It’s not illegal in the US to call a Jew a kike or a Black man a nigger last time I checked. It’s not very nice, but it’s not against the law. If you say it in public and make a fuss, some people will call the cops. Sometimes cops arrest on disturbing the peace for that, but mostly they don’t bother.
Most disturbing the peace charges are tossed before they go to court, as its hard to convict on that charge. In the US, disturbing the peace generally means “pissing off a police officer.” It’s a vague crime so it’s hard to charge someone with it.
As a supervisor if you use words like that to subordinates on the job, your company can be sued for discrimination. But it’s not illegal. It’s a tort.
You can actually stand up at a rally and yell, “Kill the Jews (or whichever group you hate)”. Most people think that’s illegal but it’s not. There have been a lot of court cases.
It’s only illegal speech if you are giving a speech and point some people (say, those Jews over there) in the crowd and incite the crowd to go beat them up or kill them. It has to be a specific, obvious, direct threat at certain people who are present, as in close by, can be seen. There was a big court case in 1968 along those lines. I think it was a neo-Nazi rally
People think that’s Inciting a Riot, but hardly anyone ever goes down on a charge like that, and if you do, you usually get acquitted or you can appeal your way out of it.
You can actually issue death threats and do it frequently and/or to lots of people. You go down on threats, even fairly vague ones, directed at the President of the US, possibly other high-ranking government officials, and I believe judges. Otherwise you can usually threaten away and nothing’s going to happen
And no one goes down on masked threats.
The sad fact is that countless people are threatening each other, even with death, every day in the US. If we arrested everyone who issued a death threat, we would have 10 million men in prison at the end of the year. And more than a few women.
So cops triage.
Someone threatens to kill you, you call the cops, and they will show up and say there’s nothing we can do. It has to be a credible threat. Generally, you have to record the person, so a lot of people who go down on this have their threats recorded on an answering machine.
Usually people who go down on the charge, “Making Terrorist Threats” are young men, often minorities, with criminal records, who are stalking and threatening an ex girlfriend. It’s egregious, ongoing, and it’s lasted a while. Often he’s been violent towards her before. It’s seen a credible threat for those reasons, and he’s typically recorded on an answering machine.
Usual sentence is ~2 years. The men who go down on this charge are bad dudes, violent towards women, usually criminals in other ways, and general menaces. The conviction and sentence is warranted in my opinion. These guys are seriously out of control and dangerous.
