“All he had to do was walk away,” Kolvet said of Boyles
He tried walking away. He walked away and these guys kept following him and taunting him/defaming him. A person can only be reasonably expected to tolerate that for so long.
This was clearly harassment with the intent to goad the professor into an action that Turning Point could spin in their favor. Either a frustrated "leave me alone" or some act of violence. After that, they'd use editing to remove their harassment so that it seemed like he got flustered and/or resorted to violence after the first innocent question.
In the United States, if you insult someone so that they punch you, it's your fault. As we get more non-white or openly LGBT judges and prosecutors, hopefully they will enforce the law as written.
The fighting words doctrine, in United States constitutional law, is a limitation to freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
In 1942, the U.S. Supreme Court established the doctrine by a 9–0 decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire.[1] It held that "insulting or 'fighting words', those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace" are among the "well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech the prevention and punishment of [which] … have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem."
To be clear, it’s not just insults in general. If you walk up to someone and say “you look like poop” and they respond by punching you square in the face, that’s on them. You need to go above and beyond in your attempted insults to raise to the level of fighting words.
Not gonna lie if I saw someone walk up to some dude and say "you look like poop" only to get fucking decked I think id be laughing too hard to care about right or wrong.
if you insult someone so that they punch you, it's your fault
That's not quite true. That's speech that you can be arrested for.
For use of force, or throwing a punch, here's the justifications for force in one of the states in which I've had to work with the law: https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PE/htm/PE.9.htm#9.22 Look at 9.31(b)(1). It specifically says that force is not justified based on verbal provocation alone. It doesn't matter what they say. As long as the speech doesn't constitute a threat, then you cannot swing freely and claim self-defense as a legal defense.
I don’t see anything in what you quoted about getting punched being your fault
Thems fighting words.
If that poster could read, they'd be very upset.
The veritas playbook!
*Project Veritas
That sure sounds like terrorism to me. Just scare everyone into agreeing with you by being violent toward them, right? It’s the conservative way.
They need to be investigated as a criminal organization.
Turning point should be treated like the hate group they are.
Absolutely
I would not be surprised if a doj investigation into their email servers over the next 3 years or so revealed some absolutely horrendous shit that they've been doing while claiming to be Noble do-gooders.
Why would the police investigate themselves?
How else are they going to declare they’ve been investigated and no wrongdoing was found?
Nazis
Not a great situation, but he doesn't have the right to lunge for the cameraman as he did. He was dealt with using minimal and reasonable force and was not further attacked after the threat was over. I wouldn't want charges for anyone over such a minor incident, but if anyone is charged it should be the attacker.
Sorry, but I believe you are entirely wrong. Even the police are investigating it as aggravated assault by the right wing idiots. If the professor felt threatened (especially due to being harassed), he was within his rights to defend himself, even if that meant he made the first move.
He was outnumbered two to one, and they were stalking and verbally harassing him with the intent to incite a reaction. Additionally, that kind of speech is not protected. If anyone should get charges, it's the two abusers.
But after Inside Higher Ed interviewed Kolvet, Arizona State released what Adam Wolfe, the police spokesman, said was security footage taken from atop a parking garage on the main Tempe, Ariz., campus. The video shows Boyles reaching for the camera, seemingly trying to grab it or otherwise stop the recording—but the Turning Point interviewer, in all black with a backward baseball cap, almost immediately pushes Boyles face-first onto the concrete.
As another person commented…
