Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

"Speech is violence" doesn't exist as a principle in modern western societies. It's a slogan and call for a coordinated mass political attack against an identified target.

It is applied by political partisans to attack their enemies and not applied to themselves or their allies.

It's cynical, crass, mass political power put into action. Reluctant participants are dragged along under the implied threat that they will be targeted because "inaction is complicity" or some similar slogan.

how can convincing (not coercing) be harmful? What's the definition of harm

But are we allowed to even discuss the topics - or will folks be burned / punched for even discussing the ideas?

And yet people don't get how narrow the Brandenburg test is:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test

> The test determined that the government may prohibit speech advocating the use of force or crime if the speech satisfies both elements of the two-part test:

> The speech is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,”

> AND

> The speech is “likely to incite or produce such action.”

[snip]

> The Supreme Court in Hess v. Indiana (1973) applied the Brandenburg test to a case in which Gregory Hess, an Indiana University protester, said, “We’ll take the fucking street later (or again)." The Supreme Court ruled that Hess’s profanity was protected under the Brandenburg test, as the speech “amounted to nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time.” The Court held that “since there was no evidence, or rational inference from the import of the language, that his words were intended to produce, and likely to produce, imminent disorder, those words could not be punished by the State on the ground that they had a ‘tendency to lead to violence.’”

> In NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co.(1982), Charles Evers threatened violence against those who refused to boycott white businesses. The Supreme Court applied the Brandenburg test and found that the speech was protected: “Strong and effective extemporaneous rhetoric cannot be nicely channeled in purely dulcet phrases. An advocate must be free to stimulate his audience with spontaneous and emotional appeals for unity and action in a common cause. When such appeals do not incite lawless action, they must be regarded as protected speech.”

And because I also see this doctrine over-applied online:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fighting_words

> In Texas v. Johnson (1989), the Supreme Court redefined the scope of the fighting words doctrine to mean words that are "a direct personal insult or an invitation to exchange fisticuffs." There, the Court held that the burning of a United States flag, which was considered symbolic speech, did not constitute fighting words.

> In R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992), the Supreme Court found that the "First Amendment prevents government from punishing speech and expressive conduct because it disapproves of the ideas expressed." Even if the words are considered to be fighting words, the First Amendment will still protect the speech if the speech restriction is based on viewpoint discrimination.

The page I linked to links to multiple law review articles on the subject:

http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...

http://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=28...

Suffice it to say: If someone online claims a speech act isn't protected due to the fighting words exemption, no it isn't.

> but at the same time, it's undeniable that a lot of money and attention is flowing to ever-bolder provocateurs whose only possible goal is to escalate existing tensions and iniquities to violence in service of their political aims.

Then you should defeat them in the marketplace of ideas and be able to counter their facillous words. To suggest otherwise is to stand in a position where you claim that some people are incapable of intelligently reasoning about something and that another superior individual should be able to police what they hear.

If someone says racist hateful things you're argument is that people should not be allowed to listen to it because it is a "bad thing" and other people who aren't as wise as you shoudlnt be allowed to hear it because they might act violently.