On When Speech Becomes Threatening and Incites Violence

     Maybe the Berkeley riots and fires of 2017 – called “leftists destroying their own communities”, even though only a small area was burned - were in response to people who are known to routinely dox people, demanding the right to surreptitiously out vulnerable people to mobs of angry xenophobia-trendies.

     Milo Yiannopoulos's speech was blockaded by anti-Alt-Right and anti-fascist protesters because Yiannopoulos had become infamous for speaking ill of transgender people, undocumented immigrants, and others. In late 2016 in Milwaukee, Yiannopoulos publicly named a transgender individual, and publicly mocked that person for filing a Title IX complaint about discriminatory bathroom access rules at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. According to The Independent (UK), protesters at Berkeley argued that Yiannopoulos had threatened to out undocumented immigrants.

     Yiannopoulos denied those claims. But whether that accusation is true or not, outing transgender people or undocumented immigrants, and spreading personal information about them, does potentially threaten their safety, especially if done in a mocking way. This behavior not only hints that such people should be targeted; it creates every element of a realistic, credible, and possibly even imminent risk of violence, by giving potential attackers virtually all of the information they will need to successfully target the vulnerable person who has been outed.

     I am not totally convinced of ideas like "fighting words", "suicide by cop", nor even necessarily "hate speech". But I do firmly believe that only speech which does not advocate harm against others should be protected.

     And telling a crowd of people the location and previous name of a transgender person, or telling a crowd of students that an undocumented immigrant attends their school and giving out their name and address, would look like deliberate attempts to provoke and incite people to commit acts of violence to me.

     While Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer, and others in the Alt-Right have not exactly done that, they have helped to create an environment in which speech that incites violence is being increasingly accepted, and arguably even normalized, and thought of as part of our freedom of speech, and thus deserving of protection by the authorities.

     All of this demonstrates the purposes of the 4^th and 9^th Amendments to the Constitution perfectly; that we are supposed to remain secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects; that our rights do not come from a piece of paper; that we have the right to live without constantly having to show our papers to the authorities; and that we ought not have the obligation to reveal things about our identity which could endanger us. Especially when we are just trying to use the restroom.


Post-Script:
     Please click the link below to watch Milo Yiannopoulos dox a transgender student in late 2016 in Milwaukee:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CulQgP8JZKs&feature=youtu.be
    Click this link to read about reactions:
   http://www.thecut.com/2016/12/milo-yiannopoulos-harassed-a-trans-student-at-uw-milwaukee.html
    Click this link to watch the full video (the relevant part of the video begins at the 49:52 mark):
     http://youtu.be/-t1ufzttyUM

Originally Written on August 24th, 2018

Edited, and Post-Script Added, on February 15th, 2019