States Push Back Against Organized Mob Rule and ‘Civil Terrorism’

Far too many so-called protesters these days aren’t simply expressing their First Amendment rights, they are using public coercion to harass, intimidate, and physically threaten people into accepting their views.

Several states are taking measures to clamp down on the rise of what one writer calls “civil terrorism,” essentially organized and often violent mayhem practiced by groups like Antifa and other anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement groups.

These are small, but important steps to ensure that America does not descend wholly into mob rule.

The most recent states aiming to curb civil terrorism are Utah and Arizona, where legislation is coming down the pipeline to increase penalties for crimes committed during essentially unlawful street “protests.”

The Utah bill HB 311 “amends the offense of aggravated disorderly conduct on a street or highway to include obstructing any street or highway if the actor does so in concert with two or more individuals” and creates the “offense of intentional concealment of identity while committing an offense in public.”

So, it’s targeting mobs blocking traffic and people wearing masks while committing crimes.

The Arizona bill is similar.

It aims to punish, according to the Arizona Capitol Times, people “who block traffic in protest, trespass in a building, or commit other minor crimes.” These individuals could face jail time and other more severe penalties for actions that are already essentially crimes.

The Arizona law was reportedly written in collaboration with Manhattan Institute legal analyst Tal Fortgang, who recently wrote an excellent piece in City Journal defending the laws.

He wrote that not only are increasing penalties vital to protecting law-abiding Americans from civil terrorists, but he also noted that the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups are wrong to say these laws abridge free speech rights.

“These criticisms make no sense because the actions in question are already illegal.=,” Fortgang wrote Wednesday. “The First Amendment has never protected blocking traffic without a permit—as civil rights marchers who were willing to pay the price understood well.”

And as Fortgang noted, even the Arizona ACLU wrote in a section on its website about knowing “your rights” that protesters shouldn’t “obstruct car or pedestrian traffic.”

“Nothing new is being criminalized,” Fortgang wrote. “There is a spectrum of protest, ranging from minimally disruptive—one person venturing onto a highway—to maximally disruptive, as in dozens of demonstrators refusing to disperse, sometimes while brandishing paraphernalia indicating support for designated foreign terrorist organizations. Updating the law to reflect this reality has no bearing on lawful protest.”

These proposed laws are generally a step in the right direction.

What we’ve seen in recent years is that the left-wing groups, more properly defined as agitators than protesters, have routinely stretched and broken the law to ensure that their fellow Americans are cowed into silence about this issue or that.

Whether it’s climate change, or Palestinians, or ICE, or whatever, they have pushed their activities beyond protest and into action that violates the rights of others. These aren’t “mostly peaceful protests,” they are hostile acts of people who, in many cases, violated the rights of fellow Americans.

The federal government and many red-leaning states have already taken steps to curb this sort of behavior that has occasionally led to deadly confrontations between activists and law enforcement officials.

For instance, Florida passed the Combating Public Disorder Act in 2021, which included harsher penalties for “violent and disorderly assemblies.” After initially being contested in the courts, the Florida Supreme Court upheld the law and simply clarified that it would only apply to people committing violence or “disorderly conduct.”

The issue will remain more difficult to address in blue states and blue districts where professional agitators routinely engage in unlawful assembly and acts of violence and typically receive only the lightest punishments.

Take, for instance, the pro-Palestinian violent agitators who took over a building at Columbia University in New York City last April.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg dropped the charges for many because he said that those who broke into the building were wearing masks, and it was difficult to identify them.

And on Tuesday, a state judge vacated punishments for 22 students and former students involved in the occupation of Hamilton Hall.

So, what kind of deterrent is there for violent activists to not take illegal actions again when they are given, at most, a slap on the wrist?

The answer is that there is no deterrent. The political powers that be decided that some people have more rights than others based on the causes they champion.

And that’s why additional state law is necessary to ensure that violent fanatics must think twice before breaking the law and terrorizing their fellow citizens over their cause of the day.

In far too many cases, innocent Americans have been hurt and even killed by radical activists who’ve decided to invoke the heckler’s and even assassin’s veto. Increased penalties will, at the very least, clamp down on some of this behavior.

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