The law must reveal violent demonstrators once and forever

In Gaza last week, a group of convincing terrorists offered captive women around a public square. At the University of Colombia earlier this month, a group of persuasive individuals disrupted a semester with screaming and hitting drums.

Introduction masks. In the United States, it is used as veiled symbols for brutality and intimidation. The general protests that moved to hate speech, physical intimidation, destruction of property and invitations of violence have one common factor – the demonstrators are masked.

The protesters in the United States exercise the rights of the first amendment – their rights to defend the reasons they believe in. However, it is contrary to simultaneously adopt the invitation and hide the identity of the individual.

The invitation is defined as supporting the cause of people on behalf of people. How does one represent a people if he blocks his identity? Moreover, how is freedom of expression correctly if it threatens the safety of others in flagrant and intentional?

Freedom of expression has restrictions, which include advertising speech, threats, harassment, intimidation and other illegal behavior. Over the past year in the United States, all these lines were crossed, while the demonstrators hide their faces.

Videos of protests look the story. The highest demonstrators and the most pink language come from those who are masked. We must break this course from not revealing its identity, getting rid of overcoming, violence and non -accountability.

The first mask control law in the United States was approved in 1845 in New York after the owners of disabled real estate and farmers’ disputes of tenants led to an armed rebellion. In 2013, Canada passed a law prohibiting the protesters participating in riots from wearing a mask or hiding their identity in another way. In February 2024, the UK approved laws that prevent demonstrators from wearing face covers.

Before the epidemic, many American states had laws that impose fines and punishment for masking. Most of the anti -combat legislation has been created as an anti -Co -Clax Clarn’s rallies. For example, in Ohio, it is now possible that the 1953 “control” law will be used to deter the KU KUX KLAN manifestations, to apply the matters of felony to the demonstrators who are convinced.

Canada and the United Kingdom have laws that restrict masks from wearing protests or riots. In the United States, the concealment laws vary by state; In several states, the crime is to wear a mask with the intention of harassing or intimidating another person.

There are suitable uses of masks, such as safety in a professional context – including, for example, journalists who cover a story that can endanger their safety, or protect individuals with the immune system at risk. Also, masks have been used throughout history to maintain anonymity for individuals who speak against repressive systems, and these individuals legally need to protect from the potential deadly consequences to suppress the regime of the opposition.

But in the United States, this does not apply to individuals who threaten others and deliberately intimidate them while hiding behind masks. Many organizations defend the support of individuals participating in “peaceful” protests, but the duration and intention of the protests last year was far from peace.

The demonstrators claim that they are wearing masks for fear that “doxxed” will be or show their identities. But does he not protest an expression of one’s identity? When people stand on what they believe in, they should also take responsibility for this?

Let’s encourage the power of speech, and let us not hide the strength of intimidation.

Elyse R. Park, Ph.d. , MPH Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine at Harvard University Faculty of Medicine.