Well, directed at individual, even at powerful one, that would be a harassment, not hate speech.

True. But I was thinking about an individual speaking in generalities. Milo Coulter et al. Bomb throwing gets someone who would normally have no media attention some attention. Obviously Coulter is a talented writer and Milo is a talented speaker, but they wouldn’t be anywhere’s near as notorious as they are without the bomb-throwing, and their bombs are *usually* not directed at individuals, but groups and policies.

Also, much like with bomb throwing, the goal is not to silence one particular individual, it’s to make thousands of others afraid (to speak up).

True again, but if you’re afraid to exercise an enumerated right, the fault is your own; you yourself have relinquished your right to it. The reason why they are enumerated in the first place is because the Framers knew that outside influences of one sort or another would attempt to limit the practice of those liberties; so they obligated the government to defend them.

You don’t have to spend too much time browsing news sites before you find writers suggesting that the freedom of speech, religion, and even press and assembly should be limited if the people who want to exercise those rights aren’t approved of by that writer. The surest and most obvious sign of the authoritarian, after all, is the person who suggests a really really GOOD sounding reason why a certain liberty should be limited.

That’s how totalitarians start out, after all.