Were Donald Trump’s remarks at the rally preceding the melee in the Capitol Building a defensible exercise of free speech? The answer would appear to be No. Without parsing the current U.S. law on the subject, I would note that the underlying principle traces back to a passage in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. Mill, who was as close as one can be to a free speech absolutist, laid out one sole exception. It reads in full:
[E]ven opinions lose their immunity when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act. An opinion that corn dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard.
There are a couple of noteworthy features to the Millian exception: 1) whether or
— source normanfinkelstein.com | norman finkelstein | Jan 15, 2021