Do you realize that anyone can claim “incitement” of violence since it’s completely subjective and therefore probably very dangerous thing to be using as a way to determine “guilt”.
In fact I don’t like the tone of your comment and I feel it might be setting some people off.
How about we keep the responsibility with the people actually physically doing the crime. People make their own decisions.
Your logic would dictate the person doing the crime takes no responsibility since they were incited into doing it.
> Do you realize that anyone can claim “incitement” of violence since it’s completely subjective and therefore probably very dangerous thing to be using as a way to determine “guilt”.
That's false. The standards for incitement according to the SCOTUS are defined in the Brandenburg Test and are _famously_ narrow. They include a subjective test of the speaker's intent, and an objective test.
- Subjective: Speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action" (this means, was the speaker intending to produce imminent lawless action).
- Objective: Speech is "likely to incite or produce such action"
In an incitement case here, the objective test is absolutely easy. The crowd broken into the halls of the Capitol, violently disrupted a session of Congress, and killed a police officer. Any lawyer would have no problem arguing in court that the speech that morning was "likely" to incite imminent lawless action.
The harder test is the subjective test of the speaker's intent. Here, we need to show that Donald Trump intended to incite imminent lawless action. That's typically a very hard test, because we can't read minds. But we can use circumstantial† evidence to piece together enough of a picture to allow a jury to convict.
† circumstantial evidence is used all the time to determine intent for crimes in courtrooms all over the United States, and is completely valid evidence. Don't raise "but that's circumstantial!" as a defense, because circumstantial evidence is completely valid.
You didn't disprove anything I said. I said nothing about making a legal case in court and proving. Notice the word claim? Additionally, just because the law is in court doesn't mean it's good or not dangerous. You still NEED a subjective proof to determine guilt. This means the law is inherently flawed because it will be used in a biased way and risks being used to attack certain individuals.
I don't care even a little bit about how you feel of the "tone" of my comment. You're being extremely disingenuous, and using terms like "guilt" and "crime" which do not apply to the current situation. The current situation is: Twitter as a corporate entity believes that Trump's tweets directly led to the events at the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election and directly incited violence. The vast majority of Americans agree, but Jack Dorsey's opinion is the only one that matters.
By your logic a mafia don who says "it'd be a lot better if [enemy boss] wasn't alive" resulting in an assassination didn't incite violence, and the responsibility should lie with the "people who did the crime" because people make their own decisions. This is a colossally stupid take.
Your post is full of straw man arguments and I'm not sure if you're being intentionally disingenuous, or just have a very poor understanding of political events in general and Twitter's ability to moderate their own platform. Come back if you want to have a real discussion.
Wooooosh the point of me saying that was that ANYONE can label your speech as incitement bud. Again, your tone sounds pretty violent to me and I think you need to be removed from this platform. See how stupid and ridiculous this logic is?
Twitter is being prodded by government officials and working in monopolistic collusion your silly claim about it being a private entity is completely moot. If this is the road you want the US to do down you reap what you sow.
No one acted violently after reading your comment, but people did act violently after reading Trump’s Twitter. If you have an example of someone’s Twitter being taken down for inciting violence were no violence occurred, let us know!
It happens all the time. Possibly a majority of all twitter bans over the last 5 years fit that description. Say racist thing like "Muslims should stay out of the USA" get banned by twitter for "inciting violence against a protected group".
In a way, all political advocacy consists of incitement of violence. Any law not ultimately backed up by the credible threat of violence is just a suggestion. If you don't pay your taxes for long enough, eventually federal agents with guns will come to take you to jail, and if you resist, they'll kill you.
In fact I don’t like the tone of your comment and I feel it might be setting some people off.
How about we keep the responsibility with the people actually physically doing the crime. People make their own decisions.
Your logic would dictate the person doing the crime takes no responsibility since they were incited into doing it.