Inciting to riot is a legal term meaning urging a group of people to riot. We also consider yelling “FIRE” in a crowded theater to be a crime. Both are federal crimes because they are likely to cause injury and death to others. For instance, when someone incites people to violence against an ethnic or race or religion. That’s when the line is crossed from First Amendment protections to criminal action and it is a wide gray stripe. When a person stands in front of a group and hurls terrible and fictional charges against a particular group he may be in the gray stripe. However, if the person said something like “follow me” or “go get them” then he would have gone past the gray stripe.

Let’s suppose the person repeatedly said all the brown people were murders, rapists, and drug smugglers. Let’s suppose this kind of talk scared people and fit into the beliefs of racist groups causing unrest and mass murders. Many of the mass murders during the last eighteen months have been against people cited in the rantings by a particular person. El Paso, in particular, was against brown people who were invading his country. Mosque shootings and vandalism occurred after the rantings about Muslims. When the rantings are on national news and in front of hundreds or a few thousand people, few listeners will engage in criminal activity. Most of those shooters found their directions from rantings on the dark internet websites, tweets and re-tweets.

Many rantings have gotten close to the “go get them” direction inciting criminal activity. At that time people will have to decide if the rantings have crossed into the “high crimes and misdemeanors” conduct.