Is support of ISIS on social media protected speech?
I don’t have a definitive answer to the question posed by the title of this post. But I know that it’s an important question.
ISIS is a modern phenomenon. Violence and terrorism is an old, old one, but the internet has exponentially enhanced the ability of such evil to reach a huge number of people around the entire globe. Geography is no longer any barrier, and ISIS has been able to unite the most barbaric bloodthirstiness of times gone by with an up-to-date ability to excite and recruit people with it, to organize and spread the word, and to do it in ways that often protect the identity of the perpetrators. If the government wants to use its own ability to spy on ISIS supporters, it has to activate methods of surveillance that offend the sensibilities of a free people.
ISIS thus can use our own dedication to liberty to undermine that liberty. I suppose ’twas ever thus for groups that seek to undermine the US, but never before has there been such a combination of primitive blood lust, religious fanaticism, and sophisticated use of the most modern methods of reaching the public from which to draw supporters. “Worrisome” doesn’t even begin to describe it.
This Fox article [hat tip: Amy Miller at Legal Insurrection] indicates that there has been so much internet chatter from supporters of ISIS as well as actual members planning violence that US intelligence is having trouble separating out the more serious from the mere talkers:
“The large number of social media postings by US-based ISIL supporters is challenging for investigators in differentiating those supporters focused only on promoting pro-ISIL rhetoric, which may be protected speech, vice [versus] detecting those prepared to engage in violence on the group’s behalf,” the bulletin said.
The bulletin warned the “reach and popularity” of social media platforms has made it easier for U.S.-based extremists to “identify and connect” with foreign terrorist organizations, which can “potentially direct” them. It said the FBI estimates there are “hundreds, possibly thousands” of people in the U.S. getting “recruitment overtures or directives to attack the United States,” and ISIS is using social media in “unprecedented ways” to send messages advocating attacks in the U.S.
ISIS is not a group that is benign in any of its manifestations. It has no redeeming social importance, not even any social service front like many other terrorist organizations use to justify themselves to the naive. It doesn’t hide its intention to wreak havoc on the Middle Eastern countries in which it is most active, and in the west and this country too. It does not make a secret of the fact that it is marshaling its forces to do so through terrorist attacks of a greater ferocity than has been previously known.
So, what are the limits of protected speech? Is supporting an organization like ISIS okay as long as the government can’t find a smoking gun? When does speech cross over into what’s called a “true threat” or sedition, or giving “material support” to a terrorist group, none of which are protected speech?
John Carlin, assistant AG for national security, seems to think it would be a good idea to try ISIS supporters as terrorists:
He suggested the Justice Department could bring prosecutions under the law against providing material support to a terrorist organization. His remarks were believed to be the first time a U.S. official has ever said that people who assist ISIS with online media could face criminal prosecution.
Carlin was asked at the conference whether he would “consider criminal charges” against people who are “proliferating ISIS social media.”
His answer: “Yes. You need to look at the particular facts and evidence.” But Carlin noted that the United States could use the material support law to prosecute “technical expertise” to a designated terrorist organization. And spreading the word for ISIS online could count as such expertise.
That does seem to be a bit of a stretch. On the other hand, ISIS has such special and extreme characteristics that supporting that group is worse than supporting other terrorist groups—even Islamic terrorists such as Hamas, for example—because of ISIS’s extreme barbarity and global ambitions, including an imminent plan to attack the population of the US. Ignoring the fact that they are recruiting in this country would seem to be a good example of the Constitution as a suicide pact.
Of course, the most effective thing to do to blunt the appeal of ISIS would be to defeat and humiliate them in Syria and Iraq. But the Obama administration doesn’t seem to have the will to mount a serious attempt to do that now, before the “JV” has metastasized even further.
Possibly related:
French Mayor Calls for Banning Islam, Deporting Muslims. Promptly is forcibly confined to a mental hospital due to the “incoherence” of his statement…
This is a dilemma a free society always faces, namely security versus liberty. Not sure which side I am on when it comes to the barbarians of islam. Ultimately, it comes down to convincing muslims, by killing many millions of them, that the West is supreme. Not holding my breath waiting for our side to do what must be done.
parker:
They think we may be supreme in our weaponry for the moment, but not in our will. And they are correct so far.
Once again, their arbitrary inconsistency has them in trouble with language again… there is no way to prosecute these little people without also setting terms that would have them prosecute big fish, like obama… who also helped isis/isil, and we now know about that thanks to FOIA…
It is a matter of having the will to defend our civilization, we used to have it; but over the last 40 years it has eroded into pc bs, self doubt, and worship at the alter of multicultural diversity. I firmly believe we in the west will do what must be done, but it will cost us millions of lives before we get down to it.
G6loq
Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union
During the leadership of General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, psychiatry was used as a tool to eliminate political opponents (“dissidents”) who openly expressed beliefs that contradicted official dogma The term “philosophical intoxication” was widely used to diagnose mental disorders in cases where people disagreed with leaders and made them the target of criticism that used the writings by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin
Article 58-10 of the Stalin Criminal Code–which as Article 70 had been shifted into the RSFSR Criminal Code of 1962–and Article 190-1 of the RSFSR Criminal Code along with the system of diagnosing mental illness, developed by academician Andrei Snezhnevsky, created the very preconditions under which non-standard beliefs could easily be transformed into a criminal case, and it, in its turn, into a psychiatric diagnosis
Anti-Soviet political behavior, in particular, being outspoken in opposition to the authorities, demonstrating for reform, writing books were defined in some persons as being simultaneously a criminal act (e.g., violation of Articles 70 or 190-1), a symptom (e.g., “delusion of reformism”), and a diagnosis (e.g., “sluggish schizophrenia”)
Sluggish schizophrenia
The diagnosis was the most infamous of diagnoses used by Soviet psychiatrists The term “sluggish schizophrenia” was invented by Snezhnevsky This diagnostic concept was limited to the USSR and some other East European countries / Theory of “sluggish schizophrenia” is so hazy that it can be applied to any individual, whether mentally sick or healthy, and it has been rejected by the world psychiatric community.[6] The application of the theory to political dissidents has been internationally condemned.[6] The fall of communism brought an end to Snezhnevsky’s theories in Ukraine as well.[7]
the abuse of medicine is most used by the feminist movement in modern times. hiding birth rates with immigration, hiding when peri menopause and menopause start, hiding STD, not doing abstinance, lying as to the mental issues around abortion, meads sexualization of women as bonobo apes in their appitites, kinsey sexualizing children, and on and on..
long long history
“ISIS thus can use our own dedication to liberty to undermine that liberty.” neo
“When I am the weaker, I ask you for mercy, because that is your principle; but when I am the stronger, I show no mercy and take away your freedom, because that is my principle.” Louis Veuillot (The dialectic of the left)
What is the physical difference between Islam’s tenet of surrender or die and Nazi Germany’s?
All totalitarian ideologies, by definition, support forced submission to that ideology. Advocating the use of lethal force in order to impose an ideology upon other people, places advocates of that ideology, outside the protection of free speech. It places them outside civilization.
Totalitarian ideologies are civilization’s cancerous tumors. In a healthy body, cancer cells do not get an equal vote. Barbarians do not get a vote. Their barbarism places them outside of civilization’s protections because engaging in barbarism is a voluntary forfeiture of their humanity.
So yes, do onto them, as they would do onto us. Fight fire with fire or… surrender. That is NOT our choice, that is the situation imposed upon people by totalitarian ideologies.
A rabid dog cannot be cured, nor can fanatical barbarians be reasoned with, like a rabid dog they must be put down.
long long history…
… and nothing learned
The fate of Robert Chardon – Updated.
It can’t happen here!
My preference is to cancel, forbid and outlaw the so-called social media. We got along just fine without them, they do not provide any essential utility, and they are being used against us. This is asymmetric warfare at its best, and we should just let it go on because Free Speech? When does recruitment of US-based jihadis become the equivalent of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater?
I expect this will set some hair on fire, but so what.
Frog, you are using this blog, a medium of social discourse, to communicate. Throwing out the baby with the bath water is never a good idea. However, it is always a good idea to kill your enemies without mercy until they accept unconditional surrender and then imposing your values upon those who survive.
Here’s the strategic situation. MPAA wants control over the internet, so what they will likely attempt in the future is to ban social media used by “domestic terrorists” using the ISIL (which they funded) excuse.
But realize this, the person they will hang is you or patriots of America, not ISIL. They won’t touch ISIL.
Foolish humans, no idea what the Left is doing so they’ll throw their support over any kind of “promised security”.
I’m a pretty much 1A absolutist. An issue with forcing such nonsense underground is that, not only is it harder for intel to watch it–I have no problem with people watching other people speaking in public–but the general citizenry will, 1. think whatever it is is worse than they (the state) make it out to be, and/or 2. wonder what the problem is.
Some people will be radicalized. Some of these are already trained thugs getting their direction from Wahabbi chaplains in prison (how did THAT happen?). But they would have been dangerous anyway. Some would be your general nutcase doing another Columbine but with chants to Allah instead of…to whomever.
I see this as an analog to wanting to ban guns after a school shooting. Only the lawabiding will be inconvenienced.
I know this is too late to be read, but I’m saying it here anyway.
The following comes verbatim from the President’s UN speech in 2012:
“However, I do believe that it is the obligation of all leaders in all countries to speak out forcefully against violence and extremism. It is time to marginalize those who, even when not directly resorting to violence, use hatred of America or the West or Israel as the central organizing principle of politics, for that only gives cover and sometimes makes an excuse for those who do resort to violence. That brand of politics, one that pits East against West and South against North, Muslims against Christians and Hindu and Jews, can’t deliver on the promise of freedom. It is time to leave the call of violence and the politics of division behind.
It’s time to heed the words of Gandhi, ‘Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.’ And we must remain engaged to assure that what began with citizens demanding their rights does not end in a cycle of sectarian violence.”
Please note that he is telling us exactly what he means to do. The President’s carefully chosen examples can be reversed and still make sense–e.g., “That brand of politics, one that pits” West against East, or Christians against Muslims. Any law or policy that criminalizes the speech or writing of those who advocate support for ISIS or anything like that, abhorrent as it is to us, will be turned against those of us who loathe ISIS.
Note specifically that the President is saying that we wouldn’t want anyone, while themselves “not directly resorting to violence”, to do anything to “give cover to” or “excuse” “those who do resort to violence”. See, that covers all speech or writing that has even the potential to cause someone to slug someone else in the nose for his political position. Our saying that anyone can tell the difference between that and “real violence” does nothing in a court of law. This is why the Left is pushing the phrases “hate speech”, “microagressions”, “triggers’, and using other such verbalizations, and one of the big reasons why the Left avoids “Islamist violent extremism”, etc.
Remember that Progressives are on The Long March.
Note that the President actually puts it into words: he wants “to assure that what began with citizens demanding their rights does not end in a cycle of sectarian violence.”
And “hate speech” and other such phraseology is in the process of being subsumed into the category of “violence”. See, Gandhi, himself, said that “intolerance is itself a form of violence.” See?
Folks, I’ve said this before: This isn’t a slippery slope; it’s a slippery drop.
Americans have gotten too stupid and evil to figure out where the slaughter cart is going. Selling humans souls for Leftist amenities tends to have certain consequences in the long term.