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Using speech to call for violence against someone is intermediated by the minds and bodies of listeners, who have their own free will, their own intelligence, a
by schoen 1y ago
Using speech to call for violence against someone is intermediated by the minds and bodies of listeners, who have their own free will, their own intelligence, and their own responsibility.
In U.S. law we have the "imminent lawless action" test from Brandenburg v. Ohio as one of the main tests for whether speech can be regulated because of its likelihood of successfully encouraging others to break the law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
Even when speech fails the Brandenburg test, it is still not literally considered a form of violence, but something else like incitement (or sometimes part of a conspiracy or criminal enterprise or something).
All of those legal discussions are pretty much expressly about not conflating speech with violence, even if speech sometimes has a role in encouraging people to commit violence.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y agoI'm arguing a cultural perspective. Edit: Law uses language in a way that is different from how laypeople use it. I am not concerned that I would be unable to convince a judge that it's violence because I know it's the judge's job to think of violence as having a specific, narrow, unchanging (except under certain circumstances) meaning. Outside that context, violence can take the form of speech.
- schoen 1y agoI see it as a great sign of maturity and civilization that we can make a firm distinction between words and violence. To me, the judge's "job" you mention is part of that. This distinction could be something that has to be actively learned (like, maybe most people in human history would have instinctively resorted to physical violence over an insult). But if so, actively learning it is a great thing.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago> I see it as a great sign of maturity and civilization that we can make a firm distinction between words and violence. I see it as a great sign of maturity and civilization that we can understand the dangers of speech without minimizing and dismissing them.
- redbar0n 1y agoDistinguishing speech from violence is not to dismiss the potential for speech to cause hurt feelings.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago> hurt feelings This is an example of how the violence of speech is often minimized and dismissed. Causing hurt feelings is violence, particularly doing so intentionally.
- redbar0n 1y agoI did not dismiss speech’s potential to cause hurt feelings, I acknowledged and affirmed it. It is not to be taken lightly. Yet, we need an effective demarcation between speech and physical action, where resorting to physical action is deemed even more severe than words. So which one do you propose?
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago> So which one do you propose? I've used an example in this thread: "physical violence". That shit ain't hard, just stop saying speech can't be violence when it obviously can be.