(Note: D = Democrat, R = Republican, I = independent, F = female, M = male)
Q: Does the First Amendment protect “hate speech”?
A: 39%Y 44%N (D 39%Y 41%N, R 44%Y 39%N, I 40%Y 44%N, F 31%Y 49%N, M 51%Y 38%N)
Scenario: A public university invites a very controversial speaker to an on-campus event. The speaker is known for making offensive and hurtful statements.
Q: A student group opposed to the speaker disrupts the speech by loudly and repeatedly shouting so that the audience cannot hear the speaker. Do you agree or disagree that the student group’s actions are acceptable?
A: 51%Y 49%N (D 62%Y 38%N, R 39%Y 61%N, I 45%Y 55%N, F 47%Y 53%N, M 57%Y 43%N)
Q: A student group opposed to the speaker uses violence to prevent the speaker from speaking. Do you agree or disagree that the student group’s actions are acceptable?
A: 19%Y 81%N (D 20%Y 80%N, R 22%Y 78%N, I 16%Y, 84%N, F 10%Y 90%N, M 30%Y 70%N)
Disclaimer from the web page (the donor who provided the financial support is itself a hot button topic):
Oh please. Let’s not pretend that it’s just this generation that knows nothing about the constitution.
Surveys and history both prove that the average American is and always has been ignorant of their own government. At least in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Also interesting that approximately equal numbers of Rs and Ds approve of violence over opinions. I always hear about the left being the ones who try and forcibly shut down free speech…
I just happened to hear somebody talking about this subject on TV tonight, though not specifically about this poll. They said baby boomers and millennials had different concepts of free speech.
Boomers associate free speech with the 60’s free-speech movement, which could be annoying, but was more intellectually-based and wasn’t particularly violent or dangerous. There were fewer media outlets then, so a lot of the really crazy ideas didn’t make it into the public domain.
Millennials view of free speech comes from observing the much more outrageous and dangerous things that are found on the internet and spouted by provocateurs, so they have a less sanguine view of free speech.
1960s-1980s political protests did have violence, including both by authorities and small groups provocateurs who tried to incite riots at others’ protests.
Violent protests in the 1960s-1980s weren’t about free speech. In the 60s and early 70s they were about the Vietnam war and civil rights. Off the top of my head, I don’t remember too many violent protests in the 80s.
Issues of freedom of speech got pulled into protests about other things when conflicts over the response of authorities and others occurred. There was also this in the 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Movement . In the 1980s, the Berkeley campus had occasional violent events at generally left-wing protests, sometimes because violence-prone extremists would show up and try to incite violence by throwing things at the (too easily baited) police from the far side of a group of peaceful protesters.
Of course, protests today are not only about freedom of speech, however they are advertised. There is some other political position being advocated.
This is really upsetting. I don’t understand how people wind up thinking that yelling over someone is an appropriate way to respond to someone whom they don’t agree with. I’ve seen videos of this happening on youtube so many times. And some even think responding with violence is ok. That’s scary. I really hope I won’t have to deal too much with people like this when I go to college next year.
Personally, I think that attending and yelling out your opposition, once, then leaving, is a perfectly appropriate method of protest. Staying there and making the event about you rather than the speaker is rude. I have no problem with students block-reserving a bunch of tickets for protests and then walking out, or standing with their backs to the speaker and booing loudly when they say something abysmal.
So there are plenty of appropriate and good ways to protest other than the ones described here.
It is amazing how people do not understand the First Amendment and that they can be fired at their private job for lashing out regardless of what side you support. It protects a citizen from government reprisals. In this scenario it is a public university but violence is NEVER protected (unless it is self-defense) and I was surprised so many students felt that it was OK.
@woodlandsmom I’m new to college but coming from a very left-wing high school and you might be surprised to know that many ppl argue that such violence IS self-defense. It’s crazy to me but makes complete sense for them.
Note that the responses to the question on whether violence is an acceptable response show similar percentages saying yes among Democrats (20%) and Republicans (22%), but somewhat lower for independents (16%). It is possible that differences would be greater between highly partisan or extremist people (either left or right wing) versus others, but that is not shown. But the biggest demographic difference in that question is between women (10%) and men (30%), which should not be that surprising since men tend to be more prone to violence generally.
To me the most interesting thing was that the male/female difference over whether the First Amendment protected hate speech completely swamped the Democrat/Republican/Independent difference. Also, the fact that none of the political parties had a clear position on that – people within each group were nearly evenly split.
I’m not sure everyone has the same definition of hate speech. For some, the definition might only include speech that advocates some kind of violence towards a person or group. For others, hate speech might simply mean anything offensive.