Word: overthrows
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Criminal Anarchy. New York State has a law forbidding anyone to incite persons to overthrow by violence the constituted Government. Under this law, one Benjamin Gitlow, radical Socialist, was convicted because, in 1919, he urged "mass industrial revolts" and "revolutionary mass action" in a published article. Gitlow fought the case to the Supreme Court on the free-speech issue...
...Court upheld his conviction. Said Justice Sanford for the majority of the Court: "It [Gitlow's article] advocates and urges in fervent language mass action which shall progressively foment industrial disturbances . . . and overthrow and destroy organized parliamentary Government. . . . This is not the language of philosophical abstraction. ... It is the language of direct incitement...
Justice Holmes, dissenting, argued that there was manifestly "no present danger of an attempt to overthrow the Government by force on the part of the admittedly small minority who shared the defendant's views...
When men for political, personal or economic motives seek to overthrow a government and, in so doing, wilfully cause the death of women, children and peaceful male citizens, the law has but one remedy-Death...
...organizations designed to overthrow by force the existing social order are to be declared illegal and all persons founding or joining such organizations may be imprisonel for from five to ten years, in addition to being fined from 50 to 500,000 lire...