A white supremacist rally, “Unite the Right,” assembled to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in a public park on Aug. 11-12 in Charlottesville, Virginia. Unite the Right demonstrators chanted anti-Semitic slogans, displayed Nazi and Confederate iconography and sported rifles, bludgeons, shields and armor. Counterprotesters came to oppose; in the violence that ensued, one of the white supremacists drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one and injuring at least 19 others.

In the wake of Charlottesville, the nation has come to confront and ponder the removal of Confederate monuments, the continued and emboldened presence of white supremacist thought, and at the root of it all, the extent of First Amendment protections.

The Winged Post unequivocally supports the current state of First Amendment rights, opposes any selective curtailment of free speech and condemns the Unite the Right rally’s efforts in undermining the free exercise thereof.

In its current form, the First Amendment affords broad but specific protections to free speech, but does not protect “fighting words” — words “that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace” — or the incitement of “imminent lawless action.”

Each of these proscribed categories has an incredibly narrow definition — the Supreme Court has never found reason to invoke fighting words clauses in any of the hate speech cases it has considered since 1942. But the actions of Unite the Right rallygoers are incendiary enough to constitute “fighting words,” a level which mere hate speech rarely achieves. The combined meaning of chanting Nazi slogans, displaying Nazi and Confederate insignias and brandishing weapons together can reasonably be considered to incite an immediate breach of the peace.

The Unite the Right protesters explicitly overstepped their First Amendment protections by instigating a breach of the peace and deliberately acting to inhibit others’ exercise of free speech through intimidation and violence. By arriving at the rally brandishing arms and intimidating counterprotesters, they inhibited detractors’ ability to willingly exercise their rights to free speech and assembly; and by engaging in violence, they forfeited their right to “peaceably” assemble.

But the violence and words of the Unite the Right protest should not be taken as cause to outlaw hate speech, as some commentators have proposed. While well-intentioned, we oppose any such qualifications. The virtue and strength of free speech come on account of its broad nature, and any abridgments would have fearful consequence.

Specifically, to enact a ban on hate speech would require a legal justification and vest the government with an unprecedented power. With newly formed precedent and the semblance of popular sanction, an administration could extend further bans on free speech of a less morally justified nature. We ought fear vesting the Trump administration with these unilateral censorship powers: bans could be enacted on discussing Climate Change, LGBT rights or sex education, each with the very real justification that their discussion is legitimately offensive to many Americans.

Speech ought not be outlawed merely for being offensive, and the violence of Charlottesville in no way denotes a need to rescale First Amendment rights. If anything, the popular backlash to the Unite the Right protesters manifested in counterprotests, popular condemnation and continued opposition all serve as evidence of the health and proper function of First Amendment rights. The current system allows for thoughts to be articulated — and if opposed, articulately challenged.

We uphold the extent of First Amendment rights and condemn the Unite the Right movement that prevented and perverted its exercise.