Comment by ikeyany
5 years ago
People are wondering "How far does this go? How can Twitter say this is not cool, but allow something like violent movies or games? Where's the line?"
The leader of the United States encouraging law enforcement and the military to shoot American citizens for looting, that's the line.
We have laws in the UK that curtail speech like that, "Inciting violence" is a crime.
Which I agree with to some extent, you're not innocent of a crime because you convinced a person to harm another, just because you were too cowardly to get your hands dirty yourself.
But the US is rather famously not British, so I'm not sure if it's a relevant thing to add to the discussion.
I'm also on the other* side of the Atlantic from this circus, but a little googling over lunch led me to the "Brandenburg Test" for when "Inciting violence" is no longer protected by the 1A. (NB: 1A is an entirely different subject than Twitter's TOS, which I addressed in the original thread)
Briefly: speech which both incites imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such action fails to be protected as US "free speech".
In this case, my IANAL analysis would be that the tweet had imminent application, but would be unlikely to produce action, for reasons given in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347453 (tl;dr lethal force is the last resort of a well-regulated militia when restoring public order)
* and am therefore fond of "On the fact..." https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd06xx/EWD611.PDF
There's plenty of "speech" criminalized in the US: many crimes are just matters of conspiring to X, or fradulently X... which may have been conducted entirely in speech.
The relevant kind of speech for "free expression" is that which seeks to express an idea/opinion/belief of the speaker.
That isn't criminalised in the UK as far as I'm aware, and would fall under the EHCR protections in any case which are in UK law as the human rights act.
You could even argue that Copyright law itself, and particularly the DMCA provisions, are a violation of free speech.
Obviously practically this wouldn't be possible, but if I were to write down all binary digits that my blu-ray of John Wick has, give it to a friend, and they wrote those digits down in their computer to watch the movie, that would be illegal for copyright violation.
I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have copyright in any capacity (though I do think that US's model is especially draconian), just giving an example of a curtailment of free speech that isn't really controversial.
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Part of the issue is if you're hostile to the speaker, you can interpret a call for peace to mean a call for violence. Try to imagine for a moment, that this comment was not made by an evil racist orange man, but someone you like... maybe Ghandi. If Ghandi said: "Looting leads to shooting." Which interpretation would you more likely choose?
1. Please don't loot, it escalates violence and people will get killed
2. Let's kill all the looters
Whether it's Trump or Ghandi, we're imagining we know something about the internal state of the speaker's mind that we don't know.
This seems like attempting to weasel-word. If Ghandi said "We have a lot of guns, and looting leads to shooting", it's a lot more clear that the meaning is (2). Trumps tweet didn't just say that one sentence, it said, in order:
* "the Military is with [the governor]"
* "any difficulty and we will assume control"
* "when the looting starts, the shooting starts"
There's a clear causal relationship between these three statements, this is not a plea for peace, it is a threat of violence.
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People in the US will say the First allows him say such things. They'd be wrong.
I believe the person in question has crossed the line long time ago.
And Twitter should improve their fact-checking and restricting algorithms and apply it all the time.
I am in agreement that waiting to do something is foolish, but I can see why they did not wait any longer.
> The leader of the United States encouraging law enforcement and the military to shoot American citizens for looting
That's an extremely literal interpretation of his words. Most people would interpret that phrase to mean "you better think twice before looting because I'm not going to sit idly by and let you do it" but in the form of a vaguely threatening, yet catchy rhyme.
> The phrase was used by Miami's police chief, Walter Headley, in 1967, when he addressed his department's "crackdown on ... slum hoodlums," according to a United Press International article from the time.
> Headley, who was chief of police in Miami for 20 years, said that law enforcement was going after “young hoodlums, from 15 to 21, who have taken advantage of the civil rights campaign. ... We don't mind being accused of police brutality."
This is where the quote comes from.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/where-does-phrase-...
Edit:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-quotes-cop-sparked-rac...
> The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence found that Headley's remarks and policing policies had been a significant factor in sparking the riots.
> Headley died four months after the riots. The Times in its obituary noted his policies had caused "growing resentment" among black Miami residents.
Our President fully understands the gravity of those words. This is what he wanted to say. This is what he meant. This is what he believes. This is WHO HE IS.
There are many ways I would describe Donald Trump, but “deeply knowledgeable about American civil rights history” is not one of them. I can almost certainly guarantee you that Trump’s statement was not intended as an homage or reference to a Miami police chief from the 1960’s.
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The President keeps surprising me. Like, I keep thinking I have an accurate mental model of him being generally hateful and clueless and instinctive, but then things like this happen and underscore to me that he is deeply knowledgeable and sophisticated with these kinds of historical cultural references. So, still hateful, but not a dummy. That phrase was not an accident.
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> That's an extremely literal interpretation of his words
Yes, which is better than a reasonable interpretation of his words would show them to be, because going beyond a mere literal reading to consider the deliberate historical reference and the implicit subtext makes the statement worse, not better.
He's fairly good at riding that line of plausible deniability.
Just yesterday, he retweeted a guy calling for Democrats to die. "Well, not literally of course"... wink wink.
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> Most people would interpret that phrase..
Even if you're right, which you're not, what is "Most" here? 51%? 63%? 90%?
Are you saying that it's bad if the majority of people are riled up to engage in violence following his tweet, but OK if 40% do? 10%? 1%?
Probably depends on what you think of the intentions of the person. Some people think Trump is the devil and assume he means the worst-case thing when he says something, others look at it in other lights.
Previous US presidents were careful with their words, as they know people will interpret them in different ways if they aren't crystal clear. Trump just does stream-of-through -> keyboard -> twitter, and we get to see the results. Which tends to leave lots of what he says open to interpretation based on the perspective of the reader.
What's vague about 'When the looting starts, the shooting starts'? It seems extremely specific to me.
> Most people would interpret that phrase to mean "you better think twice before looting because I'm not going to sit idly by and let you do it"
What do you base the knowledge of how most people will have interpreted this statement on?
The historical experiences of different classes of people can have a profound impact on the perspectives they have in relation to the government. An 80 year old black man might have a very different relationship with governmental authorities than a 30 year old Latino, or a 40 year old Caucasian.
Do you think it is morally wrong for a store owner to protect his store using guns? Do you think it was morally wrong for the Koreans to sit on their rooftops with guns to protect their stores from looters during the LA riots ( https://warisboring.com/the-legacy-of-the-roof-koreans-28-ye...)?
If the "people" you reference are incapable of telling the difference between movies/games and the POTUS threatening violence on his own people (and arguably a majority of the country), than this is exactly why Twitter needs to do what it's doing.
So on the one hand people can tell the difference between presidential tweets and movie violence... but on the other hand they take all his tweets and interpret them in the most literal way?
> encouraging law enforcement and the military to shoot American citizens
Also, small business owners getting their livelihoods destroyed by thieving thugs.
Rioters should not destroy businesses, correct.
Sword rattling is pretty standard behavior for leaders everywhere throughout history.
Sure, alongside slavery, genocide and mass murder. Perhaps we might draw a line on occasion?
If you're not familiar with the phrase, "sword rattling" is something you do when you're trying to avoid conflict. If you want to attack someone, you just do it.
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> ...shoot American citizens for looting...
When the government uses violence to enforce the law... that's part of the system.
...but the more fundamental question is "Who gets to decide?". Should it be a corporation or an elected body?
It is literally the president’s job to command the military. If he gives a warning that looting will lead to shooting, it is not glorifying violence. It is a statement of fact.
And looting always leads to shooting, regardless of who is saying it.
First of all, look up the Posse Comitatus Act.
Next, the 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments to the United States constitution. Telling armed forces to shoot unarmed people because they happen to be looting (e.g. when there is no imminent threat to life) is summary execution and unconstitutional.
The Posse Comitatus act only applies to the Army and Air Force. It's DoD policy to pretend that it also covers the Marines and other branches, but AFAIK not a legal requirement. Even then, the Insurrection Act gives the Feds power to use the military as law enforcement in case of severe civil unrest (like the LA riots)
Sure and let's ignore the fact that if anyone stayed in those shops and tried to prevent protestors from "protesting", they'd just be peacefully left alone by those violent criminals because... Some random X-th amendment?
How about martial law, seeing as we're throwing around unrelated legal laws and concepts?
Either way, these ridiculous "protests" indicate a complete break down of society and the government should be sending in the military to arrest people.
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The national guard does not work like that. Also, no the military cannot just shoot people on the spot for being in the area of looting, it is not a "statement of fact." You just made this up and pulled it out of thin air so don't respond with "well prove it" or some other BS. Quit being a racist troll and reflect on your hateful little life.
> It is literally the president’s job to command the military.
Even if one views the Tweet as a legitimate military command, which it is not, unless the government has seized Twitter with just compensation as required by the 5th Amendment, it is not Twitter's obligation to ignore its own standard sfor the purpose of relaying such orders by the President.
Otherwise, except as to explaining why Twitter opted for the public interest notice rather than simple removal, the President’s job is irrelevant here.
> If he gives a warning that looting will lead to shooting, it is not glorifying violence.
That doesn't follow from the preceding, and the statement as written glorifies violence, both potential future violence and specific historical violence by the government against it's citizens, in much better the same way (though far more proximate historically and thus much worse) that it would if Trump said “Kill them all, and God will know his own.”
> It is a statement of fact.
It is quite possible to state a fact (or make a threat which one has the power to declare execute, which is more the case here than statement of fact) while glorifying the outcome that would be produced and/or the past historical antecedent which is invoked.
Well, so do you censor things like Dr Dre’s 187 because it might be interpreted as inciting violence against (corrupt) police? A public figure of renown among fans.
Media companies have applied censorship or content warnings to rap music and other art forms - voluntarily or otherwise - for decades without a word of protest from those people determined to make the case for the POTUS' immunity to Twitter's rules
Oh right messrs Gore’s old PMRC, thanks mr internet!
Two notes: 1) I am not Jack Dorsey and Twitter is not my product, so I'm not sure why you said "you". 2) Dr Dre is not the president of the United States and does not have the authority to direct law enforcement and the military... surely you see the difference.
"Do you" in a sentence like this is equivalent to "does one;" it doesn't actually refer to the listener, at least in American English.
People “affiliated” certainly can direct violence.
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I think you could argue the authority level difference between the president and Dr. Dre means something.
You know, the answer is yes and no. Yes the president has more legal authority and perhaps moral authority, and greater reach, but don’t underestimate the authority of people within their circles. Be it a J Gotti ot Suge Knight.
> The leader of the United States encouraging law enforcement and the military to shoot American citizens for looting, that's the line.
Is this supposed to be bad? I actually wish that our own PM had done the same. I am sure that the citizens of a lot of countries that live under the rule of criminal syndicates, looters, and highwaymen would agree.
It seems that the US citizens are fine with state mandated violence as long as it does not include them. Nothing happened regarding https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21018041 for example.
It is bad because the value of human life (even people you don't like) is infinitely greater than material goods. A looted store can be repared, restocked, rebuilt. A dead human stays dead forever and yields a mountain of grief around him. They are not comparable at all.
> It is bad because the value of human life (even people you don't like) is infinitely greater than material goods
The human life of the people looting your property is more important than the well-being of you and your family who will be in debt after that, I see.
Regardless, this seems to be your personal value, something that I (and most people that I know) do not seem to share - even the US constitution and laws do not seem to share it, after all it is legal to shoot someone invading your home. I have no grief to give to someone who died while trying to invade my home and loot my property. They are dead due to their own choices.
> A looted store can be repared, restocked, rebuilt
For free? It can be a lifetime's worth for some. Are you willing to pay it out of your own pockets? If there were enough people willing to do so I would support your statement, but that does not seem to be the case.
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> It seems that the US citizens are fine with state mandated violence as long as it does not include them. Nothing happened regarding https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21018041 for example.
I don't think it's fair to paint this as unique to US citizens. I'd go as far as saying this is generally true across the world, with few people protesting state sanctioned violence abroad, and significantly more people protesting domestic state sanctioned violence.
I don't think that's unusual. I think it's normal that we care more about our own lives than we do others lives, we care more about people dying at home than we do abroad.
I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it is normal human behaviour. A good example of this is watching how peoples perceptions of this latest coronavirus unfolded.
There's too much going on in all of our lives to have time for every bad thing happening elsewhere. You pick your battles. That's ok. You still have to live your life for yourself at the end of the day, nobody else is going to live your life for you.
I think that you forgot to mention that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21018041 was an act done by the US military, and it was not the only one of its kind. I would understand if most USA citizens did not give a shit if it was done by a 3rd party, but it was done by their own military which they fund via their own taxes.
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> Is this supposed to be bad?
Yes.
> I actually wish that our own PM had done the same.
That would be bad.
> I am sure that the citizens of a lot of countries that live under the rule of criminal syndicates, looters, and highwaymen would agree.
They are also bad.
What is better is to have a functional police system that responds proportionately.
Why would that be bad exactly? Anyway, I am glad that you did not have to survive through something like that.
> What is better is to have a functional police system that responds proportionately.
In times of mass-looting? I doubt that even the most functional police system could be able to help.
That being said we are talking about the extremely dysfunctional American police system. I doubt that they can change it into a functional one within an hour. What would you suggest for right now?
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We wouldn't be here at all if the police were allowed to address this properly. It either wouldn't have escalated, or they'd be overwhelmed and the army would have had to have been called in to assist. I don't understand why this is so complicated. People pay taxes to be protected from such violence. It's the reason we're told to shut up and go to Somalia when we complain about taxes. But when it comes down to it, nothing happens. Local acts of terrorism and people are left to defend themselves, possibly without the capability to own a firearm too.