After [Asswipe] pleaded guilty to charges in connection with painting swastikas on an Indiana synagogue’s property and setting the yard ablaze, his attorney argued in court documents that the 21-year-old man did not deserve prison time.I guess I have a twinge of sympathy for Asswipe's attorney. He had a pretty tough sell to make. But the judge didn't buy it, Asswipe got three years.
...
Prisons are hotbeds for brainwashing by white supremacists, [Asswipe's] lawyer, Samuel Ansell, wrote in a sentencing memo filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana. Probation and significant community service were more appropriate punishments, Ansell wrote.
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Ansell argued that [Asswipe's] radicalization was heavily influenced by what his wife, who was 17 at the time of the crime, had been reading online. “According to [Asswipe], she began with rightwing yet mainstream views such as those presented on Fox News,” Ansell’s sentencing memo said. “She then moved on to writings by Ben Shapiro and articles on Breitbart News which bridged the gap to the notorious white supremacist and anti-Semitic propaganda site Stormfront.”
[Asswipe] “bought into the propaganda,” Ansell wrote.
Asswipe's attempt in court to throw Mrs. Asswipe under the bus must have been unconvincing as fuck. She got probation in state court, the Feds apparently didn't think she was the primary culprit.
Hate speech has its consequences. I believe that these low-wattage fools think that Trump sympathizes with what they are doing. The remind me of gay-bashers who are shocked when the cops arrest them for their crimes.
"Hate Speech" is one thing. First Amendment and all that.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to *Actions*, then things get different.
The problem with "Hate Speech" is that the definitions change, and what defines Hate Speech is in the eye of the beholder.
But when one takes action, then there are (and should be) consequences.
I, personally, think he got off lightly
There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or "fighting" words--those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.
ReplyDelete— Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 1942[3]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words#United_States
The first amendment does cover propaganda, in that there is no crime in believing something to be true that isn't.
ReplyDeletePropaganda, though, does work as intended on a certain percentage of the population.
Since the harm to society from propaganda is well established and no legislative remedy is available under our constitution, the only remaining remedies are social in nature, and none of them have been shown to be all that effective against the damage done by the propaganda.
So we get bumbling hate crimes which are hard to prosecute.
We try to prosecute them as best we can anyway, knowing the root of the problem and trying to be mindful of the rights of those not adversely affected by the propaganda.
It's a messy process, but peril lies in the streamlining of it, so we do what we can to do what's right when we don't agree on what that is.
The propagandists, though, know what they're doing.
I really don't like them at all.
-Doug in Oakland
The problem with Chaplinsky is that damn near every time a case that cites it as justification reaches the Supremes, they narrow the holding. The pissant motherfuckers of the Westboro Baptist Church were prosecuted for spewing their vile hatred at funerals, that didn't fly when it reached the Supreme Court.
ReplyDeleteBut Neo-Nazi/Alt-Right commentators have brought us Charlottesville, Comet Pizza, Tree of Life, Emanuel AME and others, including these two Asswipes. There are susceptible people being radicalized by the far-right commentariat.
The reality is that the U.S. is getting a taste of online radicalization with a twist. What has been happening with the jihadist over the past couple of decades plus is now developing in the radical right, at warp speed, because of the internet. This doesn’t bode well for the U.S., at least as we knew it.
ReplyDelete