We have been discussing the increasing political violence on the left. That includes a student who published a column recently on “when must we kill them?” I noted that such views are often reflections of the many extremists currently in teaching. That was evident this week in Maine, where English teacher JoAnna St. Germain of Waterville Senior High School called upon the Secret Service to kill Trump and his supporters.
On Tuesday, St., Germain called on Facebook for the Secret Service to “step up” and avoid a civil war by killing Trump and his supporters. She insisted that it would not constitute an assassination because Trump is not a legitimate president “duly elected by the American people.”
She explained that “If I had the skill set required, I would take them out myself.”
Whatever “skill set” St. Germain possess, sanity does not appear to be part of it.
St. Germain later responded to the shock of many that a teacher would be advocating murder, posting “People are quite angry with me for stating openly that Trump and his cronies need to die […] If you’re mad that I’m speaking truth to power? F**k you.”
She insisted that she was not advocating mass murder, but just serial killings, stressing that we should kill Trump and “those in the room with Trump, who are permitting and approving his egregious actions.”
As for those upset by such calls for violence, she supplied the names of the school superintendent and others who are her superiors, adding
I posted knowing I’d likely lose my job and benefits. I have zero shame about what I’ve said. I’m not backtracking a single thing.
I believe Trump and every sycophant he has surrounded himself with (this is not you – if you’re reading this, this doesn’t apply to you. You are beneath his notice and mine) needs to die.
I believe this with the same forceful belief that Hitler and his sycophants needed to die, before they murdered 6 million innocent Jewish persons.
St. Germain is not the first academic to use such language.
Indeed, some faculty members continue to make the news for violent political acts.
It is now common to hear inflammatory language from professors advocating “detonating white people,” denouncing police, calling for Republicans to suffer, strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, calling for the killing of Trump supporters, supporting the murder of conservative protesters and other outrageous statements. One professor who declared that there is “nothing wrong” with such acts of violence as killing conservatives was actually promoted.
That is the culture that produces this type of extreme rhetoric among students. These faculty members have normalized violent speech.
Of course, some professors have gone further and committed acts of political violence. Such conduct should be prosecuted and those faculty members fired. However, even in those extreme cases, liberal faculty have often rallied around their colleagues.
Years ago, many of us were shocked by the conduct of University of Missouri communications professor Melissa Click who directed a mob against a student journalist covering a Black Lives Matter event. Yet, Click was hired by Gonzaga University. Since that time, we have seen a steady stream of professors joining students in shouting down, committing property damage, participating in riots, verbally attacking students, or even taking violent action in protests.
At the University of California Santa Barbara, professors actually rallied around feminist studies associate professor Mireille Miller-Young, who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display. Despite pleading guilty to criminal assault, she was not fired and received overwhelming support from the students and faculty. She was later honored as a model for women advocates.
At Hunter College in New York, Professor Shellyne Rodríguez was shown trashing a pro-life display of students.
She was captured on a videotape telling the students that “you’re not educating s–t […] This is f–king propaganda. What are you going to do, like, anti-trans next? This is bulls–t. This is violent. You’re triggering my students.”
Unlike the professor, the students remained calm and respectful. One even said “sorry” to the accusation that being pro-life was triggering for her students.
Rodríguez continued to rave, stating, “No you’re not — because you can’t even have a f–king baby. So you don’t even know what that is. Get this s–t the f–k out of here.” In an Instagram post, she is then shown trashing the table.
Hunter College, however, did not consider this unhinged attack to be sufficient to terminate Rodríguez.
It was only after she later chased reporters with a machete that the college fired Rodríguez. She was then hired by another college.
Another example comes from the State University of New York at Albany, where sociology professor Renee Overdyke shut down a pro-life display and then resisted arrest. One student is heard screaming, “She’s a [expletive] professor.” That, of course, is the point.
After losing the last election, some on the left are turning to calls for violence or committing political violence. Ironically, they do so in the name of democracy. That is precisely why rage is so addictive and contagious. It gives you license to do things that you would ordinarily never do.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Whoever said “You can’t judge a book by the cover” was wrong more times than they were right.
Let us not forget what was done to Charles Murray at Middlebury College in 2017:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/28/how-donald-trump-caused-the-middlebury-melee-215195/
For a video of the attempt to have a discussion in an attempt at a safe space, see
https://www.middlebury.edu/announcements/news/2017/03/video-recording-charles-murray-and-prof-allison-stanger
Note the fire alarms going off at 6:50 and later, and the door pounding, shouting, and other attempts to disrupt.
Causing Murray to ask:
“What am I saying that requires me to be shut up?”
Also the breakups in the video.
Let’s face it, antifa are a bunch of egomaniac, domineering, scurrilous thugs, who use absolutely disgusting tactics to prevent rational discourse.
It should be admitted those are the tactics antifa has employed.
And they are coddled by the Democrats.
What an admission of their failure to present persuasive, countervailing arguments.
I am not persuaded that this teacher is engaging in any unprotected speech. It is vulgar and unbecoming … possibly even professionally disqualifying for someone required to possess a teaching certification.
I suspect that the raw sentiment underlying this extreme expression of discontent is shared by many creative and/or nutty people with slightly better judgment. I just hope she stimulated a lively classroom discussion on the use and misuse of shocking words.
That’s crazy. What she is saying is clearly incitement to violence.
There must be an imminent danger that actual violence will occur in order to meet the SCOTUS’s current test for incitement.
That target on the back of her head is a nice adornment.
Of course it’s protected speech. No one is disputing that, or advocating her arrest. If she had a job in the public school that did not involve public contact she couldn’t even be fired for it. But the same would be true had she said, for instance, that all n***ers are good for nothing but slavery and should be put back in chains. That too would be protected speech, and she could not be arrested for it, and if she had a back-office job in government employment she could not be fired for it. But in both cases such opinions should not be regarded as acceptable, and she should be regarded as incapable of effectively teaching a classroom full of students who know what she said.
PS: No, it is not incitement. The definition of incitement is speech that is both subjectively intended and objectively likely to cause a listener to immediately commit a crime. That is clearly not the case here.
Just another individual who was swallowed into the mental incapacity of the self-righteousness of the liberal euphoria of always be right. She has no back bone or said more clearly ‘She’s a Coward’ asking others to do what she won’t. I wonder what this charlatan would say if her parents or other family members were threatened for raising such a vile simpleton. Her bile, odious tirade is another reminder of the harm that has been fostered on society by the modern Democratic Party.
A bit of advice to her from Albert Einstein: “If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.”
Exactly!
She says, if she had the skill set required she would do the job herself. She could buy a rifle, get shooting instruction and go to a shooting range every day for one month and she would have the skill set to do the job. What she is really saying is that she is too much of a coward to do the deed herself simply because she doesn’t want to sit her ass in prison for the rest of her life because she stood up for what she believed in. Some say that they are avenging angels but when found out it is discovered that they have no wings to fly.
Eighty-one years of age and still a relative newbie to JT’s blog, I began my mission to enlighten all, of brain damaging, mind altering medically unrecognized nearly subclinical non-IgE-mediated food (minimally) allergy reactions and FDA approved food poisoning (e.g., added artificially cultured “free” [can cross the blood-brain barrier] monosodium glutamate [MSG]), with a postal letter about my early lay finding of connections between allergies, added MSG, chronic diseases and obesity to the FDA (with replies) in October of 2005 (obviously, now, in-vain) followed-up after an unsatisfactory response with postal letters to the US AG, every state AG and the headquarters and every affiliate of the ACLU in 2006, and thousands of professional others of various specialties since, with mostly similar results; IN-VAIN! It’s probably an ‘axiom-of-life’ that small minds tend to focus on small problems, and/or mere symptoms.
While it’s not exactly proof of cause and effect, one way to judge the accuracy of my early lay findings is to note the growing numbers of cheaply and easily prevented chronic diseases and another is the growing numbers of gun (minimally) violence, both of which transcend all presidential terms of office since the early 1970s. Again, here and there in 21st Century America, it’s not just a matter of politics it’s a much more serious matter of brain health. To my current level of lay findings the three most brain damaging toxic FDA food additive approvals are soy (late 1960s), the cooking oil preservative TBHQ (1972) and ‘alleged’ “flavor enhancer” MSG (1980). By my lay estimate the FDA and Big Food have caused some 30 million additional premature deaths just since 1980; up to 6,000 per day in 2025. Now, after two and a half generations of undiagnosed food allergies aggravated (or not) with toxic food additives, I don’t see how any young American adult can be held fully legally responsible for any of their bad acts. More details on the “About” page of my ad-free video channel: https://odysee.com/@charlesgshaver:d?view=about
You’re just as much a lunatic as this teacher.
These raving lunatics are beyond scary! They HAVE to be held accountable and punished or we are going to have one nasty, brutal war on our hands, real soon!
This teacher makes the case for parents rights and school choice. Any sane and normal parent would not want this teacher around their child.
The real question is who hired this person?
Remember Ashli Babbitt
– January 6, 2021
Yesterday at 4:49, gigi started her daily rant with “Turley begins today’s little latrine piece with..”
Funny how, as soon as she gets off work, gigi is drinking out of the latrine.
Be honest: what was the first thought that came to you the moment you saw the photo of this person?
1. extreme Woke
2. craving attention
3. unhinged
My first impression was that this was an IT.
Also, it was a unique way of resigning. I wonder how proud it’s parents must be.
a
Academics gravitate to marxism for the same reason other losers do: to call their losing winning and to try to cast it as noble struggle while canceling any who dispute them. The fact that none of it works in practice is why they accrete to “the academy,” a place where they can preen and posture in parlors and symposia devoid of need to do anything but complain and demand.
Marxist ideas deserve even greater disdain now than they did 100 years ago because there have been so many more object lessons in the interval, all of them bad, many of them among the worst calamities, genocides, and social and economic devolution in human history.
Trump was right, the Harvard Crimson will be replaced by the Crimson Tide.
This woman is a lunatic & ID give a d-mn what her political beliefs are. She should be locked up in a mental hospital, not teaching our offspring. Where the h-ll is the Secret Service?? Our POTUS has already had TWO attempts on his life!
SD, she should be sterilized.
Calm down karen.
Victor Davis Hanson is a Canadian psychologist? He has a take on this.
Whatever survives is basic biology. Scarcity. Odd how people create scarcity. It may happen when there isn’t a moral plan in place.
Someone asked what would Jesus say or do. He’d say, stand at the door and knock. A door is any door. A front door to your dwelling or a port ( door )of entry. The question is then what is knocking? It delineates lawful and illegal entries. If someone came through your window? He’d say, follow the laws of the nation and God. Do both. If it were not so He’d have said break down the door, or barge through the door or walk through the door. He said knock. He said stand indicating wait.
Laws regarding doors.
Victor Davis Hanson is a Californian Historian.
Jordan Peterson is a Canadian Psychiatrist – one of the most cited in the world before he defied the lunatic left.
My take on WWJD is, seeing the thieves in a place of worship, braiding your own whip, then raising hell, whipping the thieves, and flipping tables is a very good thing to consider.
-Rabble
Not too many years ago, she would have lost her job and be escorted in a straitjacket and taken to a padded cell in a psychiatric ward.
Now, the wackos and crazy people are the mouthpiece of the new face of the Democratic party and their unhinged and irrational rage. She’s getting her 15 minutes of fame.
Straitjacket huh? Seems yo know you’re talking about.
she is maniac like most maine maniacs
E.M.
Well said. This is what happens when they normalize violence.
That’s how they did things in the Soviet Union. Not here.
Jonathan
Your stance against rage rhetoric rings hollow, when you allow Dennis McInliar to perpetuate it here day in and day out.
Yesterday he suggested that Trump is Hitler simply because he had the audacity to be born on the same day of the year that the US Army was established.
And of course we all know from the polls what this dog whistle means.
55% of democrats are whack jobs like Dennis, who feel that assassinating Trump would be at least “somewhat justified”.
Steven, Great post. You make valid points.
Sorry, Steven but I am at offs with you and in defense of Dennis.
Dennis is all that you say he is
But the right to free speech includes the right to say all nasty, false, even violent things.
Dennis’s rantings serve many purposes – as do those of others Turley criticises in his age of rage rants.
The weak arguments that Dennis produces help reassure the rest of us of the likely correctness of our own position.
The ranting violent and stupid arguments assure us that the Dennis’s of the world have no better arguments.
The comments of Dennis and those like him – tell us who they are
Inciting violence and advocating assassination is NOT protected speech, and threatening duly elected officials is prosecutable under a number of laws, Federal or State.
There are very specific and difficult ot meet requirements to use criminal statutes regarding incitement to abridge free speech.
In lay terms the request for or threat of violence must be
SPECIFIC
IMMEDIATE
CREDIBLE
Asking Secret service agents to take out Trump does not meet those requirements.
Those speaking do not have authority over the secret service.
There is zero likelyhood that secret service agents will respond to the request.
Trying to broaden incitement claims – or ANY laws is alway a bad idea – as we saw in the lawless J6 prosecutions.
I am not even supportive of Prof Turley’s requests for action regarding left wing nuts constant discussions of violence.
The correct actions are to jeer at them, and to take note of thjeir poor character and integrity.
If they are elected – then work to defeat them.
But we WANT left wing loons to speak out and self identify as left wing loons who see violence allegedly for their cause as justified.
She has neither incited nor threatened anyone. And advocating assassination ABSOLUTELY IS protected speech. Advocating ANYTHING is protected speech, up to and including resuming the Holocaust (which we have seen thousands advocating in public in the last two years), returning all black people to slavery, or violently overthrowing the United States.
Yes. Excellent!
No need to apologize, John. I don’t value your opinion much and you are free to be wrong.
The point was not about McInliars free speech rights, it was about the hypocrisy being displayed by JT, who has banned many commenters here for lack of civility, yet continues to let Dennis and Gigi have free reign with their rage rhetoric.
I am sorry you do not value my opinion – though the reuirements to prosecute speech as violence are well established by the Supreme court – Brandenbeg Vs. Ohio and subseuent cases. The most recent being – No some idiot on Facebooks threat to kill his estranged wife and state police officers did NOT violate the law, the threat was neither specific nor credibile.
A significant portion of my posts are NOT opinion – such as this one and the one you are at odds with. They are either facts or established law, or logical conclusions drawn directly from facts and law.
Should the violent rhetoric of left wing nuts be prosecutable is a uestion of opinion – today by law and constitution it is protected speech.
It is my opinion – based on the reasoning of John Stuart Mill in “On Liberty” that to the greatest extent possible no speech should be censored.
There is a translation to modern english at Heterodox academy.
https://heterodoxacademy.org/resources/all-minus-one/
I am sure Turley’s book on Free speech is excellent – But Milll is the OG of free speech or individual liberty.
“But the right to free speech includes the right to say all nasty, false, even violent things.”
Please show us that in the text of 1A
“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech”
Yes, exactly. That is where it is in the text. If you claim that the freedom of speech does NOT include nasty, false, or violent things, then the onus is on YOU to prove it. You can’t, because it ain’t so.
There is a short list of known exceptions to the freedom of speech, that the Supreme Court has developed over the course of the 20th century, and there are very unlikely to be any more exceptions suddenly discovered in the 21st. Neither nastiness, nor falsehood, nor even violence, is on the list.
Rings hollow huh? As does your comment.
“She insisted that she was not advocating mass murder, but just serial killings, stressing that we should kill Trump and “those in the room with Trump, who are permitting and approving his egregious actions.”
The problem is that stupid people like George Svelaz and Anonymous learn from people like her.
S. Meyer–
Yes, and what happens to her students, likely male, who support Trump? Are they truly safe?
What happens to students who are of Christian or Jewish faiths?
Has anyone surveyed the boundaries of her madness?
Likely not.
Hopefully she can’t reach the President but her students are at her mercy, if she has any.
In sixth grade I had a teacher who had driven a boy into a mental institution a few years before. When I got there she directed her corrosive attention to me. It is not a pleasant experience. As I said I would not let a child enter this woman’s class.
When you raise a teacher in a public school – rather than a college or university. You have different issues.
We could solve those issues by eliminating public education entirely.
Then teachers could do as they please, administrators could fire them, and parents could move their kids to different schools.
There are all things that can relatively easily occur in a college.
If you get government entirely out of the funding processes for colleges and universities – no loan guarantees no grants – not at all.
Then colleges and universites can establish their own speech policies – and you can decide where you wish to send your children.
I frankly do not care that a student feels intimindate by a professor at a college.
Learning to deal with people in power who disagree with you is an important life skill.
LEarning to deal with it can mean sucking it up, feeding the professor what they want.
It can mean dropping that class,
It can mean protesting to the college,
it can mean transfering to another college.
What it CAN NOT mean is government deciding what speech is appropriate or not.
With respect to the malignant teacher, where are the parents? The school board? The superintendent? Is nobody sane in that school district? No child of mine would enter a school where anyone is openly entertaining these ideas. Later will we hear, “she was on our radar?”
It gets lonely up in Main in the Winter.
Cabin fever…….
Which is we we need as true free market in education – so that each parent has choices regarding the education of their kids.
If you wish to send yout kid to Drag Queen Story hour Pre-school – that is your right as a parent.
If you wish to send your kind to seventh sy adventists, no vaccines elementary – that is your right as a parent.
What if a parent wishes to send their kid to Self Harm (the art of cutting oneself) story hour?
You good with that, big mouth?
Possibly – but absurd hypotheticals are useless.
In your hypothetical, you have teachers actually teaching ACTS of violence. The brandenberg reuirements to abridge such speech are met.
There is an immediate threat of real violence,
Though even this depends on exactly what is being taught by
“Self Harm (the art of cutting oneself) story hour?”
The left engages in this labeling stupidity all the time.
They would pass the “all puppies go to heaven” law that would euthanize all pets.
That said – no I do not think you can a priori interfere with a parents right to send their child (or not which is the current SCOTUS case) to xyz story hour, without demonstrating an extremely high probability of ACTUAL harm.
You CAN interfere with parental rights AFTER actual harm has been proven.
Allowing government to step in a priori over almost anything and abridge our rights – including parental rights over fear of harm is limitless power.