this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2025
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How so? I think there's a very clear distinction between the example he gave and what I was talking about. Streicher was a full blown Nazi party member and he held public office under their rule. His position in government is to actively enable a genocide through propaganda. That's not a private citizens with vile opinions, that's a public official acting on his beliefs directly. If Streicher was a private individual who held Nazi beliefs, he would have not been hanged for them because those are just his opinions, as vile as they may be.
In your original comment, the distinction you made was between speech and action, nothing to do with whether they were a private citizen or member of the government. Now in this comment you are claiming that speech ("propaganda", from your perspective) constitutes action. Are you trying to claim that hate speech & propaganda are "actions" if they come from an individual working for the state, but not from a private individual. As I said, your comments contradict each other in that sense.
I don't think you understand the distinction. Free speech, as a principle, exists to protect and allow all people to privately hold and voice any opinion without persecution from the government. This principle doesn't extend to people who are making speech on behalf of the state. That's not their personal opinions, that's the narratives the government wants to release to the public. It is their job to release this propaganda, and that's an action to fulfill the obligations of the work they've been tasked with. Keep in mind, public officials still obviously have freedom of speech as they're still people, however, this protection doesn't extend to what they do within the capacity of their offices. That's the big difference between someone like Kirk and someone like Streicher.
Also just to be clear, I'm not one of those free speech "absolutists", I specifically said that I think the exceptions that are currently defined federally for the 1st amendment are the golden standard. Btw these exceptions are obscenity, child pornography, defamation, fraud, incitement to imminent lawless action, true threats, fighting words, and speech integral to illegal conduct. These pretty much cover everything that needs to be an exception. They're clear enough to set objective standards, but also have some ambiguity to allow for nuance. I don't think hate speech covers anything that's not already covered, I also think that hate speech as a concept is inherently more subjective, arbitrary, and therefore more volatile than the already existing exceptions.
Your point about freedom of speech is well and fine, however that's unrelated to the contradiction I am pointing out. Speech does not become action solely by virtue of the speech being made on behalf of a state.