It is absurd to think that anonymously posting "I'm gonna merk sheriff Chitwood" would count as breaking a law but openly calling for assassinations in immediate response to another assassination wouldn't.
When taking PoliSci 101 in college, my professor explained the difference as: Mere advocacy of a political theory is protected; the more specific it gets, the more likely one is treading on thin ice. As an example, one could likely say,
Any politician who lies deserves to be put in the stockade and pelted with rotten vegetables without consequence. However, if one said,
Politician X deserves to be boiled in oil, the line becomes a bit murkier because of the reference to a specific individual. Mentioning
Politician X and death in the same sentence just might end up being enough to give law enforcement and/or the secret service a free open house of your residence.
"Hate speech" is free speech.
I see the bigger issue being "hate speech" and "hate crimes" being both one-sided and loaded terms that have eventually lost their meaning over time as they get misused and overused. If not written that way, perception is the rules only favor certain groups and not all when it comes to anti-hate legislation. It doesn't help that the usual suspects will take a statement as innocuous as "you don't look good in green" and find a way to claim it's somehow hate speech or a hate crime which doesn't help when it comes across as someone being charged more for mean words or conduct than an actual crime.
Still, I do like seeing Antifa being considered a domestic terrorist group. For all the
It's only an idea pearl clutching, those ideas seem to be on prominent display with social media posts using coded messages such as "Bash the fash!" and the protestors out west during the 2020 Summer of Love Protests wearing related gear and emblems while they attacked law enforcement with lasers, glued doors shut to police departments as they set fires outside, etc. along with recent violence that started up again in conjunction with ICE's immigration enforcement. Sure, such groups may be akin to multi-headed hydra, but attacking one head and following the neck will ultimately lead to the body - especially if these groups get debanked as quickly as other protestors have been in the past.
