CommentsCORRUPTION WATCH-The Supreme Court opinion forbidding shouting “fire” in a crowded theater should morally apply to the hatred and violence Donald Trump is fomenting in America. The pertinent passage from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ opinion reads:
“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree.” [bold added] Schenck v. United States 249 U.S. 47, 52 (1919)
How the Law Is Applied
The law sets down basic premises and thereafter people have to assess behavior against the words in the law. Whether the law is a statute, or a legal case, we need to break it down into its key words: “false,” “shout,” “panic,” “clear and present danger,” and “substantive evils.” These elements must be analyzed to see whether someone is within the bounds of free speech or if they are shouting fire in a crowded theater.
The Liar-in-Chief
The recent focus has been on Trump who shouts falsehoods louder than anyone else. Starting with the campaign, Trump shouted about Mexicans being rapists and criminals, posing a danger to America. Other favorite Trump targets have been: “The Media,” “Globalists,” “Internationalists,” and “Hollywood elites.” These are right-wing code words for Jews. Many people missed how Trump conflated his attacks on immigrants and other foreigners with coded attacks on Jews. When one reviews his speeches, one sees how often the anti-Jewish code words appear when Trump attacks who he blames for thwarting Trump’s Making America Great Again agenda.
When his own economic adviser Gary Cohen resigned, Trump made certain to connect the Jewish Mr. Cohen with the Globalists. Let’s be clear what this code word means.
“The term ‘globalist’ is a bit like the term ‘thug.’ It’s an epithet that is disproportionately directed at a particular minority group. Just as ‘thug’ is often used to invoke the stereotype that African Americans are violent, ‘globalist’ can play on the stereotype that Jews are disloyal. Used that way, it becomes a modern-day vessel for an ancient slur: that Jews—whether loyal to international Judaism or international capitalism or international communism or international Zionism—aren’t loyal to the countries in which they live.”
Does Trump shout?
Does a bear…?
Does Trump cause panic?
Panic leads to wildly unthinking behavior; it results in violence based on hyper-emotionalism. The meaning of a message is in its receipt. When Robert Bowers murdered 11 Jews in the Pittsburgh synagogue, he believed that Jews were slaughtering his people. According to a doctor who spoke with him and to first responders, Bowers said the noise was telling him that his “people were being slaughtered.” And who legitimized Bowers’ delusion other than Donald Trump? A few days before in Houston, Trump had invoked the code word “Nationalist” to describe himself. Within the lexicon of the far-right wing, “Nationalists” oppose the “Globalists,” the “Internationalists,” the “Jews.” Most Americans are unaware of these code words just as they cannot decipher gang writing on freeway signs, but Trump has access to the world’s most informed experts on extremist groups. They have repeatedly told Trump that he is using anti-Semitic memes.
Is there a clear and present danger?
On October 22 when Trump went to Houston, the nation was dealing with a bomb being mailed to Democrat George Soros, who is Jewish. Trump’s advisers had to have told him that this time was particularly perilous. Mail bombs provide a social context for more violence. Mentally unstable people gain psychological encouragement from other extremist acts. Thus, law enforcement warned that the mail bombs pose a clear and present danger of other violence.
What did Trump do? He went to Houston and gave his “Ich bin ein Nationalist” speech that was a coded green light to the extremists. During his Houston rally, Trump twice declared that “we are putting America first,” which is a Pre-WW II anti-Semitic meme. Then, he shouted out about “corrupt power-hungry globalists. You know what a Globalist is,” Trump yelled. Yeah, the Nazis and other right-wing extremists know; Globalist means Jews.
“A globalist wants the globe to do well not caring about our country so much. We can’t have that,” Trump proclaimed while strumming the banjo strings about disloyal Jews. He told the cheering crowd in Houston, “We can’t have that.” How does a mentally ill person stop the disloyal Jews? You kill them.
When Trump called himself a “nationalist,” he made certain that the right wingers knew that he knew what it meant. “It’s sort of an old word. I am not supposed to use that word,” he admitted. That’s right! The President of the United States is not supposed to shout out anti-Semitic memes calling for the murder of Jews. Yet, he uses it to wild cheers.
Did Substantive Evils Result?
That depends on whom you ask. Far too many Trump supporters find pleasure in the massacre of Jews. Why? Because they fervently believe that Jews are disloyal internationalists who are preventing Trump from Making American Great Again. Millions of other Americans believe that murdering Jews because the President shouts that we cannot have Globalists is a substantive evil.
Will the massacre in Pittsburgh change anything in America? No. Both the GOP and the Dems make too much money off the death, the blood and suffering of Americans to be willing to stop it.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams’ views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
