Protected Speech Has One Exception Which is Often Overlooked
Leave a commentSeptember 3, 2017 by Alfred
The Washington Post’s September 2, 2017 Editorial titled “Where To Draw the Line On Hate Speech “ is correct in all aspects of what it declares, but it is not quite complete in that it has not warned about the one instance where “free speech” is not protected speech.
In 1942 in the Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire case, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the “fighting words doctrine” constitutes a limitation of the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech.
This reality is often ignore as when (e.g.) Pamela Geller’s Zionist extremist racist organization, namely the National Freedom Defense Initiative, got initially away with the temerity of posting on buses and trains and Metro stations in Washington, DC and New York City a racist hate ad which says that “ In Any War Between the Civilized Man and the Savage – Support the Civilized Man – SUPPORT ISRAEL.
To characterize the Palestinian victims of the international law violating invasions and occupations and oppressions constitutes clearly the use of “fighting words” as it ads insult to injury by suggesting that said real Palestinian victims of lethal violence aggression are actually “savages” and this outrageous speech is clearly not speech not entitled to First Amendment protection, as it does and has incited lethal violence on all sides.
This is what is characterized by “case law”.
Case law is part of common law, consisting of judgments given by higher (appellate) courts in interpreting the statutes (or the provisions of a constitution) applicable in cases brought before them. Called precedents, they are binding on all courts (within the same jurisdiction) to be followed as the law in similar cases.
Hence websites using Nazi, KKK, or Zionist racist supremacy fighting words must be banned by the government from public posters and from the Internet.
This is the law, not “censorship”.
Censorship is that which is brazenly practiced by our so-called dictatorship “ally”, namely Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive governments of the world, with whose leaders Trump recently danced the traditional sword dance after selling it $ 110 billion dollars worth of weaponry. This is a government which sentences democracy activist bloggers such as Raif Badawi, to lashings, and years in prison.
