Mississippi politician, angered at removal of Confederacy monuments, calls for lynchings

Alessandra Kelley

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ederate-symbols-karl-oliver-lynching-comments

A Republican state lawmaker in Mississippi, the last remaining state in the US to carry the Confederate battle emblem within its official flag, has posted an incendiary threat on social media calling for those removing Confederate monuments from public display to be lynched.

Karl Oliver, a funeral director from Winona Mississippi who represents the 46th district of the state, made his explosive remarks on Facebook. He began by lambasting the recent events in New Orleans, in neighboring Louisiana, which saw the last of its Confederate monuments – a statue of the south’s civil war commander Gen Robert E Lee – taken away on Friday in a move by local officials to end the visible celebration of white supremacy.

Oliver called the action in New Orleans “heinous and horrific”, and likened it to Nazi-era book burning. He went on to make his threat against anyone wanting to “destroy historical monuments of OUR HISTORY”, saying: “They should be LYNCHED!”

Oliver’s district includes Money, Mississippi, the small town where Emmett Till, aged 14, was brutally murdered after talking to a white woman in a grocery store.

Oliver’s lynching remark has been strongly rebuked by fellow Mississippi Republicans. The governor, Phil Bryant, called his language unacceptable and said it “has no place in civil discourse”.
 

kaylim

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Does anyone want to red pill me on the purpose of politicians making insane comments on social media? Is facebook making us psychotic?
 

ElaineA

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Look, when politicians see other politicians get away with hate speech, misogyny, lies and misrepresentations, with no consequences for that level of depravity, of course they're going to mimic it. It was a winning strategy, was it not?

Pandora's box, open.
 

Kaiser-Kun

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It would seem that Trump was both a result and a catalyst of a major shift in the global mentality.
 

Brightdreamer

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Look, when politicians see other politicians get away with hate speech, misogyny, lies and misrepresentations, with no consequences for that level of depravity, of course they're going to mimic it. It was a winning strategy, was it not?

Pandora's box, open.

+1

Add that to the sadly evident fact that this rot has been festering down in the national bones long before it erupted (because one doesn't just suddenly wake up a hateful liar after watching someone else spout hateful lies, one must already have the hate and lies in them), and I think we can pretty much give up on the idea that we're coming out of this spiral any time soon, if at all.

May we at least be a warning to others as the flames rise...
 

regdog

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I would like to believe those comments are grounds for removal from office.
 

cmhbob

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I would like to believe those comments are grounds for removal from office.

I'd agree with your intent, but we probably have different processes in mind.

The First Amendment has to protect even disgusting speech - the stuff we don't like - if it's going to protect anything. So I'd be completely against him being "fired" in some way without voter input. They hired him; they can fire him by following whatever due process exists. Although it doesn't appear that there's an easy way to recall politicians in Mississippi.
 

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Yeah, but he didn't just say vile things; he actually called for people to be lynched. Hate speech is one thing, but isn't that inciting violence? And wasn't it already decided that calls for/threats of violence are not protected by the First Amendment?
 

blacbird

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The First Amendment has to protect even disgusting speech - the stuff we don't like - if it's going to protect anything.

It doesn't protect incitement to commit criminal violence, and that's been clearly established via judicial opinion. That statement was a good deal beyond just being "disgusting".

caw
 

cmhbob

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Devil's Advocate mode here: who did he incite? Who was the threat directed toward? Was it "those people," or was it "John Smith was running the crane! Hang him!"

When I think of incitement, I think of a person directly influencing a small crowd right in front of them. I think there needs to be an immediacy to the incitement, not this general broadcast to thousands of people. When does the "spell" if you will, wear off? If someone were to attack someone in a week, could you realistically trace it back to this moron? Two weeks?

On the brighter side, the Mississippi GOP seems to be running as far away from him as possible. He's lost his position as vice chairman of the House Forestry Committee, and pretty much everyone is calling on him to step down.
 

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Always found it interesting how fast Conservatives abandon each other when a member of the club who possesses a platform chooses to vocalize core tenets of Conservatism.
 

RichardGarfinkle

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Devil's Advocate mode here: who did he incite? Who was the threat directed toward? Was it "those people," or was it "John Smith was running the crane! Hang him!"

When I think of incitement, I think of a person directly influencing a small crowd right in front of them. I think there needs to be an immediacy to the incitement, not this general broadcast to thousands of people. When does the "spell" if you will, wear off? If someone were to attack someone in a week, could you realistically trace it back to this moron? Two weeks?

On the brighter side, the Mississippi GOP seems to be running as far away from him as possible. He's lost his position as vice chairman of the House Forestry Committee, and pretty much everyone is calling on him to step down.

That doesn't make a lot of sense. You seem to be saying that incitement ceases to be incitement when it uses a more efficient medium (televsion) and therefore has a higher probability of success (since it affects more people).
 

regdog

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Devil's Advocate mode here: who did he incite? Who was the threat directed toward? Was it "those people," or was it "John Smith was running the crane! Hang him!"

When I think of incitement, I think of a person directly influencing a small crowd right in front of them. I think there needs to be an immediacy to the incitement, not this general broadcast to thousands of people. When does the "spell" if you will, wear off? If someone were to attack someone in a week, could you realistically trace it back to this moron? Two weeks?

On the brighter side, the Mississippi GOP seems to be running as far away from him as possible. He's lost his position as vice chairman of the House Forestry Committee, and pretty much everyone is calling on him to step down.


If incitement only applies to someone standing directly in front of a group of people then why is the internet a hotbed of recruitment for all groups, from White Supremacists, to Islamic Radicals. I'm going to end up Goodwining the thread, but why do Nazis still read Mein Kampf? Incitement takes all forms and uses all forms of communication.
 
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cornflake

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If incitement only applies to someone standing directly in front of a group of people then why is the internet a hotbed of recruitment for all groups, from White Supremacists, to Islamic Radicals. I'm going to end up Goodwining the thread, but why do Nazis still read Mein Kampf? Incitement takes all forms and uses all forms of communication.

Then everything is incitement. Then someone on a forum suggesting pitchforks and torches is inciting a riot.

I think that line, should it exist at all, which I'm very, very wary of, has to be extremely clear, hard and quite far to one end. There is absolutely no qualification on the clause. We start putting them on, we do so at our peril. We expand the ones we put on, we're rolling down the proverbial slope in gunny sacks, gathering speed and mud as we go.
 

ElaineA

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If incitement only applies to someone standing directly in front of a group of people then why is the internet a hotbed of recruitment for all groups, from White Supremacists, to Islamic Radicals. I'm going to end up Goodwining the thread, but why do Nazi, still read Mein Kampf? Incitement takes all forms and uses all forms of communication.

This is true, but I think the point is the "legal definition" of incitement, which has been defined--sort of, in the case of speech cases--by the Supreme Court. I don't know how a case involving this Mississippi guy's idiocy would play out, and we probably can't know unless someone acts on his call. But there IS a very similar case playing out right now, so we may find out. The one where an attacker is using "Trump encouraged me to" defense. Bearing in mind this is a civil case, not criminal, still the issue of incitement is going to be central to the case.

US District Judge David Hale ruled out that the attackers were Trump agents but said it's plausible the would-be President incited a riot. He denied motions to dismiss or strike portions of the complaint.

There was an earlier thread about this brand of misbehavior and we talked about solutions then: Shame. Hopefully this man will feel the weight of it.
 

talktidy

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I see he's apologised. Grovelling comes to mind, so methinks someone threatened to turn off the flow of money to his political war chest. He's still going to have this stinking on his lawn for months, if not years to come, though.
 

Tazlima

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This is true, but I think the point is the "legal definition" of incitement, which has been defined--sort of, in the case of speech cases--by the Supreme Court. I don't know how a case involving this Mississippi guy's idiocy would play out, and we probably can't know unless someone acts on his call. But there IS a very similar case playing out right now, so we may find out. The one where an attacker is using "Trump encouraged me to" defense. Bearing in mind this is a civil case, not criminal, still the issue of incitement is going to be central to the case.



There was an earlier thread about this brand of misbehavior and we talked about solutions then: Shame. Hopefully this man will feel the weight of it.

From the linked article.

In court documents, Trump's attorneys denied the allegations, asked the court to dismiss the case and argued their client is "immune from suit because he is President.

And there you have it. DT's legal defense for everything in a nutshell...
 

kneedeepinthedoomed

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The First Amendment has to protect even disgusting speech - the stuff we don't like - if it's going to protect anything.

This wasn't just speech, though, this was an outright demand for murder (lynching) directed toward a specific group of people (those with a different opinion about Confederate monuments). Do the USA have no idea of hate speech? I'm starting to understand why some American internet forums I've been on think it OK for users to threaten murder to other users... the admins would just say, "that's freedom of speech".

Incomprehensible from a European perspective. Europe has free speech, but not free murder threats, insults or hate speech. Personally I find that a more reasonable approach.

Sincerely, a European
 

cornflake

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There are no qualifiers on the clause. The amendment says what it says.

Every qualification that has been placed on it is caselaw based.

As to hate speech -- that is not a thing, no. We don't prosecute for ugliness. We can prosecute for direct threats (depending), or direct provocation to violence (depending), or things like libel (depending). We do not prosecute insults, or cursing, or being racist or mean or cruel, nope. Sorry. That's how we roll. The First Amendment says "freedom of speech." It does not say "freedom of speech except" anything at all.

Also see RAV vs. St. Paul for how seriously we take this notion - that's a case in which the city attempted to prosecute people for burning a cross on the lawn of a black family. Unanimously, the Supreme Court said we do not do that here.
 

cmhbob

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This wasn't just speech, though, this was an outright demand for murder (lynching) directed toward a specific group of people (those with a different opinion about Confederate monuments).

But that's an overly broad group of people to threaten, and so it's not realistic. That could encompass hundreds of people. What he actually said was "If the...leadership of Louisiana wishes to...burn books or destroy historical monuments of our history, they should be lynched." I don't think from a criminal (or even civil) standpoint that that's specific enough to be actionable.

Cornflake seemed to get the idea I so clumsy tried to make.

Regdog, my impression of the internet recruiting process is that thee's a massive calls to get people riled up, then a few agents start trying to engage individuals. It's a filtering thing. They don't put a call out thinking they'll get thousands. They call thousands knowing they'll get half a dozen.
 

cornflake

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But it doesn't really have to protect people from getting fired, does it?

Employers firing people for what they say has zip to do with freedom of speech, unless they're specific types of gov't employees.
 

BoF

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Always found it interesting how fast Conservatives abandon each other when a member of the club who possesses a platform chooses to vocalize core tenets of Conservatism.
Freedom of speech doesn't gurantee a mic, a megaphone, or podium. Conservatives anbandon other conservatives when it moves out of the country club locker room via stump or smartphone recording. As has been said, "light is a disinfectant".

With the rise of smartphones and hidden cameras disinfectant light has grown rapidly.
 
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