We've spent the last several years hearing the illiberal left talk about microaggressions and dog whistles and insisting that even silence is violence.
It's easy and safe to say that he illiberal left has spent a lot of time talking about what people might do if inspired by "hateful speech." For vast numbers of these people, it's clear that they would like to get the legal definitions of "incitement" expanded. Namely, a lot of these people would love to see, say, Trump and his supporters in prison for "incitement" for anti-immigration speech if a redneck decided to shoot a Hispanic immigrant.
Of course, that's not how incitement works in American law -- nor should it. As the last several months have proven, a lot of these same illiberal leftists are allowed to shout, "Gas the Jews!" at the top of their lungs with no legal repercussions. Even with people responding with violence toward Jews, even the illiberal left, in this one case, understands that the only person responsible for the violence is the person who engaged in the violence, no matter how vile the speech that may have inspired the violent actor was.
Nonetheless, the lesson needs to be learned that the very restrictions of speech that so many of these illiberal leftists are pushing for can and will be redirected at them.
The calls for violence against Trump over the last several years has gone well beyond dog whistles. From Kathy Griffin posing with Trump's severed, bloody head to members of congress calling, at the very least, for people to punch him. You can only refer to a person as being "literally Hitler" and "the greatest threat to our democracy" before somebody takes you seriously.
Again, all of this anti-Trump speech that even celebrates the idea of violence directed toward him and his supporters is and should be protected speech under the First Amendment. That's true even though, as my feed has shown over the last few days, a great many illiberal leftists have engaged in this kind of speech with the expressed hope that somebody would kill Trump. They don't seem to care that one of his supporters was killed in the attempt on Trump's life because, of course, he was just another deplorable.
By every measure the common rhetoric from the illiberal left regarding Trump and his supporters comes closer to incitement than the "dog whistles" that they're always talking about. By their on logic in regard to what should fall into the category of incitement, and therefore outside of protected speech, if they won that legal fight, about 70% of the illiberal leftists on my feed would be facing prison time right now.