Empty chair hung over a branch...Obama is target of racists

Last night on the Fox local news cast, I almost could not believe what I saw.  It was an empty lawn chair hanging from a rope looped over a tree limb in a Loveland man's front yard.  For those without a background in US racial history,  African Americans in the South who dared to become  "uppity" and were outspoken in complaining  about their conditions or who were accused of a crime  were met with the racist based Ku Klux Klan with a noose and hung from a tree limb. The body was left there as a message to others.  It is one of the darkest chapters in US history and the practice, called "lynching",  lingered into the 1930's.

The reference to those practices has cropped up from time to time.  The noose analogy appeared  in the 2008 campaign, perpetrated by racists who opposed the election of an African American  president.  However, the 2012 version is even starker.  The noose analogy is appearing in the South and now even in Colorado...but the connection is made even more pointedly with Pres. Obama  with addition of  the empty lawn chair and the rope over the tree branch..

If  actor  Clint Eastwood  accomplished anything by his address to the Republican National Convention, it was his stage drama type  conversation with President Obama symbolized by the empty chair that contributed to  the widely panned failure of the Convention to move the polling needle toward Romney. I am sure Eastwood is  shocked  how his empty chair has become  a tool of racist expression..

However, there is no question what the empty chair symbolized.  It was the President. The addition of the rope over the limb of the tree that  leaves no doubt what is being stated. "The President is Black and he should be lynched." 

The Loveland man's neighbors were interviewed and they expressed their interpretation of the act and condemned it as racist.  They were obviously appalled and incensed.  The man was also interviewed and he said the reason he put hung the chair on a rope over his tree limb...was because vandals steal chairs sitting out front of his house..  Come, come.  If he were so ignorant and so naive and it was brought to his attention how abhorrent his act was to so many, he would have removed his rope and the chair. He had not and the practice in the South has already received media exposure.  No one said he should be sent to jail for his acts, because he has the right to express his opinion, no matter how his fellow citizens would object to its racist statement.

What the Loveland man did was a visual form of hate speech, every bit  of  an expression of hate as the anti-Mohammed film that has sparked the riots against US embassies in Muslim countries.

This is an example of hate speech protected by the US Constitution. He has the freedom to express himself so long as it does not result in inciting violence or committing a crime.  If such a visual, public statement  were made in opposition to the leader of many countries, it would be considered an act of treason and that man would have found himself in a jail cell, or worse.

For a greater understanding of how hate speech is protected in the US, I wrote a blog posted below for the benefit of my friends who read my blog and facebook world wide.  I translated it into Croatian and Arabic with the help of Google, in addition to posting the English version.

Understanding the concept of free speech in the US

I have been asked by some of my European friends, how is it that hate speech against Jews is called anti-Semitic, hate speech against African Americans is called racism, but the hateful film about Mohammed that caused the violence in the Arab world is called by Americans   “free speech”.

They are all hate speech. However, anti Semitic literature and racial slurs are considered free speech, too, in the US, even if  those who utter it are verbally condemned by their fellow citizens.  Most of the world does not understand the US concept of free speech because it is quite different than what the rest of the world assumes it is .

 To understand the US version, our European friends should separate public and political  expression of  personal or official opinion from government action.  The key is: what does the government do when hate is uttered.  In some countries, the speaker is thrown into jail.  In others, students are forbidden to wear any form of religious preference…a head scarf, a star of David, a cross.   In the US, you are not prosecuted by any government for wearing any of these symbols of religious belief.  Such expression is protected by the US Constitution.  Even if you have a swastika on your T shirt, you may get dirty looks, but you will not go to jail for it. What people say when accusing   someone of  uttering hate, such as calling someone anti Semitic  or a gay basher  is  tolerated even if saying so  is offensive to others. 

There is a limit to free speech:  The  US Supreme Court’s ultimate test is “shouting fire in a crowded theater” is not free speech.  People panic and get hurt as they rush to the exits. Rallying a group to demonstrate violently…setting cars on fire, smashing windows..etc..will also lead to prosecution by the government.  If police determine a demonstration is violating the law, such as blocking a street without a permit, that is against the law and if the group refuses to obey police orders to stop such actions, they too are subject to arrest and prosecution. Such happened in anti Wall Street demonstrations in Denver this summer.   When the demonstrators failed to move their tents and barriers from the street, they were arrested and spent the night in jail or got a citation and were released.

 Another kind of limit has been placed  into law recently:  if the motivation of a person to commit a crime such as vandalism, arson or assault or even murder is   hate against a religion, sexual preference, or ethnic or racial person or group,  the crime is considered a federal one and penalties are far greater  than just the usual ones for those crimes.   If  a mosque is firebombed,  that is investigated as a hate crime.  If a synagogue is firebombed, it is also investigated as a hate crime. If a gay person is attacked by someone, and that attacker either says something or has indicated somewhere else that they have hate against gays, they will also be subject to investigation for a hate crimes. If they are found guilty, the penalties will be more severe than if they were not motivated by hate.

Here  is why the film that insulted Mohammed, put together by someone who appears to be a Coptic Christian in California, did not result in his arrest.  He was a prior convicted fraudster and might be imprisoned for violating terms of his release from prison time later, but imprisonment  would not be due to the film.  One could say he shouted fire, and someone in the Middle East  resorted to violence against US embassies, but there were those in the Middle East who also translated  and  used the hateful words as a way to incite  violent protests, too.  That the violence resulted because of third party use of the film muddies the water of guilt  and the violence that resulted was not committed in the US or  subject to US laws, so  the US Constitution could not be invoked. In fact, few ever saw the film until someone posted a trailer on the internet.

 Regardless of that, as US officials said, peaceful protests are justified  but violent protests should not be tolerated and the  killers of the US ambassador and 3 other US officials will be brought to justice.  It appears the Libyans are prepared to be the ones to do it.   What US officials, both Hillary Clinton and Pres. Obama  have said firmly is that the film does not represent the US policies and they  roundly condemned the film  as disgusting and hateful.    As an individual, I am invoking my right to  free speech to condemn it, too.