AntiWar

 

Anti-War

It seems like we are always hearing about anti-war protests. People are protesting the war in Gaza and the war in Ukraine, so we are still able to protest as citizens, at least for now. If we think about the anti-war movement, we think about the Vietnam War protests in 1965 through the late 70s. We think about protests taking place on college campuses. We do hear about protests about wars in the news, but we never talk about the hot spot of the war itself.  We know what these protesters are complaining about, usually it is human rights violations taking place in the war, the deaths, and the violence against people, animals and land. We can read about what started a war, but it is usually in vague terms with buzzwords and rage bait thrown about to get the reader upset. And the readers get upset, but what can they do about it? And what are they upset about? The war or the cause of the war? 

If we wonder why we went to war in the Middle East in the 2000s, we may hear about weapons of mass destruction, but as we know now, there were no weapons like that. Were we lied to? Why were we lied to? What was the real cause? We never hear about it. The news doesn’t explain why these wars happen, and the government doesn’t want citizens to go up against it, so we know there are wars, and we know there are protests, and that is about all we know, except that the media does not seem to be doing its job in explaining. Why? This is all because of the First Amendment. People have the right to protest against anything like the government and businesses. Sometimes we protest in person, sometimes we protest with our wallet. This amendment gives us the right to free speech with very few exceptions, but there are exceptions and the one that is in play here is incitement. In criminal law, incitement is the encouragement of another person to commit a crime. Depending on the jurisdiction, some or all types of incitement may be illegal. Where illegal, it is known as an inchoate offense, where harm is intended but may or may not have actually occurred. 

So how is writing about the war or expressing anti-war sentiment encouraging someone to commit a crime? The government believes that if people know the details of wars, they may resist the government’s actions. This resistance could be violent and that could be a crime. If a news organization is accused of incitement, they would lose their credentials and reporters could be imprisoned. While looking at the website Anti-War, it’s confusing to understand what each article means.  It’s almost like it's a jumble on purpose for deniability. They want to make you see the facts and make sure they don't get caught for incitement. It leaves you with questions on what is possibly going on with this war. In another website, The American Conservative, they talk about wars in small details because the organization does not want to get in trouble and they can avoid that by only looking at small details of larger wars. The news organization does not need to be violent; the people’s violent response is caused by the news organization according to the law.