Brandenburg's speech also calls for violent action against minorities solely on the basis of their race and religion. After all, as far as news publications have reported, Trump did not use racial epithets in his riot-related Tweets and during his address prior to the riot. It is Brandenburg's choice of words in regard to violence, and not his diction in regard to race, that justifies drawing attention to the similarity between Brandenburg's and President Trump's words. The speech, reminiscent of President Trump’s condemnation of minorities during his first run for President and filled with the kinds of language President Trump used as a possible “accomplice to an act of violence” during the Capitol Hill riot, reads like a catalogue of racist and bigoted terms used to further disenfranchise already severely victimized people. This test, the “incitement to imminent lawless action” test, gauges whether speech is “likely” and “imminently” to cause “lawless action.” If speech is “likely” and “imminently” to cause “lawless action,” it is not protected by The First Amendment, the court in Brandenburg found.īrandenburg, the appellant, had phoned a radio station to invite its reporters to a Ku Klux Klan rally, which he ultimately attended and where he delivered a speech replete with disgusting epithets directed against Black and Jewish people. Of particular importance in regard to Brandenburg is the test developed in this case for determining whether incendiary speech comparable to President Trump’s is protected under The First Amendment.
In the same year as Brandenburg and roughly a year after the aforementioned traumatic events, The Manson Family butchered actress Sharon Tate (pregnant for eight and a half months) and four other people. Kennedy’s assassination and the civil unrest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
444 (1969), roughly a year after Civil Rights trailblazer Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Civil Rights Movement advocate and 1968 presidential candidate Robert F. Precedent likely to protect President Trump’s speech before and during the onslaught against the Capitol was set into judicial record in landmark U.S.
To make this claim, although this article neither endorses this possible finding nor the opposite of such a finding, case law dating to 1969 is relevant. Arafa, SJD observed earlier today during my interview with him. And, in the time since the election, Trump has regularly Tweeted with extremely strong language about the need to challenge the election, saturating his social media rhetoric with words overwhelmingly characterized by many as calls for “insurrection,” Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell Law School and Professor of Law at Alexandria University in Egypt Mohamed A. (Available at:, Accessed 12 January 2021.) As the violence progressed, President Trump commended the protesters as “great patriots” via Twitter, while he at the same time advised them to return “home in peace.” However, characterizing the protesters as “great patriots,” while still advising them to return “home in peace,” regardless of whether it seemed as if he were trying to pacify the offenders by saying the latter, may still amount to an endorsement of their violence. The congressional chambers were cleared by security officials, and improvised explosives were later found at the scene, reported last week. However, while this article is not meant to compromise pushes for greater observance of universal First Amendment protections, this analysis of the riot may problematize First Amendment absolutism, given that protections for such speech that might have resulted in the Capitol Hill tragedy could be a factor in emboldening some of the more problematic Trump-like figures engaged in speech comparable to his during the civil unrest last week. It is also not meant to suggest that this article necessarily indicates agreement with the contention that President Trump's words, prior to and even during the riot, constituted "incitement to insurrection." What is written herein is merely an observation. This claim is not an endorsement of his conduct.
Trump’s incendiary "calls to action," that may have resulted in the Capitol Hill riot, occupy a part of judicial history yielding precedent that could afford him free speech protections under The First Amendment.