The definitive account of the career and legacy of the most influential Western exponent of violent jihad. Anwar al-Awlaki was, according to one of his followers, “the main man who translated jihad into English.” By the time he was killed by an American drone strike in 2011, he had become a spiritual leader for thousands of extremists, especially in the United States and Britain, where he aimed to make violent Islamism “as American as apple pie and as British as afternoon tea.” Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens draws on extensive research among al-Awlaki’s former colleagues, friends, and followers, including interviews with convicted terrorists, to explain how he established his network and why his message resonated with disaffected Muslims in the West. A native of New Mexico, al-Awlaki rose to prominence in 2001 as the imam of a Virginia mosque attended by three of the 9/11 hijackers. After leaving for Britain in 2002, he began delivering popular lectures and sermons that were increasingly radical and anti-Western. In 2004 he moved to Yemen, where he eventually joined al-Qaeda and oversaw numerous major international terrorist plots. Through live video broadcasts to Western mosques and universities, YouTube, magazines, and other media, he soon became the world’s foremost English-speaking recruiter for violent Islamism. One measure of his success is that he has been linked to about a quarter of Islamists convicted of terrorism-related offenses in the United States since 2007. Despite the extreme nature of these activities, Meleagrou-Hitchens argues that al-Awlaki’s strategy and tactics are best understood through traditional social-movement theory. With clarity and verve, he shows how violent fundamentalists are born.

In 1919 American Communist Party member Benjamin Gitlow was arrested for distributing a "Left Wing Manifesto," a publication inspired by the Russian Revolution. He was charged with violating New York's Criminal Anarchy Law of 1902, which outlawed the advocacy of any doctrine advocating to the violent overthrow of government. Gitlow argued that the law violated his right to free speech but was still convicted. He appealed and five years later the Supreme Court upheld his sentence by a vote of 7-2. Throughout the legal proceedings, much attention was devoted to the "bad tendency" doctrine-the idea that speakers and writers were responsible for the probable effects of their words-which the Supreme Court explicitly endorsed in its decision. According to Justice Edward T. Sanford, "A state may punish utterances endangering the foundations of organized government and threatening its overthrow by unlawful means." More important was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' dissent, in which he argued that the mere expression of ideas, separated from action, could not be punished under the "clear and present danger" doctrine. As Holmes put it, "Every idea is an incitement"-and the expression of an idea, no matter how disagreeable, was protected by the First Amendment. While the majority disagreed, it also raised and endorsed the idea that the Bill of Rights could be violated by neither the federal government nor individual states-an idea known as "incorporation" that was addressed for the first time in this case. In recreating Gitlow, Marc Lendler opens up the world of American radicalism and brings back into focus a number of key figures in American law: defense attorney Clarence Darrow; New York Court of Appeals justices Roscoe Pound and Benjamin Cardozo; Walter Pollak of the fledgling ACLU; and dissenting justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis. Lendler also traces the origins of the incorporation doctrine and the ebb and flow of Gitlow as a precedent through the end of the Cold War. In a time when Islamic radicalism raises many of the same questions as domestic Communism did, Lendler's cogent explication of this landmark case helps students and Court-watchers alike better understand "clear and present danger" tests, ongoing debates over incitement, and the importance of the Holmes-Brandeis dissent in our jurisprudence.

This book explains why international criminal tribunals struggle to monitor inciting speech, and proposes a model of prevention and punishment.

The editors and contributors to Color of Violence ask: What would it take to end violence against women of color? Presenting the fierce and vital writing of organizers, lawyers, scholars, poets, and policy makers, Color of Violence radically repositions the antiviolence movement by putting women of color at its center. The contributors shift the focus from domestic violence and sexual assault and map innovative strategies of movement building and resistance used by women of color around the world. The volume's thirty pieces—which include poems, short essays, position papers, letters, and personal reflections—cover violence against women of color in its myriad forms, manifestations, and settings, while identifying the links between gender, militarism, reproductive and economic violence, prisons and policing, colonialism, and war. At a time of heightened state surveillance and repression of people of color, Color of Violence is an essential intervention. Contributors. Dena Al-Adeeb, Patricia Allard, Lina Baroudi, Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA), Critical Resistance, Sarah Deer, Eman Desouky, Ana Clarissa Rojas Durazo, Dana Erekat, Nirmala Erevelles, Sylvanna Falcón, Rosa Linda Fregoso, Emi Koyama, Elizabeth "Betita" Martínez, maina minahal, Nadine Naber, Stormy Ogden, Julia Chinyere Oparah, Beth Richie, Andrea J. Ritchie, Dorothy Roberts, Loretta J. Ross, s.r., Puneet Kaur Chawla Sahota, Renee Saucedo, Sista II Sista, Aishah Simmons, Andrea Smith, Neferti Tadiar, TransJustice, Haunani-Kay Trask, Traci C. West, Janelle White

Provides an explanatory framework for the challenges facing the development of the international norm prohibiting hate speech.

This book offers a comprehensive study of incitement in its various forms in international law. It discusses the status of incitement to hatred in human rights law and examines its harms and dangers as well as the impact of a prohibition on freedom of speech. The book additionally presents a detailed definition of punishable incitement. In this context, Wibke K. Timmermann argues that incitement should be recognized as the crime of persecution, where it is utilized within a system of persecutory measures by the State or a similarly powerful organization. The book draws on the Nahimana case before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, as well as jurisprudence from German and other courts following World War II to provide support for this proposal. The work moreover provides a comprehensive analysis of public incitement to crimes; solicitation or instigation; and the related modes of liability aiding and abetting and commission through another person. Dedicated exclusively and comprehensively to incitement in its various forms, this book will be of essential use and great interest to students and researchers of international criminal law and human rights law, in addition to practitioners within these areas.

This book critically analyzes the criminalization of incitement to terrorism under the fundamental principles of legality, necessity, and proportionality with the aim of striking a fair balance between security and liberty on this complicated issue. The criminalization of incitement to terrorism has gained momentum, but no exact or generally accepted definition of this offense exists at the international level. What’s more, given that the criminalization of incitement to terrorism results in restrictions on the exercise of citizens’ freedom of expression, there should be certain limitations on those criminal measures to avoid unnecessary or disproportionate infringement of this fundamental human right. Nevertheless, there has not been a precise standard by which to determine how to draw the line between anti-terrorism and the protection of freedom of expression. Hence, it could be concluded that the criminalization of incitement to terrorism concerns how to balance security and liberty, and the safeguarding principles of legality, necessity, and proportionality should be fully observed in considering this issue. This book studies definitions of “incitement”, “terrorism”, and “incitement to terrorism” under the relevant international and national legislation, and points out the existing absence, ambiguousness, or substantive divergence in defining actus reus and mens rea regarding incitement to terrorism. It carefully considers the current need for and essential limitations on criminal measures against incitement to terrorism in accordance with the principles of necessity and proportionality, and particularly focuses on how to balance the protection of freedom of expression with the criminalization of incitement to terrorism. In considering how to draw a line between the two, the book formulates precise requirements for objective and subjective elements of this offense in accordance with the principle of legality. Given its scope, it will be of interest not only to academics, human rights lawyers and practitioners, but also to policymakers, as it offers an extensive evaluation of the effects and counter-effects of existing criminal measures.