LPNH Tweets

On September 15, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire posted a tweet saying Anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be an American hero. The tweet has since been deleted, but another user posted a screenshot of it.

Needless to say, I strongly disagree with this statement.

Furthermore, I condemn the statement. It should never have been posted. But I want to be careful, because I'm also a strong advocate for freedom of speech.

If a private individual had posted the tweet, I would likely just ignore it. The tweet may very well fail the "imminent lawless action" test laid out in Brandenburg v. Ohio, in which case it's protected free speech.

Evidently the tweet was deleted because it violated X terms of service. But that's not why I condemn it.

From my perspective, the problem with the tweet was that it was posted on the party account. And the party should have known that a lot of dues-paying members, probably a majority, strongly disagreed with the statement.

The party followed up with a lengthy post explaining their position. Here they actually made my case for me, saying Perhaps you do not think it is strategically or morally correct to use violence today. Yes, that's exactly how I feel: it's strategically and morally incorrect to use violence today. And I'm pretty sure the majority of dues-paying members are with me on this. Hence the tweet should never have been posted.

The party has been posting inflammatory tweets for quite some time now. Here is one example, and here is another. The September 15 tweet was just the latest instance, but it was offensive enough that it made national news.

One promising sign: apparently the backlash from the September 15 tweet was so severe that the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire is now considering some new guidelines for future tweets. I sincerely hope we can agree on some guidelines that are broadly acceptable to the membership.