Westboro Church chased out of town by an angry mob

[Darmalus]

I tend to draw the line where if it's "legitimate" official national violence or angry mob violence. There's a difference between 'We should kill all the X because of Y. We should go to war, vote for Z!" and "We should kill all the X because of Y. Grab your torches and hanging ropes!" Sure, all the X get killed, but it's the difference between national policy and personal vendetta. If killing all the X is justice or not is an entirely different question.

This is where the idea falls apart. What happens when national policy is dictated by personal vendettas? Does the vendetta gain legitimacy?

Yes. You may not like it, other nations may not like it, but it is now a legitimate national policy.

Leave the country, change the government, get someone else to invade on the behalf of the X. Just because you don't like it doesn't remove it's legitimacy within that government.

[Gandalf]

Yes. You may not like it, other nations may not like it, but it is now a legitimate national policy.

Leave the country, change the government, get someone else to invade on the behalf of the X. Just because you don't like it doesn't remove it's legitimacy within that government.

So an incitement to violence isn't an incitement to violence if it's expressed as national policy.

Can anyone on charges of incitement to violence declare themselves a nation to play this wonderful legalistic game?

[Darmalus]

So an incitement to violence isn't an incitement to violence if it's expressed as national policy.

Can anyone on charges of incitement to violence declare themselves a nation to play this wonderful legalistic game?

I believe the sovereign citizens are trying to give that a shot.

You can declare anything you want, actually getting it is a trial of force and popularity. Legitimacy is just a measure of how much your neighbors agree/aprove. It's why some nations are recognized and others aren't, why some laws are enforced and others aren't.

[Gandalf]

You can declare anything you want, actually getting it is a trial of force and popularity. Legitimacy is just a measure of how much your neighbours agree/approve. It's why some nations are recognised and others aren't, why some laws are enforced and others aren't.

Firstly, a nation need not be externally recognised to be a nation. I think this is causing an issue, so I'll change my wording slightly.

Is an incitement to violence an incitement to violence if it's a personal vendetta masquerading as state policy? I'm not asking about the legalities.

[Darmalus]

At your request I'm dropping the nations tangent.

Is an incitement to violence an incitement to violence if it's a personal vendetta masquerading as state policy? I'm not asking about the legalities.

An incitement to violence is an incitement to violence. There are different motivations and methods, some of which society approves of and encourages and some that it discourages, sometimes drastically.

If there are billboards saying "Join the army, kill those X!" and you have to put on a uniform and generally kill X under supervision of some sort. There are generally rules and some sort of accountability.

If the local Big Man whips up an angry mob and has it storm the ghettos to hang any X they find, there's no rules or accountability, just the inclinations of the mob.

This being human nature, there are an infinite number of shades of grey in between that make drawing a line in the sand a matter of personal opinion. What is legitimate to one person is illegitimate to another.

[Borgholio]

Fair enough. Here's a question for you and this thread at large. More than a few people have advocated "kill the Muslims because national security wills it." Would that count as an incitement to violence?

I would have to say, yes. Anybody with half a brain would know that not all Muslims are terrorists. Not all Muslims fly planes into buildings. Not all Muslims are suicide bombers. A great number of them want to just live their lives in peace and not be harassed. So if someone advocated killing all Muslims due to the actions of a handful, then that would be inciting violence and it would be hate speech.

[Simon_Jester]

I tend to draw the line where if it's "legitimate" official national violence or angry mob violence. There's a difference between 'We should kill all the X because of Y. We should go to war, vote for Z!" and "We should kill all the X because of Y. Grab your torches and hanging ropes!" Sure, all the X get killed, but it's the difference between national policy and personal vendetta. If killing all the X is justice or not is an entirely different question.

This is where the idea falls apart. What happens when national policy is dictated by personal vendettas? Does the vendetta gain legitimacy?

The difference is that when it becomes national policy AND is directed outward, it stops being a breach of the civil order. At that point it's an international law issue, not an intranational law issue.

If private citizens harass private citizens, it's a breach of the peace (in the civil sense).
If private citizens harass the government, it's a protest or a revolt, depending on how they do it.
If the government harasses private citizens, it's a civil rights violation.
If the government harasses another government, it's diplomacy as usual, or possibly an act of war.

There are different sets of rules governing each case, for good reasons.

When private citizens harass private citizens- well, that's pretty much literaly what governments were invented to prevent in the first place. We have a wide range of laws to discourage that, because it's relatively easy to enforce such laws in an orderly fashion, without a lot of needless brutality.

Private citizens harassing a government- governments ban that in self-defense, and because otherwise there'd be no way to enforce laws on anyone who didn't want them enforced, including most of the criminals.

Governments harassing private citizens- that's what constitutions are for. Governments get a lot of power to use on citizens because it's necessary for the public good, but the tendency to abuse it... well, just look how many threads we've got on that subject right now.

[Both mass government persecution of entire groups, and government persecution of specific individuals, fall under this heading]

Governments harassing other governments... there's no way to police it, so we do what we can with international law and the basic Westphalian system. Powerful governments tend to disrespect the rules precisely because we can't stop them without making things worse.