Why are the media treating 'Let's Go Brandon' like criminal hate speech?

Reason’s Robby Soave writes, “Last month, NBC reporter Kelli Stavast was interviewing NASCAR driver Brandon Brown following his victory in the NASCAR Xfinity Series Sparks 300 race when fans started chanting 'f*** Joe Biden.' But that's not what Stavast heard.

And so the 'let's go Brandon' chant—a less vulgar way of signaling one's opposition to the current president—was born. Fans say it at sports gatherings. Conservatives tweet it at each other...

So what?

On “Let’s Go Brandon” blowback: Why does the mainstream media think its job is to police speech critical of Joe Biden as of it were criminal? https://t.co/mVN2XC88ce

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) November 5, 2021

Well, even though it was completely normal for Democrats to vigorously insult former President Donald Trump throughout his presidency, some liberal media figures have decided that the comparatively mild 'let's go Brandon' chant is an essentially violent utterance. Asha Rangappa, a commentator for CNN, said it was akin to making a pro-ISIS statement…

say what you will but bizarrely encouraging someone to say "long live ISIS" on an airplane is extremely on brand for an FBI agent pic.twitter.com/PLACtTiMM3

— Sam Biddle (@samfbiddle) November 1, 2021

Make no mistake: The chant is clearly First Amendment–protected speech, even if some would consider it hate speech. Contrary to what many progressive activists naively assume, hate speech is free speech. There is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment, because there is no mutually agreed-upon definition of hate speech, and there are no Supreme Court decisions supporting such an exception. The Supreme Court has carved out some categories of speech that don't qualify for protection—threats of imminent violence, for instance—but hate speech isn't one of them. On the contrary, the right to insult political leaders and government officials is perhaps the most important and obvious component of the First Amendment.”

Read the entire column.