The law should unmask violent protesters once and for all

In Gaza last week, a group of masked terrorists paraded captive women around a public square. At Columbia University earlier this month, a group of masked individuals disrupted a class with screams and banging drums.

Masks embolden agitators. In the U.S., they are being used as thinly veiled symbols of brutality and intimidation. Public protests that have devolved into hate speech, physical intimidation, destruction of property and calls for violence have one factor in common — protesters are masked.

Protesters in the U.S. are practicing their First Amendment rights — their rights to advocate for causes they believe in. Yet it is contradictory to simultaneously embrace advocacy and conceal one’s identity.

Advocacy is defined as supporting a cause on behalf of a people. So how is one representing a people if they obscure their own identity? Moreover, how is free speech a right if it blatantly and intentionally threatens others’ safety?

Freedom of speech has limitations, which include defamatory speech, threats, harassment, intimidation and other unlawful conduct. Over the past year in the U.S., all of these lines have been crossed, while protesters hide their faces.

Videos of the protests sound the story; the loudest protesters and the most vitriolic language come from those who are masked. We must break this cycle of anonymity, deindividuation, violence and unaccountability.

The first anti-mask law in the U.S. was passed in 1845 in New York after masked landlords and tenant farmer disputes led to an armed revolt. In 2013, Canada passed a law prohibiting protesters involved in riots from wearing a mask or otherwise concealing their identity. In February 2024 the United Kingdom passed laws that prohibit protesters from wearing face coverings.

Prior to the pandemic, many U.S. states had laws imposing fines and punishment for masking. Most anti-masking legislation had been created as a countermeasure against Ku Klux Klan marches. For example, in Ohio, the 1953 “anti-disguise” law, written to deter Ku Klux Klan demonstrations, could likely now be used to apply felony charges to protesters who are masked.

Canada and the U.K. have laws restricting masks from being worn in protests or riots. In the U.S., masking laws vary by state; in several states, it is an offense to wear a mask with the intent to harass or intimidate another person.

There are appropriate uses for masks, such as for safety in a professional context — including, for example, journalists covering a story that could put their safety at risk, or protection of individuals with compromised immune systems. Also, masks have been used throughout history to preserve the anonymity of individuals who are speaking out against oppressive regimes, and these individuals legitimately need protection from potentially fatal consequences of a regime’s suppression of dissent.

But in the U.S., this does not apply to individuals who deliberately threaten and intimidate others while hiding behind masks. Many organizations advocate for support of individuals engaging in “peaceful” protests, but the tenor and intent of the past year’s protests have been far from peaceful.

Protesters claim that they wear masks for fear of being “doxxed” or having their identities exposed. But isn’t protesting an expression of one’s identity? When people stands up for what they believe in, shouldn’t they also take responsibility for doing so?

Let us promote the power of speech, and let us not mask the power of intimidation.

Elyse R. Park, Ph.D., MPH is a professor of psychiatry and medicine at Harvard Medical School.

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