at the Anti-Defamation League edgy fliers that say “Our Patience Has Its Limits.”

House Representative Karen Bass has complained loudly about the FBI’s lack of transparency regarding arrest statistics related to “white supremacist terrorism.” Her implication is that the career girls, left-wing crusaders and Zionist lickspittles in federaI law enforcement – some who have proudly accepted awards from the Anti-Defamation League for railroading James Fields – are “protecting” these supposed dangerous white supremacists.

The truth is, as Tucker Carlson has remarked, that “white terrorism” alarmism is nothing more than a politically motivated hoax comparable to the “8 intelligence agencies” claiming Russia stole the 2016 election for Donald Trump.

Warren Buffett once famously said “if a cop follows you for 500 miles, you’re getting a ticket,” and the string of marijuana arrests, coercing teenagers and the mentally ill into bogus pleas, prosecuting people for their answers to confusing questions on federal forms, and various other pedestrian crimes don’t begin to justify the amount of federal resources being flushed down the toilet in surveilling and intimidating those the SPLC and ADL classify as “white nationalists.” The FBI is hiding its statistics because they know what they’re doing is wrong.

Since 2016, no member of a (white) nationalist organization has committed an act of terrorism with the possible exception of James Fields, who was loosely affiliated with Vanguard America and who would’ve beaten his trumped up political charges in any other time period.

Republicans Are No Ally

There is a House Bill on the docket intended to heed the call of the FBI Agents Association for a “domestic terrorism” law.

The Domestic Terrorism Penalties Act of 2019, introduced by Texas Republican Randy K. Weber with the support of 14 other GOP lawmakers and one Democrat, is perhaps the most dangerous piece of legislation drafted in decades.

This bill seeks to take regular crimes and add a “terrorism” enhancement if the suspect has dissident political views or belongs to an organization advocating for them. According to the language of the bill, domestic terrorism is defined as: “Whoever, with respect to a circumstance described in subsection (b), and with the intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence, affect, or retaliate against the policy or conduct of a government.”

The crime of kidnapping, which the state tried to slap on Augustus Invictus and failed, would potentially get the accused life in prison.

The crime of Assault becomes “domestic terrorist assault,” and gets you 30 years in the big house.

Political vandalism? 25 years. That’s not a typo.

In practice, if this bill were made into law, a member of the Proud Boys – who the FBI would like to classify as a domestic terror group – could get 30 years in prison for punching an anarchist heckler in self-defense at a political rally.

Paint a political slogan on a piece of property? 25 years. For perspective, the average convicted rapist serves 5.4 years. The typical child molester serves 3 years. The median time done by a 1st degree murderer? 17.3 years.

The law also has a “conspiracy” clause. If you “conspire” to commit an assault, which according to ADL SHIELD recipient Thomas T. Cullen’s legal reasoning can be uncharitably defined as members of the Rise Above Movement texting each other “Smash the Reds,” you are punished as harshly as if you had committed the act.

Institutions associated with conservatism, like the Marine Corps, are also implementing draconian rules and regulations. 44% of all military recruits hail from the South, but Commandant General David Berger has recently announced a plan to thoroughly eradicate all symbols of Southern and Confederate heritage from bases.

At CPAC, the convention of the supposed conservative “grassroots,” early supporters of President Trump like Alex Jones and Gavin McInnes have been “canceled” by the conservative movement and forcefully bounced, while left-wing extremists like Jared Holt have been given press credentials.

In “respectable” conservative media, not a single person has made a peep in defense of the Constitution.

The only response to the elite agenda to punish white men for their political beliefs has come from Kyle Shideler, the Director and Senior Analyst for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy.

In The Federalist, a pseudo right-wing publication famous for hiding its donors, Shideler responds to the New Jersey Department of Homeland Security’s decision to elevate “white supremacy” as a “high-level threat” in response to Black Israelites killing Jews not with civil liberties concerns, but ideological ones.

According to Shideler, the problem is that groups the federal government defers to for classifying groups as terrorist have a bias against “conservatives” and “libertarians.”

Shideler would like catches in any new legislation that would clearly protect the rights of anti-Muslim neo-cons like himself from terrorism prosecutions, by clearly designating “Islamists, Antifa, national socialists, black nationalists, or white supremacist groups” as groups who are not “committed” to the US Constitution, and thus fair game for persecution.

This appears to be inspired by Germany’s law for the “protection of the Constitution,” which gives the BRD’s intelligence services a free hand to censor and arrest critics of the government. The milquetoast conservative challengers to Angela Merkel’s highly unpopular immigration policy, Alternativ Fur Deutschland, have been subjected to extensive surveillance and pressure from the secret police thanks to this law.

Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) Designations

An article in the New York Times criticizes the strategy of using Congress to visibly legislate our rights away due to the potential for public scrutiny and backlash.

Instead, they recommend an idea previously proposed by General John Rutherford Allen, which is to create a list of foreign nationalist groups and then prosecute Americans in contact with them (which is inevitable thanks to the global nature of the internet) as enablers of terrorism. This gives the government extensive powers to suspend your constitutional rights.

To understand the ramifications of a Foreign Terrorist Organization classification, when Trump issued an empty threat to add Mexican drug cartels to the list of FTOs, the media and Mexican government understood it as a warning that he was going to order drone strikes and send troops to kill drug lords.

They have good reason to believe this. A few months after Trump added the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as an FTO, he greenlit the assassination of Iranian state official General Qassem Soleimani, who led the group.

Representative Max Rose has already drafted suggestions for groups to add to the list: Azov Battalion, an anti-Russian militia that receives weapons from the US and Ukrainian governments, National Action, a defunct British based group that was primarily internet based, and the Nordic Resistance Movement, an above ground Scandinavian protest group that is legally permitted in Sweden.

These groups are wildly disparate and, with the exception of Azov, are not waging armed struggle. The choice of adding an organization like NRM appears to be motivated by the fact that they have many American fans and supporters who Rose would like to see droned or tortured in Guantanamo Bay. In the case of National Action, which was founded on the internet forum Iron March, they also had extensive online ties with people from all over the world

State Department designations are completely arbitrary and decided by the president without oversight. The executive office could for example find that the Scandza Forum, a gathering of nationalist intellectuals from around the world, is a terrorist organization without giving a reason, and then subject everyone who sends money or attends the conference as material supporters of terrorism.

The Real Motive

On February 26th, the FBI gave a presentation to the House of Representatives detailing what they are doing to fight “anti-Semitism.”

In it, the FBI admits to playing a prominent role in influencing social media companies in their decisions on who can and cannot use their platforms:

It is also important to highlight our outreach to social media and technology companies. FBI interactions with social media companies center on education and capacity building, in line with our goal to assist companies in developing or enhancing their terms of service to address violent extremist exploitation of their platforms.

They assure the public that they are protecting First Amendment speech and privacy, but do not detail how. They expect us to take their word for it.

It is unknown how significant the role of the government is in the mass censorship of dissidents from social media, but it isn’t relevant. As Mike Enoch has said, the distinction between private and public is irrelevant, it is a “system.”

Amazon, the book vending monopoly, has given Jewish organizations the right to engage in cyber book burnings without much in the way of government pressure. Most of Counter-Currents’ catalogue has been eliminated, as has the written work of various journalists, scholars and historians like Colin Flaherty, Kevin MacDonald, Jared Taylor, and multiple Holocaust revisionists. Even materials of primary historical value, like collections of speeches by Third Reich officials, are in their iron sights. This is not a war on terrorism, it’s a war on ideas.

In a time where government officials across the country are emptying their jail cells and “law and order” Republican Donald Trump has implemented “criminal justice reform,” (which he admitted is highly unpopular) public safety is clearly not why our oligarchs are having this conversation.

A better explanation can be found in the work of University of Connecticut academic Peter Turchin.

According to Turchin, who combines historicism with mathematics to draw forecasts of political stability, the United States and other liberal Western nations are due for “popular mobilizations,” potentially violent, starting in the 2020s. Turchin famously predicted the rise of the 2016 Trump populist movement and Brexit.

The thesis of Turchin’s book, Ages of Discord, states that declining living standards, mass immigration, the corruption of liberal institutions and polarization in general have primed the United States and other liberal plutocracies for collapse.

The fall may be bloody, or it could be a less dramatic Soviet-style downfall, but it’s happening, says Turchin. He has lectured to Jews and members of the managerial elite in Washington and New York, who in turn have debated his work in the publications they read. A handful of billionaires, thanks to the internet, have been exposed as the architects of our nation’s decline. They know they have lost the public’s consent to rule and are preparing for war against their subjects as a list ditch effort to cling to power.

Telling the truth has never been cheap. Dissidents should mentally prepare to withstand the erratic spasms of a monster in its death throes. The coming years are bound to be trying times for those who refuse to submit to the doctrines and dogmas of an immoral and oppressive system.

 

 

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Koch & Soros Unite To CENSOR The Internet

Posted by M. C. on August 24, 2019

https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/koch-soros-unite-to-censor-the-internet_08212019

Mac Slavo

Establishment left-wing and establishment conservative billionaires are teaming up to censor the Internet.  It looks like elitists on both sides of the political aisle are trying to make sure you only get the information they want you to have.

Organizations established by left-winger George Soros and neo-conservative Charles Koch have been working together on a key priority of globalist neoliberals and neoconservatives: censorship of the Internet, according to Breitbart News. Censorship is necessary for tyranny so it makes sense that those who need the government to enslave humanity would be working together to achieve the means to an end.

Last year, the Charles Koch Institute pledged its support for the “After Charlottesville Project,” an initiative organized by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) aimed at combating “online extremism.”

Sponsors of the initiative include Comcast, NBC Universal, the Kresge Foundation, and the George Soros Charitable Foundation.

Other groups involved in the project include a host of Soros-funded organizations, including “Hope not Hate,” the British equivalent of the far-left SPLC, and the pro-immigration National Immigration Forum.

The former group, Hope not Hate, has a reputation for far-left extremism. Liberal anti-extremism campaigner Maajid Nawaz accused them of “book burning” after it announced a campaign to get allegedly “racist” books banned by major retailers. It was also forced to retract a smear against a Jewish pro-Israel activist last year.-Breitbart News

The Charles Koch Institute, once seen as a conservative nemesis of the left, has now aligned itself with this group of left-wing, pro-censorship, anti-Trump agitators. When it comes to censoring the Internet, both the progressive and “conservative” establishment appear to be converging on a common position.

The Charles Koch Institute now also appears committed to advancing Internet censorship and aligning with totalitarianism and slavery over freedom and libertarian principles. Koch is now for  “content moderation,” as they call it. Sarah Ruger, the Institute’s director of “free expression initiatives” has praised Airbnb for canceling the reservations of far-right activists, and has called for “online hate” to be treated like a “virus.”

As always, there’s an elephant in the room — what counts as “online hate?” Is it questioning the official narrative? Is it condemning authoritarians who harm others? Is it siding with morality even though it contradicts the existence of government?  What exactly is “online hate” and who gets to decide if you’re hateful?

 

Author: Mac Slavo
Views: Read by 728 people
Date: August 21st, 2019
Website: www.SHTFplan.com

Copyright Information: Copyright SHTFplan and Mac Slavo. This content may be freely reproduced in full or in part in digital form with full attribution to the author and a link to http://www.shtfplan.com. Please contact us for permission to reproduce this content in other media formats.

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Israel Lobby Rebuts Omar’s Claims About Its Immense Influence By Exerting Its Immense Influence – Caitlin Johnstone

Posted by M. C. on March 6, 2019

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/03/05/israel-lobby-refutes-omars-claims-about-its-immense-influence-by-exerting-its-immense-influence/

In response to criticisms made by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar that US political leaders have too much allegiance to Israel and its lobbying groups, House Democrats have put forward an entire House resolution in accordance with demands made by AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League.

“The backlash [over Omar’s comments] continued on Monday, as the Anti-Defamation League wrote a letter to Pelosi calling for a House resolution to specifically reject what the organization calls Omar’s ‘latest slur,’” Politico reports. “‘We urge you and your colleagues to send the unambiguous message that the United States Congress is no place for hate,’ the group’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, wrote in a letter.”

“The charge of dual loyalty not only raises the ominous specter of classic anti-Semitism, but it is also deeply insulting to the millions upon millions of patriotic Americans, Jewish and non-Jewish, who stand by our democratic ally, Israel,” tweeted the Israel lobbying group AIPAC on Friday in response to Omar’s comments.

“I hope @AIPAC isn’t too angry that it took Democratic House leaders almost 48 whole hours to do what they’re told to condemn their own member and will instead be understanding that it was a weekend and that’s what caused the delay,” snarked journalist Glenn Greenwald in response to the news of the House resolution.

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Berkeley scientists developing artificial intelligence tool to combat ‘hate speech’ on social media

Posted by M. C. on December 17, 2018

Berkeley developing a “hate index” algorithm that could censor and perhaps ruin your reputation.

Getting a warm fuzzy? Me neither.

BERKELEY! They ARE the haters.

Berkeley scientists developing artificial intelligence tool to combat ‘hate speech’ on social media

DANIEL PAYNE – ASSISTANT EDITOR

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, are developing a tool that uses artificial intelligence to identify “hate speech” on social media, a program that researchers hope will out-perform human beings in identifying bigoted comments on Twitter, Reddit and other online platforms.

Scientists at Berkeley’s D-Lab “are working in cooperation with the [Anti-Defamation League] on a ‘scalable detection’ system—the Online Hate Index (OHI)—to identify hate speech,” the Cal Alumni Association reports

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safe space

 

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Google’s Secret Speech Police | The Daily Caller

Posted by M. C. on January 22, 2018

Just accept it sheeple, it is for your own good. Google smart, you dumb.

http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/19/google-youtube-censorship-demonetize-hate-speech/

More than 100 nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and government agencies around the world help police YouTube for extremist content, ranging from so-called hate speech to terrorist recruiting videos.

All of them have confidentiality agreements barring Google, YouTube’s parent company, from revealing their participation to the public, a Google representative told The Daily Caller on Thursday. Read the rest of this entry »

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