"Speech Acts" under law

U.S. Ayatollahs’ prosecutable offenses

Edited by Carolyn Bennett

“Protections afforded by the First Amendment are not absolute, and we have long recognized that the government may regulate certain categories of expression consistent with the Constitution....” [Justice Sandra Day O’Connor for the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003]

Charles Glass writes in “The Secular Fatwa on Julian Assange.”

The Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in February of 1989 inciting the faithful to murder author Salman Rushdie for blasphemy.  Professional writers convened in London, New York, and elsewhere within a few days of this action to discuss countering the threat.…

Recent incitements from politicians, journalists, and pundits to murder [WikiLeaks founder] Julian Assange are a new, secular fatwa threatening the freedom to disseminate information.… Calls for the death of Assange are incitements to murder as much as was the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa.

The question is whether such speech is protectable under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Those demanding murder [e.g., “Assange ‘should be assassinated’ and (the U.S. president) ‘should put out a contract and maybe use a drone’ to kill him] are not merely stating facts or lies, opinions or observations.… [T]hey are acting — their statements are ‘speech acts.’ …

“If someone comes to your house with a firing squad and declares, ‘Ready, aim, fire’ — when the case comes before the court, the First Amendment would provide no defense against a charge of murder.…”

The [U.S.] Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in July 2003 expressly condemned “the idea that incitement to murder is permissible free speech.” The CPA “shut down the Al Mustaqila newspaper for urging death to ‘spies and those who cooperate with the U.S.’”

Again, Justice O’Connor writes for the Court.

“...a State may punish those words “which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.” We have consequently held that fighting words — ‘those personally abusive epithets which, when addressed to the ordinary citizen, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke violent reaction’ — are generally proscribable [prohibited, impermissible] under the First Amendment [of the United States Constitution].”

Therefore, Glass concludes, U.S. Attorneys General in the states where public figures have demanded the killing of Julian Assange must investigate whether these incitements to murder may be prosecutable.

Sources and notes

“The Secular Fatwa on Julian Assange” (Charles Glass), December 14, 2010,  pranvera.smith2@frontlineclub.com. Full article in Takimag.com, edited and published by Taki Theodoracopulos, http://takimag.com/article/the_secular_fatwa_on_julian_assange

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, VIRGINIA, PETITIONER v. BARRY ELTON BLACK, ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF VIRGINIA , April 7, 2003,

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court, http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/virginiavblack.html

Also Case Summary for Virginia v. Black Argued: December 11, 2002 Decided: April 7, 2003, http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/faclibrary/casesummary.aspx?case=Virginia_v_Black

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