Milwaukee sheriff says it's 'pitchforks and torches time' and stands by Trump

It’s “pitchforks and torches time”, a prominent conservative sheriff tweeted on Saturday, with a condemnation of the government and media that echoes the increasingly heated rhetoric of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

David A Clarke, the elected sheriff of Milwaukee County, is a leading Trump supporter who has previously called Black Lives Matter activists the “enemy”.

Clarke paired what appeared to be an accusation of the corruption in most of the United States government with a photoshopped image of a crowd of people carrying burning sticks and pitchforks.

Clarke’s comments come at a time of growing anxiety over Trump’s repeated claims, without evidence, that the presidential election is rigged against him. At least one Trump supporter at a rally in Cincinnati on Friday was quoted by the Boston Globe as saying that if Clinton is elected, “I hope we can start a coup.”

“We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office, if that’s what it takes,” the supporter said.

At a rally for Republican vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence on Thursday, a woman from the audience told the candidate she, too, would rather take action than allow a Democrat to win. “I don’t want this to happen – but I will tell you for me, personally, if Hillary Clinton gets in,” she warned, “I’m ready for a revolution because we can’t have her in.”

“You don’t want – don’t say that,” Pence replied.

Noting a history of violence at Trump rallies by his supporters, some online observers took Clarke’s call for “pitchforks and torches” seriously, asking whether he was inciting violence and whether his comments constituted sedition against the government. His remarks also raised concerns that it was inappropriate for a law enforcement official famous for his “law and order” political views to be calling for citizens to take to the streets.

Robert Post, a first amendment expert and the dean of Yale Law School, said Clarke’s comments were “horrible and despicable” but that “an American court would view this as venting, basically.”

In 1969, the supreme court overturned a Ku Klux Klan leader’s conviction for inciting violence.

The Brandenburg case set a high bar: “It says that you must intentionally be inciting imminent violence, and it has to be likely that there’s going to be violence.”

Clarke’s tweet “would fall far short of that test”, Post said.

Eugene Volokh, a Libertarian second amendment scholar at the University of California Los Angeles school of law, said Clarke’s remarks were clearly intended to be figurative.

“What do you think Sheriff Clarke is trying to get people to do? Is he trying to get them to spear someone with a pitchfork and burn down their house, or is he trying to motivate someone to vote for Trump or support conservative values? It seems to be quite clearly the latter,” he said.

When it came to hyperbolic rhetoric about violence, Volokh said, people were more likely to give people with like-minded politics the benefit of the doubt, and to take their political opponents literally. Those who were taking Clarke’s pitchfork remarks seriously were “taking it seriously because they don’t like the guy who’s saying it,” Volokh said.

Incitement of violence is defined very narrowly under the law, leaving wide freedom of speech protections to talk about violence or revolution in hyperbolic or unspecific ways.

“It has to be a situation where you’re talking to a crowd and you’re trying to get them to do something right now,” Volokh said.

“I don’t think anyone looking at this would say, Wow, he’s really asking me to show up with pitchfork and torches outside of the newspaper and burn it down. I don’t think anyone would interpret it that way, especially in light of the photo.”

Clarke has built a national platform for himself as a police official with extremely conservative, tough-on-crime views. He is a television commentator, has his own podcast, and is a prominent National Rifle Association speaker. In July, he compared the Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street movements to the terror group Isis.

“Americans watching the news of the murders of police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, are observing a civil war unfold within our borders. A war between rule of law and anarchy-seeking hate,” he wrote.

“The murders in Baton Rouge, and before them Dallas, were not acts of domestic terrorism but guerrilla urban warfare against the police – who represent law and order – against the constitution, and against the American way.”

In August, Clarke called for the National Guard to be sent to Milwaukee in response to unrest after police shot a 23-year-old black man, even though the local police department and mayor said this was unnecessary.

“People have to find a more socially acceptable way to deal with their frustration, their anger and resentment. We cannot have the social upheaval,” Clarke told a local Fox news station.

A man who answered the phone at a number listed under Clarke’s name declined to identify himself, and hung up without answering any questions. Clarke later tweeted: “Big Media @abcdigital, @GuardianUS and @CNN called,” Clarke tweeted later on Saturday. “Should be as interested in reporting on WikiLeaks and Clinton corruption than my tweets.”

Fran McLaughlin, a spokeswoman at the Milwaukee County sheriff’s office, did not respond to a request for comment on the sheriff’s tweet.

A spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether the organization approved of Clarke’s “pitchforks and torches” rhetoric.

After his pitchforks tweet, Clarke tweeted again directly to Trump supporters, citing the New Testament and sharing a photograph of himself with the Republican nominee.

“To all @realDonaldTrump supporters, Let Not Your Hearts Be Troubled (John:14 1-3) Big media knows that our day is coming. Stay strong,” he wrote.