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There's been a minor news story recently after a teacher got well over a million bucks in settlement money, and there's a strong argument she shouldn't have gotten fired originally... and then you think about everyone who got fired and didn't get anywhere near the compensation or an order of magnitude under that, didn't get their jobs back, and didn't get the fawning political coverage, for something far less charged than saying the target of a political assassination (and his family!) deserved it.
But what really gets me is the dog that doesn't bark. Nicholas Decker's "When Must We Kill Them" (answer: when he wanted the substack revenue) wasn't accompanied by an involuntary commitment and a warrant; PopeHat's complaining about a Bluesky ban rather than the solitary confinement and involuntary medication after he called for people to kill Musk. Trace is back from his internship and has a lot to say, and can't quite get his dander up about the forum he built because TheMotte didn't respect the humanity of spree criminals and arsonists can't reflect on the humanity of a guy who talked. There's no serious investigation of all those Tesla arsons, nor are we getting lawsuits by people fired for supporting the Tesla arsons. Damore isn't independently wealthy; he got judges informing people the law required his speech be infringed. William Kelly probably got his job back, and if he got anything else it was a rounding error, for 25 USD in Rittenhouse donations.
We know what happens when people do things that progressive leadership oppose. It's not a surprise when it didn't happen here.
I'm a bit confused regarding the mentions of involuntary commitment and involuntary medication, although this might possibly be because I can't follow your old.reddit links anymore (Reddit recently blocked old.reddit without a login, and I don't have a Reddit account). Would you mind explaining what you're referring to as the counterexample?
I don't want to rest my position on that, specifically, since involuntary commitment and medication are rare (and a little unprincipled), while TheSchism or anti-arson or anti-discrimination laws were all supposed to be consistent and universalist by their own terms. But Nicholas Decker and Ken White's posts are within the bounds of stuff that has historically gotten a lot of negative attention, including warrants or arrests on their own, and when paired with other behavior or insufficient deference, escalated to commitments or medication.
Unfortunately, that sorta stuff usually doesn't get much attention (tbf, probably because it's not a great thing to publicize for either the nutjob's sake post-medication / calm down time, or for the general populace given contagion risks, in the cases it does turn out to be serious), so examples tend to be jank. So if you want a clear-cut example where it's clearly defensible speech, I'm not going to have one. All I've got are people about as crazy as Ken White.
I'll note that Decker did get investigated for that post, even if he seems to mostly have benefitted from it. And for all his hyperbole, the criterion of "revolt iff democracy abolished" is a popular one. Ken White (and thanks for being precise this time, as Clark Bianco was about median Mottizen before being kicked out) went a lot further.
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Welcome to the difference between public sector jobs and private sector jobs. https://www.fire.org/research-learn/what-free-speech-rights-do-government-employees-have
Because their speech is protected from the government under the 1st amendment. They did not make a True Threat. https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/true-threats/ https://www.fire.org/research-learn/how-and-why-true-threats-are-unprotected-speech
Their speech would not be protected from private actors, such as a future (private sector) employer or their friends or whoever else.
In case you missed the reference
That stops a conviction (maybe). It does less than nothing against a warrant. Moderators here have been Very Concerned about warrants for speech that would easily avoid Brandenberg.
Moderators here, quite properly, have decided that they don't want fedposting on their forum. Even if it wasn't a legal risk to the mods, tolerating fedposting makes the forum less able to fulfil its stated purpose.
That doesn't mean that the mods receiving a warrant for a common or garden fedpost is particularly likely.
Amadan has specifically and repeatedly noted concerns about a possible warrant to Zorba as a major motivating factor. Whether it's "particularly likely" enough for you to let it count, it's clearly enough for an actual person who actually hosting a website to care -- but only for one political allegiance.
Maybe related: the "contact us" page has a warrant canary saying no warrants have yet been received in 2023.
Probably just forgetting to update, it, but you never know.
This isn't the first time it's been noted.
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I don't get it. Is fedposting against the right allowed on this forum?
Nope.
But there's a lot of places it was tolerated, and not only did their management have no concerns about lawfare, more importantly, literally zero have shown up in the news having been hit by or having to resist that lawfare. There's no sequel to ARFCOM; there's no even a sequel to 'Discord Channel Shut Down for making fun of George Floyd'.
This isn't perfect information, just like there are limits to our ability to extrapolate from the lack of Brendan-Eich-facepunching aimed at modern day interleft-battles. It's still information.
I don't really understand what you are trying to say here.
First you say that fedposting is allowed only against figures on the right without lawfare. Then you provide a long post with examples of people saying kirk deserved to be shot and then say that no discord channels were shut down for this sort of behavior.
However, it's quite clear that saying that someone deserved to die is not fedposting. So the connection is unclear to me.
I'm saying that not-left-aligned organizations and groups have to be extremely cautious about tolerating fedposting because they have clear examples of lawfare and other destructive outside forces targeting them, often successfully. Left-aligned organizations don't fear that, and they have gotten away with fedposting without evidence of having to even resist any lawfare, and it cost them zero support among self-described 'normies'.
The moderators here have included far less overt advocacy than "His killer committed a just act." as fedposting.
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I'm fully on board with this - I wouldn't accept a small risk of attracting police attention for a fun online hobby either. But that remains a reasonable decision on the part of Zorba even if the risk is very small indeed.
I think it's a perfectly reasonable decision on Zorba's part. I even think it's a perfectly reasonable calculation on the part of progressive-leaning forum.
I'm critiquing the process, not the people reacting to the result.
Zorba never expressed a fear of being served a warrant or asked me to mod fedposters to prevent that from happening. That was me saying "Let's not post things that could result in Zorba being served a warrant," so blame me, not him.
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They came to an agreement about it https://www.13newsnow.com/article/news/local/mycity/norfolk/norfolk-resolves-issue-police-officer-william-kelly-fired-donating-to-rittenhouse-fund/291-045c4a2f-444d-4d1f-9d13-0bb9619b4b90
Clearly whatever the result is, Hogge is fine with it and did not wish to pursue further. I imagine it's probably something like a reinstatement (or promotion?) with a significant pay raise, but who knows. Still, if he wasn't happy with the result he could sue and would likely win so it must be considered good enough for him.
In the US, it absolutely does.
It does a lot against warrants. Blatantly anti first amendment abuse like that is very rare in modern day America, and typically from lower level government officials in smaller towns and cities when they do happen.
The moderators can decide whatever caution level they please, it doesn't mean this properly reflects US law. Also of course, not everyone here is an American and they would have to obey the laws of their own respective country.
Hogge's the lawyer, giving lawyer-speak for 'I can't even say I won'. Kelly got his job back, so he's not complaining and definitely not doing it somewhere where the department could get him fired for doing it, but there's no evidence he's come out of things with a million or even a hundred thousand bucks.
Party presentation rule, anyone?
I would be fascinated to see you explain what procedural protections are present in an ex parte warrant hearing in front of magistrate judges, where police and prosecutors don't even have a duty to present exculpatory evidence. The standard of probable cause means that even a warrant focusing on arguably protected speech is fair game for that 'arguably' result in a search warrant to be evaluated post-ante at trial, and that's before we get to the continuing effort by lower courts to water down Brandenburg.
We don't know the circumstances, but obviously Kelly and his lawyer are fine with the outcome and didn't seek more. If they are fine with it, what's the complaint?
The only real modern example I can think of where blatantly anti first amendment abuse of the criminal justice system happened would be James Comey, who wasn't convicted. It's an incredibly weak indictment that basically every legal expert expects to get thrown out.
We don't know they're fine with it; we just know that they think it's the best strategic choice. Which is probably true, since they don't have a friendly administration on the other side of the lawsuit.
But there's another bit I'll highlight. The time from April 20, 2021 to February 27, 2023. Can you guess whether the college staff was fired for her speech longer, or shorter, than Kelly?
Well they said they are, so absent anything else I don't see why we should not believe them.
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