Some Thoughts About Inciting Violence

I believe in personal accountability. Each person is responsible for their own actions. If someone does something, that's on them, no matter what anybody else said or did.

I also believe in freedom of speech. People should be allowed to share their thoughts and opinions.

This puts me in a tricky situation when it comes to the topic of inciting violence. I believe that it's immoral to encourage violence. In fact, I think it should probably be illegal, but I can't help wondering why I think that. If the responsibility for an action falls on the one who performed it, not the one who incited it, and if the inciter's only crime was saying certain words, then what is the moral justification of laws against inciting violence?

One person I know has argued that more than one person can share responsibility for a person's actions. The person who performed the action is responsible for their action, but so is anyone who encouraged that action. The actor may carry more responsibility than the inciter, but the inciter still carries some.

But should that be illegal? I'm wary of any law that opposes free speech because I believe that it's important for individuals to be able to openly share their opinions, especially on political topics. If any individual or party wanted to silence another, all they would need is an argument for how their opponents' ideologies could lead to violence, and they could abuse anti-incitement laws to silence their political opponents. I may be succumbing to a "slippery slope" fallacy, but I'm not certain that I am. Laws against inflammatory speech seem to be too easy to abuse.

Still, I am not okay with people openly encouraging violence. I believe that it increases the likelihood of people committing very serious crimes and sins. Crime and sin should be discouraged, not encouraged, so I feel that there should be some sort of punishment in place to disincentivize incitement.

There is still a question of what counts as "inciting violence" and what doesn't. If we can determine a clear, objective definition, that would make an anti-incitement law easier to enforce and harder to abuse. But, in the absence of a good definition, I'm almost willing to say that inciting violence (whatever that means) shouldn't be illegal.

I'm kind of on the fence about this. I should explore this topic further, and I probably will in my philosophy class, but for now, I just hope that we don't have to vote on any anti-incitement laws until I've figured out how I feel about them.