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45 Yale J. Int'l L. Online 1 (2020)

handle is hein.journals/yejloillwo45 and id is 1 raw text is: Features Essay
The International Law of Rabble Rousing*
Hendrick Townleyt and Asaf Lubintt
I. INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................ 1
II.   INTRODUCING RABBLE-ROUSING: A  TWO-FACED TROLL.......................................................... 5
A .  W hat Is  Rabble-Rousing?.............................................................................................. 5
B .  The  D anger of Rabble-Rousing  ......................................................................................... 8
C .  W hy  R abble-R ousing?........................................................................................................ 10
III.  THE LEGALITY OF RABBLE-ROUSING: A SQUARE PEG AMONG ROUND HOLES..................... 12
A.   Rabble-Rousing and the Principle of Non-Intervention ................................................. 12
S     Domain R       .se ...................................... ..... 13
2     Coerci.n..............        ............................[3
B.   Rabble-Rousing, the Principle of Self-Determination, and the Prohibition on
Subversive  Propaganda..................................................................................................  16
C.   Rabble-Rousing  and  the Territorial Sovereignty ............................................................. 17
D.   Rabble-Rousing and the Prohibition on Transboundary Harm ....................................... 18
E.   Rabble-Rousing and International Human Rights Law  ................................................... 19
IV.   RABBLE-ROUSING AND TECHNOLOGY: FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE?........................................ 22
V .   C O N CLU SION S ...............................................................................................................................26
I.    INTRODUCTION
It was noon on an ordinary sunny spring day in May, but the scene was not
as it should have been outside the Islamic Da'wah Center in downtown Houston,
Texas.
On one side of the street stood approximately ten protestors. Bearing
confederate flags and White Lives Matter banners, they had gathered that day
for an event titled Stop Islamification of Texas organized by the Heart of
Texas, a Facebook group celebrating the homeland of guns, BBQ and [your]
heart and boasting 250,000 followers.1
The authors wish to thank Barrie Sander for insightful comments on a previous draft of this Essay.
Hendrick Townley is a software engineer and a student fellow at the Information Society Project at
Yale Law School. He graduated from Yale College with a B.S. in Computer Science.
tt Asaf Lubin is an Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University,
Visiting Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, and Visiting Scholar at the
Federmann Cybersecurity Research Center at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This research was
supported in part by funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation under grant 2018-7277.
' See, e.g., Claire Allbright, A Russian Facebook Page Organized a Protest in Texas. A Different
Russian Page Launched the Counterprotest., TEX. TRIBUNE (Nov. 1, 2017),
https://www.texastribune.org/2017/1 1/01/russian-facebook-page-organized-protest-texas-different-