From Hate Speech to Hate Crime

      Ever since the tragic shootings in Tucson last week,  people have been discussing the possible link between  hateful political messages (nowadays disseminated primarily on the Internet) and  physical  attacks on public officials.   Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin  denounced  such connections as a "blood libel,"  an unfortunate choice of words.  But is she right?

     Since the end of World War II, the United States has endured the murder of one President  (John Kennedy), the shooting of another (Ronald Reagan),  the attempted assassinations of  Presidents Truman and Ford,  and the shootings of  two   presidential candidates  (Robert Kennedy and George Wallace).    Major public figures who never  sought elective office  (such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and  John Lennon) were  also  shot to death during this period, and several members of the House of Representatives were wounded by gunfire right in the House chamber in 1954.  

      Of course, there have also been assassinations of national leaders in other  countries  such as Egypt, Israel, Sweden, South Africa and  India during this time, but of these,  only India has lost more  top leaders than the US (1).    Why is the United States especially vulnerable to  political assassinations, and  are they driven by extremist political rhetoric?

      The fact that guns more readily available in this country than in most others cannot be ignored as a factor.  All the attacks mentioned above, in addition to the killings of three  previous   presidents (2), an attack on President-Elect Franklin Roosevelt  (3)  and  the wounding of  a  former president running for another term in the office (4) before World War II were all committed with guns.  (Significantly,  some of the foreign assassinations did not involve guns.   Prime Minister Verwoerd of South Africa was killed   with a knife and  Prime Minister Ragiv Gandhi  of  India with a bomb.)  The Second Amendment to our Constitution guarantees access to  guns, and political violence is one price that we pay for it.   As Nevada Republican senatorial nominee Sharron Angle put it last year, some people  she knows are looking at  "Second Amendment" solutions to political problems not solved to their satisfaction by elections.

      Hate-filled political rhetoric is not new in this country; the history books are full of it.   Actually  major American newspapers today  are  more moderate in tone than some that were published  in the 1800's, which carried vicious cartoons and attacks on Abraham Lincoln and subsequent presidents.   But not everyone gets quoted in the newspapers;  if you are not a prominent  current or former official, the best you can hope for is  a letter to the editor, which  will be purged of incendiary language. 

      The difference today is the Web:  anyone can  write on it,   and anything can be published  (like the Glazerbeam!)  The blogs and tweets and other electronic messages are subject to no quality  or even sanity control, so the most irresponsible and outrageous stuff  goes out and gets read.

           But do hateful messages on the Web inspire  actual violence?   Although there is no known connection between  the shootings in Tucson and any political  rhetoric anywhere,  the general answer is that it can.  Although  American assassins are usually characterized as "deranged loners",  even deranged loners  are often affected by what they hear and read.   A message that a certain politician is a traitor, a baby-killer or  whatever evil monster may focus the rage of a psychopath on a particular  target  For example, there is no question that Timothy McVeigh in the US and Yigal Amir  (who shot Yitzchak Rabin) in Israel were influenced  by the vitriolic rhetoric of others.

           Today's  Internet  facilitates contact between  like-minded people, so that no matter how absurd their conspiracy theories may be,  they are  comforted by the knowledge  that they are not alone.  A person is more likely to commit a violent act if  he (or she) believes that many others will approve the  crime.

           Those who spew vile verbiage about public figures on TV, radio or the Web are not legally liable if some nut with a gun acts on it.  But they should  be considered morally  accountable if   their words lead to criminal deeds.
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(1) Although Mahatma Gandhi never sought or held public office, he had hundreds of millions of followers in India at the time of his murder in 1947.  Prime Ministers  Indira Gandhi and her son  Ragiv were also assassinated.

(2) Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield and William McKinley.

(3) A bullet fired at  Franklin Roosevelt in Miami in early 1933 instead killed Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who was seated next to him in an open car.

(4) Theodore Roosevelt, who was shot in Milwaukee during  the  1912  presidential campaign, died in 1919.

Video Violence

"The Obama administration asked the (Supreme) Court to reinstate a...law that bans the production and sale of videos that show torture, mutilation and death of animals."
Washington Post, Oct. 7, 2009

This law had been stricken as unconstitutional by the US Court of Appeals, which invalidated the conviction of Robert Stevens of Virginia, who had been sentenced to three years in prison for making videos of pit-bull fights.

The US Humane Society and other groups sympathetic to animals have supported the law, while civil liberties groups consider it an infringement on the rights of free expression.

I am totally opposed to dog-fights, and support the tough laws that imprison those people (like football player Michael Vick) who arrange them. I also abhor bull-fights, which are legal in most Hispanic countries, although not in the United States. All cruelty to animals is morally wrong.

Yet the law in question punishes the video maker, not the persons responsible for the dog-fight. As I see it, the First Amendment right to "freedom of the press" covers videos and photos, and the framers of the Bill of Rights made no exceptions for depictions of cruelty. I understand that courts have upheld restrictions on child pornography, but I considers those rulings questionable as well.

The truth is that the Internet is full of videos of fights between people, including children. (1) Although the adults involved are presumed to have consented to participate in these violent activities, the children (like animals) involved are considered by law to be too young to consent. If the law under which Stevens was convicted is held valid, the government could then ban videos of children fighting as well.

Questions raised by the Justices during argument of this case indicate that the Supreme Court will uphold the Circuit Court's finding that the law is an infringement on freedom of speech and of the press. Most likely, the ruling will be a narrow one, declaring that the law is too broad and does not clearly delineate the conduct prohibited. Such a ruling would not threaten other legal restrictions on pornography, obscenity, vulgarity and the like.

Following the lead of the late Justice Hugo Black, I would prefer a stronger decision on the side of free expression. But I will take whatever protection the Court will provide.
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(1) For example, Google " kid fights", "boy fights" or "girl fights".