The Redefinition of Incitement

Political language has always been heated, but something fundamentally different is happening in American discourse. Both the political left and right are systematically redefining "incitement" and "violence" to justify increasingly authoritarian responses to speech they find objectionable. This linguistic sleight of hand represents one of the gravest threats to free expression in modern American history.

The Elastic Definition Problem

During a recent episode of The Capitalist Corner, one viewer noted: "Has anyone else noticed that right wingers are starting to stretch the definition of incitement and violence to justify harassing people for bad takes?" This stretching isn't limited to one political tribe - it's become a bipartisan assault on the First Amendment.

The problem lies in abandoning any objective standard for what constitutes actual incitement. As Michael Liebowitz noted, "If it just means something that angers somebody else, then we're done." When incitement becomes synonymous with "speech that makes people angry," every political opinion becomes potentially criminal.

True incitement requires a direct, immediate connection between speech and resulting violence. It's not enough for someone to say something inflammatory online and then claim that any subsequent violence was "incited" by those words. There must be a clear causal chain - specific words directed at specific people capable of acting on them immediately.

The Politics of Emotional Harm

The redefinition extends beyond incitement to the concept of violence itself. Increasingly, political actors treat disagreeable speech as equivalent to physical violence. This conceptual merger serves a dual purpose: it elevates the perceived harm of opposing viewpoints while justifying increasingly aggressive responses to them.

When Stephen Miller labels the entire Democratic Party as "not a political party" but "a domestic extremist organization," he's not just engaging in hyperbole - he's laying groundwork for treating political opposition as a security threat. Similarly, when left-wing activists describe conservative speech as "violence," they're creating justification for physical confrontation with speakers.

This represents a fundamental category error with dangerous implications. Words and violence are different phenomena requiring different responses. When we collapse this distinction, we lose the ability to respond proportionally to actual threats while simultaneously criminalizing legitimate political discourse.

The Authoritarian Endgame

Both sides engage in this redefinition because it serves their immediate political interests. The left uses it to silence conservative speakers on campuses and social media platforms. The right uses it to justify federal crackdowns on protest movements and opposition journalism.

But as Mark Pellegrino warned, "This stuff goes round and round and round and round. It's a circle jerk of violence that needs to end." Today's victor in the speech-policing game becomes tomorrow's victim when political power shifts.

The historical pattern is clear: expanded government powers created to target one's political enemies inevitably get turned against their creators. 

The Constitutional Framework Under Attack

The First Amendment wasn't designed to protect popular speech - popular speech doesn't need protection. It exists specifically to safeguard unpopular, offensive, and controversial expression because these forms of speech are most vulnerable to suppression.

Leonard Peikoff observed that there comes a time when physical resistance becomes necessary - specifically when the First Amendment is eliminated. We're watching both political parties systematically undermine this foundational protection, each convinced that their cause justifies the erosion.

The danger isn't just that bad actors are redefining these terms - it's that large portions of the public are accepting these redefinitions. When people genuinely believe that opposing political views constitute "violence" or "terrorism," they become willing participants in their own disenfranchisement.

Defending free speech requires more than just opposing censorship - it requires maintaining clear conceptual boundaries between different types of human action. Violence is physical. Incitement requires immediate causal connection to violent action. Disagreement, criticism, and even harsh rhetoric are forms of speech, not violence.

This isn't a call for civility or niceness in political discourse. The point is that we must maintain the distinction between words and actions, between speech and violence, between political opposition and actual threats to public safety.

The alternative is a system where whoever controls the definitional framework controls the bounds of permissible thought. In such a system, political power determines what constitutes "incitement," "violence," or "terrorism" - and those definitions will always align perfectly with the interests of those in power.

As we watch both parties abandon constitutional principles for tribal advantage, Americans face a choice: defend the conceptual foundations of free expression or watch them erode until only approved opinions remain expressible. The redefinition of incitement isn't just a semantic game - it's the mechanism by which free societies transition to authoritarian ones.

The Constitution provides no protection if the people themselves abandon the principles it embodies. When we allow words to be redefined as violence and disagreement to be classified as incitement, we're not just changing language - we're dismantling the intellectual framework that makes political freedom possible.

Every American who values their right to think, speak, and dissent should resist these redefinitions regardless of which political tribe proposes them. Because in the end, when free speech dies, it takes everyone's freedom with it.