Columnist: Anti-AOC Anime Video Is Free Speech In Action, So Get Over All The Hysteria – The Free Press

Democrats are not amused.

Recently, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona tweeted a video of anime characters doing battle with President Joe Biden and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over illegal immigration.

The video reportedly shows a character with Gosars face allegedly killing AOC.

As The Free Press reported on Thursday, Democrats were not amused. Led by AOC, they dog-piled each other in criticizing Gosar, and announced they would work to censure him.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted, Threats of violence against Members of Congress and the President of the United States must not be tolerated. She also called on Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to join in condemning this horrific video and call on the Ethics Committee and law enforcement to investigate.

The hysteria here is matched only by the Democrats hypocrisy.

When former President Donald Trump occupied the White House, Pelosi and these same Democrats sat in stone silence as their supporters routinely depicted Trumps assassination whether it was alleged comedienne Kathy Griffin hoisting what resembled Trumps severed head; rapper Snoop Dogg making a music video that ends with him shooting a Trump-like character in the head; a New York City actors group putting on Shakespeares Julius Ceasar, which includes a Trump-like Ceasar being stabbed to death; or incidents such as actor Johnny Depp publicly asking about when the last time an actor killed a president, or Rosie ODonnell promoting a game called Push Trump off a Cliff.

In fact, when liberals spoke at all, they defended such actions. In 2017, for example, Washington Post columnist Alyssa Rosenberg wrote that Snoop Dogg had an absolute right to make a video depicting Trumps death.

Ironically, Robby Soave, a columnist for the libertarian publication Reason, makes the same argument about Gosar which on the left will assuredly fall on deaf ears.

Responding to the criticism from AOCs pals in Congress, Soave wrote, Congress is not like other workplaces. Employees are chosen not by bosses, but by a democratic process: elections. Gosar doesnt work for an HR-conscious manager; he works for the voters of Arizona, and its their job to boot him if they dont like his anime videos.

One can sympathize with Gosars Democratic colleagues for being irritated with his highly unprofessional even creepy behavior, he continued.

But setting aside the alleged ethics violation, Soave added, (T)here is little doubt that the anime video constitutes First Amendment-protected expression: Though it was in poor taste for Gosar to share it, he did not actually credibly threaten the lives of Biden or Ocasio-Cortez. A parody video of an anime figure vanquishing a villainous Democrat is clearly not a true threat of violence.

Law enforcement should make no effort to investigate the Gosar video, since the only conceivable conclusion they could reach is that its protected speech, he concluded. And the government should not and indeed, cannot police speech solely because it is offensive to people in power, even if the speech is, in fact, offensive.

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Columnist: Anti-AOC Anime Video Is Free Speech In Action, So Get Over All The Hysteria - The Free Press