To the editor:

Gary Hamon’s letter last Thursday said something many people in Fox News world believe: “If I disagree with what you say, I will try to cancel you, twitter shame you into oblivion, demand that you be fired, or removed from public office.” The censorship frenzy in recent days since the event (in Washington) is an example.

People have been canceling subscriptions, shaming and demanding removal from job or office since the earliest days of our republic. What crossed the boundary of free speech after the riot was the use of political propaganda to incite violence.

The president used his social media platforms to call his supporters to the White House, where he inflamed their passions with unsupported claims of election fraud. Then he directed them to the Capitol and watched them on TV for the next three hours until around 4 p.m. when he released a video on social media telling them to, “go home.”

No right is absolute, and after Trump’s speech set off a violent attack, shutting down his media platforms was the only prudent step for the owners of those platforms to take to prevent further violence. The false claims of election fraud advanced by his supporters in the Congress and on Fox News are the functional equivalent of the anti-Semitic propaganda the Nazis used to create an environment of hate, which they exploited to set off the Holocaust. In light of the insurrection, those claims should no longer be considered protected speech.

Craig Voorhees,

Lawrence