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Free Speech Tag

Two days ago black-clad Antifa thugs beat people in Berkeley as police mostly stood on the sidelines, as we documented in Journalist amid Antifa Berkeley Riots: “Police have completely disappeared … People getting beaten up”. ABC News reported that police were ordered not to intervene:
Berkeley Police Chief Andrew Greenwood said officers were told not to actively confront the anarchists. He applauded officers' restraint, saying it forestalled greater violence.
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Areguin, while criticizind the Antifa violence, approved of the police stepping back and effectively ceding the streets:

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in discussing the limits of free speech, wrote in Schenck v. U.S. (1919):
"The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic."
A lot of people mess up the quote, saying that "you can't yell fire in a crowded theater." Actually you can yell fire in a crowded theater, if there really is a fire.

Officers in Laguna Beach have arrested Richard Lousy who allegedly sucker punched a black Trump supporter at a rally on Sunday. R.C. Maxwell told FOX 11 the attack was unprovoked:
"If the optics were completely different and I was a black lives matter supporter and I was attacked on the Trump side of a protest I would be in the spotlight on CNN right now," Maxwell said. "I went over to the left side to see if I could engage them with dialogue and I was instantly encircled by the so called anti fascists."

We recently reported how anti-Jihad websites were the subject of attempts to deprive them of funding and internet access as a result of appearing on "hate" lists from the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League. PayPal cut them off after outreach from ProPublica, as discussed in our post, Charlottesville is being exploited to attack freedom of speech and internet freedom.

Antifa justifies its violent actions against neo-Nazis protesting peacefully by saying that the speech of Nazis constitutes violence:
Antifa leaders admit they're willing to physically attack anyone who employs violence against them or who condones racism -- as long as force is used in the name of eradicating hatred...

This was a really bad week for freedom of speech and internet freedom. As documented in my post Gathering Storms And Threats to Liberty, corporations that operate the gateways to the internet, such as domain registrars and services such as Cloudfare, have come under pressure and have capitulated to drive the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer from the internet. That pressure is now moving to other organizations based on biased and politicized "hate" lists from groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League. I pointed out the danger to internet freedom:

We're living in a very dangerous time. Several things are coming together that pose a serious threat to the liberty of anyone who is right-of-center. While there are many factors at work, I've been focused in recent days on three: (1) Antifa becoming a part of the anti-Trump Resistance; (2) politically-motivated denial of access to the internet at the gatekeeper level; and (3) attempts to weaken free speech protections in the name of social justice.