IT’S BEGINNING TO SEEM AS IF CAMPUS HATE-CRIME REPORTS ARE USUALLY FAKE: Montclair State Muslim Charged After Bogus Hate Crime Report.
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FAKE RAPE CHARGES SHOULD BE REGARDED AS A HATE CRIME: Florida woman faked rape after skipping work: authorities. “Alexandra Westover’s harrowing tale of a rush hour assault on the side of a Florida turnpike was a hoax, Palm Beach County Sheriff says. The 21-year-old Boca Raton woman reportedly needed an excuse to explain why she didn’t show up at her job.”
KING OF COMEDY UPDATE: Watch the Jussie Smollett hate hoaxers re-enact the ‘crime.’ “Is this the best video to grace the internet today? Cockburn thinks yes. Check out Abel and Ola Osundairo, the Nigerian brothers who allegedly perpetrated a fake hate crime against Empire actor Jussie ‘Juicy’ Smollett, re-enacting how they carried out the staged attack:”
The Osundairo brothers were hired men for a con created to dupe America. They share what they were instructed to do the night of the staged attack on Jussie Smollett. https://t.co/jvWwGloz8k #FoxNation #JussieSmollett #AnatomyOfAHoax pic.twitter.com/3uOEHLFSoN
— Fox Nation (@foxnation) March 13, 2023
(Classical reference in headline.)
THE DEMAND FOR HATE CRIMES IN AMERICA FAR EXCEEDS THE SUPPLY: Jussie Smollett is part of a larger trend of fake hate crimes.
That the people who perpetuate these deceptions are either too stupid or selfish to see this will never cease to amaze.
In 2019, for example, an Ohio University student claimed to have received three threatening anti-LGBT letters. Law enforcement officials said later she authored the messages herself, charging her with three counts of making false alarms.
A former student at North Park University in Chicago was likewise caught fabricating a story about receiving threatening, slur-riddled notes mentioning then-President-elect Donald Trump. Like the aforementioned Ohio University incident, the North Park student posted the messages, some of which contained anti-gay slurs, herself.
Earlier, in 2016, a former employee of St. David’s Episcopal Church in Bean Blossom, Indiana, was discovered to have vandalized his own place of employment following the election of Trump. The former employee, who is gay, defaced the church with an image of a swastika and the words “Heil Trump” and “Fag Church.”
Elsewhere, a Muslim student at the University of Louisiana said two white men wearing “Make America Great Again” hats ripped her hijab from her head the day after Trump won the election. She admitted later she concocted the story from thin air.
You’re gonna need a much bigger blog. As Roger Kimball wrote when Jussie Smollett’s story broke in 2019, “The less hate there is in the United States, the more hate crimes must be manufactured in order to keep the Fraternal Order of Victims afloat.”
#HATEHOAX: HE TOLD POLICE HE WAS STABBED FOR BEING JEWISH. THEN HIS APPLE WATCH CAUGHT HIM IN A LIE.
Found via Andy Ngo, who tweets, “Even as people are being attack daily in New York in anti-Semitic hate crimes, some choose to create their own #hatehoax. Detroit police accuse Sean Samitt of faking his stabbing at a synagogue. He’s been charged w/a felony for the alleged fake hate crime.”
DEMAND FOR HATE CRIMES FAR EXCEEDS THE SUPPLY: If America Is A Racist Country, Why Do People Have To Constantly Invent Fake Hate Crimes?
HATERS GOTTA MAKE FAKE HATE: Citing SPLC’s Inflated Numbers, Gillibrand and Other Dems Push Hate Crime Hoax Bill.
THE HATE-HOAX BONFIRE. In his latest G-File, Jonah Goldberg writes:
Smollett’s hoax isn’t that unusual. I’m already running long, so I’ll spare you the data, but hoaxes happen all the time — and so do actual hate crimes. They’ve happened under Trump, and they were happening for decades before Trump. That’s why it’s particularly galling to see Al Sharpton opine on the Smollett case given that his entire career stemmed from the Tawana Brawley hoax and his role in a real hate crime that killed seven people.
I’ve been following this stuff ever since I witnessed such hoaxes as a college student. I think the first book I ever reviewed professionally was about student activism. The author, Paul Rogat Loeb, had a whole chapter about racism on college campuses. He focused on a hate crime at Emory. It was only after dozens of pages about all the wonderful consciousness-raising — and shakedowns of administrators — that resulted from the response to the atrocity that he acknowledged that the victim orchestrated the whole thing. But that was irrelevant, according to Loeb, because “other racial harassment has unquestionably occurred again and again, at colleges nationwide.” And besides, so much consciousness was raised! I wrote at the time, “When students are taught that the coin of the realm is race and rage, invariably some will spend that currency on self-aggrandizement and controversy.”
Read the whole thing. Tom Wolfe may have passed on, but the coding he wrote to program the Matrix is still working brilliantly.
QUESTIONS ASKED AND ANSWERED: “Chicago police say today that Jussie Smollett concocted the hate hoax because he wanted to get a higher salary from the producers of his TV show Empire:”
Eddie T. Johnson, the visibly angry Chicago police superintendent, said Mr. Smollett had taken advantage of the pain and anger of racism, draining resources that could have been used to investigate other crimes for which people were actually suffering.
“I just wish that the families of gun violence in this city got this much attention,” he said at a news conference in Chicago.
The superintendent seemed particularly upset by the fact that Mr. Smollett, he said, had arranged a fake assault that featured a noose hung around his neck. The police say the staged assault was carried out by two brothers to whom the actor had paid $3,500.
“Why would anyone — especially an African-American man — use the symbolism of a noose to make false accusations?” he asked. “How could someone look at the hatred and suffering associated with that symbol and see an opportunity to manipulate that symbol to further his own public profile?
Chicago’s police superintendent isn’t the only person appearing to be vexed by Smollet’s apparent action. As Kyle Smith writes, “‘Why Would Jussie Smollett Do This?’ They Cried:”
[CNN’s Brian] Stelter chimed in again: “This is about why he might — and, so far, we don’t know. But why he might have made this up. It just boggles the mind.”
It boggles the mind! One struggles in vain to think of another profession in which someone could evince or affect as much incompetence as Stelter and Co. and expect to remain employed.
* * * * * * * *
Stelter was a toddler when a black teen named Tawana Brawley made up a story about six white men raping her, smearing her with feces, scrawling “KKK” and “n****r” on her torso with charcoal, and leaving her in a trash bag. He has lived nearly his entire life in the era of hate-crime hoaxes. He surely remembers the Duke-lacrosse gang-rape hoax of 2006, the University of Virginia gang-rape hoax of 2014, the incident just after Trump’s election when a woman on the New York City subway claimed drunken white men had ripped off her hijab. There are lots of other examples. Hey, do you remember as far back as January, when an Indian man tried to portray himself as the victim of a hateful mob of Trump-backing teenage goons? George Will once wrote of campuses, “When they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate.” When the media can be relied upon to credit hysterics and axe-grinders the way campus administrators do, America effectively becomes a vast campus.
The reasons for Smollett’s hoax didn’t boggle anyone’s mind, assuming that the mind in question was functioning above the level of someone who eats a bowl of lead-paint chips for breakfast. In America, victimhood is currency. It is easily converted into actual currency, and if Smollett had gotten away with his hoax, he had every reason to expect that his vastly increased celebrity would have led to the salary bump Chicago police said he wanted from his show Empire.
As Roger Kimball writes, “The less hate there is in the Untied States, the more hate crimes must be manufactured in order to keep the Fraternal Order of Victims afloat.”
THE BOSTON HERALD EDITORIALIZES ON SMOLLETT AND THE MEDIA: Alleged Chicago hate crime hoax a bad look for many.
As Jussie Smollett’s account of his alleged assault falls apart, it is important to note that politicians, the media and influential voices did their best to fan the flames of outrage, based on nothing but the dark premise that conservatives and Trump supporters are evil.
It is astounding that so many reputable people took Smollett’s fantastical account seriously. Certainly, hate crimes based on race and sexual orientation are a very real thing, but the details surrounding this particular episode centered around a lampoonish representation of a Trump-era bigot.
It was a flimsy yarn from the outset, which only became more precarious with each passing day. That didn’t stop those most deeply invested in the narrative of Evil Trump to jump into action.
Presidential hopefuls Cory Booker and Kamala Harris each labeled the supposed attack a “modern-day lynching,” with Harris adding that, “We must confront this hate.”
Kirsten Gillibrand tweeted, “This is a sickening and outrageous attack, and horribly, it’s the latest of too many hate crimes against LGBTQ people and people of color. We are all responsible for condemning this behavior and every person who enables or normalizes it …”
Joe Biden tweeted, “What happened today to @JussieSmollett must never be tolerated in this country. We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jussie.”
It wasn’t only those with presidential aspirations who weighed-in, Democratic-Socialist superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez railed against news accounts that qualified their reporting. “There is no such thing as ‘racially charged,’ She tweeted. “This attack was not ‘possibly’ homophobic. It was a racist and homophobic attack … It is no one’s job to water down or sugar-coat the rise of hate crimes.”
Another freshman congressman, Rashida Tlaib, tweeted, “The dangerous lies spewing from the right wing is killing & hurting our people.”
Not to be outdone, Hollywood notables also reacted as expected. Director Rob Reiner tweeted, “The horrific attack on Jussie Smollett has no place in a decent human loving society. Homophobia existed before Trump, but there is no question that since he has injected his hatred into the American bloodstream, we are less decent, less human, & less loving. No intolerance! No DT!”
The media has comported itself badly as well. Almost immediately after getting the Covington Catholic story so wrong, many in the news industry immediately accepted the Smollett story as true.
Astonishingly, a Washington Post writer named Nana Efua Mumford wrote this: “If Smollett’s story is found to be untrue … The incident would be touted as proof that there is a leftist conspiracy to cast Trump supporters as violent, murderous racists. It would be the very embodiment of ‘fake news.’ And that reason, more than any other, is why I need this story to be true.”
In other words, Trump supporters are violent, murderous racists. That dark premise is a lie, fake news and untrue. Let us hope one half of the country can correct their horrifically jaded view of the other half before we lose ourselves.
Hope is not a plan.
WHY SOME PEOPLE CHEER WHEN “JOURNALISTS” ARE LAID OFF: On January 29, Two Hate Crimes Occurred. The Media Only Covered The Fake One. Here’s Why.
SURPRISE! SERVER FAKED “RACIST RECEIPT” OUTRAGE IN TEXAS. “It seems as though Saltgrass [Steakhouse] simply accepted [waiter Khalil] Cavil’s assertion as fact, even though it would be highly rare for a customer to go that far out of their way to insult a waiter’s ethnicity in writing.The Odessa American did a good job in reporting the hoax afterward, but for the week prior did little to verify the story. Instead, the paper talked about how proud Cavil’s mother was of him, and all about his civic virtue. The newspaper seemed more interested in promoting a narrative than in checking to see whether it was true. Saltgrass isn’t the only institution in Odessa with egg on its face.”
As to Cavil himself, Saltgrass declined to explain whether he had been fired or quit. “All I can say is he’s no longer with the company,” spokeswoman Colleen Wagner told the Washington Post yesterday.
If it weren’t for fake hate crimes, how many hate crimes would we have?, to coin an Insta-phrase.
FIGHT AGAINST “FAKE NEWS” FRAUGHT WITH FAKERY: Our intellectual betters in the EU, including France, Ireland, Germany and England have been passing or flirting with all sorts of laws criminalizing “fake news.” Industry giants Facebook, Twitter and Google have consistently failed at sorting out “fake news” and more often than not, simply add an ideological filter skewed against conservative-leaning speech as if that would fix the problem. I, for one, think the “problem” is greatly exaggerated.
But to heck with what I think. As free-speech advocacy group Article 19 points out, “neither states nor business are getting it right on ‘fake news’ and free expression”:
“The notion of ‘fake news’ is too vague to prevent subjective and arbitrary interpretation, whether in legislation or the rules of online platforms. “Fake news” laws can be (and frequently are under some regimes) used to suppress media freedom and jail journalists, but it would not be much reassurance to have private entities like the tech giants making these assessments instead. Such efforts can lead to undue censorship as a result of flawed algorithms and ill-thought out assessments of what can be considered “true” – not to mention that these businesses may be subject to the influence of non-democratic governments in certain countries where they operate.”
Just last week the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that two Jordanian journalists were arrested for violating that nation’s Press Law, which criminalizes “false information.” In the US, as in Jordan, there is a reflexive impulse of government actors to decry news they don’t like or that may be factually incorrect without proof of malicious motive as “fake” or “false.”
The proof of the problem with these kinds of laws is concrete. In early January, pressured by the new German “fake news” law, Twitter blocked the account of German satirical magazine Titanic after it posted tweets that parodied a far-right politician. The German Federation of Journalists, which has criticized the law since it was first proposed last year, told CNN said that the suspension of Titanic was exactly the kind of censorship the group has warned about for months. Eurocrats countered by saying that “rules covering hate speech and illegal content on digital platforms [are] in line with those already imposed on print media.” Justice minister Heiko Maas said that “freedom of expression is not a license to commit crimes.” When a bureaucrat can’t tell the difference between “hate speech” and humor that actually lampoons “hate speech,” you know trouble is inevitable. (Not that the Germans are famous for their sense of humor anyway).
Worse yet, even The New York Times has admitted that the impact of the fake news propagated in social media may have been wildly exaggerated. While “fake news” is on the never-ending and always evolving list of reasons that Ms. Clinton lost an election she had thought was sewn up, it is emerging that these fake news stories and memes didn’t change votes, but rather reinforced the bubbles and bias of those who had already made up their minds.
Here’s a crazy idea: how about treating the polity as capable of thinking for themselves and embracing the “marketplace of ideas“? In the words of the great Nat Hentoff: “Let the asses bray.”
**Shameless Self-Promotion: I’ll be speaking on the keynote panel “Fake News Eats the World: Protecting Speech, Evaluating Truth & Validating our Decisions” at the Legaltech 2018 Conference in New York City on Thursday, January 31, 2018
HOWIE CARR ON HATE-CRIME HYPOCRISY:
Finally, yesterday, the Chicago police charged the four aspiring rappers with a hate crime for allegedly beating, torturing and kidnapping a white mentally disabled kid from the suburbs.
They were screaming “Bleep white people!” and “Bleep Trump!” but none of the PC posse wanted to … uh, jump to any conclusions.
Take Obama — please. His flack Josh Earnest was asked if this was a hate crime.
“I think it’s too early to tell.”
No call from Obama for a “national conversation” about hate crimes. He didn’t even call it “workplace violence.” . . .
This wasn’t the first post-election black-on-white hate crime on the West Side. In November, a 50-year-old white man was dragged from his car by four people screaming obscenities about Trump. That hate crime was likewise recorded on videotape.
Police arrested Rajune Lewis, Dejuan Collins, Julian Christian and a juvenile and … do you remember seeing anything about this on the network newscasts? Me neither.
Compare this kid-glove treatment for all these thugs to what happened to the two Babson College students who drove over to Wellesley College after the election. Let’s let Babson President (and former Lt. Gov.) Muffy Healey describe how her students “engaged in behavior that was, at a minimum, insensitive, unacceptable and contrary to our core values.”
Their crime? They were yelling “Trump 2016!” and “Make America Great Again.”
Muffy banned them from campus and they were kicked out of their frat. They had to hire lawyers to fight Muffy’s fake news.
If it wasn’t for double standards, the alt-left wouldn’t have any standards at all.
True.
WHAT YASMIN SEWEID’S PRETTY LITTLE LIES REVEAL ABOUT ‘FAKE NEWS’ MEDIA HYPOCRISY:
[S]ince Donald Trump’s election, social media users have been bombarded by a finger wagging media about a flood of fake news and misinformation spreading online which, the media claims. But the media isn’t taking a long hard look at themselves and asking how and why “fake news” has gained the audience it has. With little to no discretion and all too eager to push anti-Trump narratives, these news organizations hit the publish button on Seweid’s story with little to no hedging that, at that point, all they had was her account. And its faith in the story dies hard. When Buzzfeed published the story of Seweid’s arrest on Wednesday, the headline read “Woman Arrested For Allegedly Making Up Story of NY Subway Attack by Trump Supporters”, carrying more skepticism in the fact that she was arrested for fabricating the story, than Buzzfeed gave to its original report.
These editors, apparently not convinced that Donald Trump provides enough real life clickbait content, rushed off to prove their desired narrative of rampant Islamophobia and hate crimes. If newsroom editors want to lament the spread of fake news, perhaps they can start with how they and their journalists handled the Yasmin Seweid case. Likewise with rape victims in the viral media cases of Emma Sulkowicz, the University of Virginia Greek system or Duke Lacrosse, all this does is undermine their own narratives and most importantly real victims.
Maybe mainstream news outlets and networks will figure this out sometime into President Donald Trump’s second term.
Read the whole thing.
THEY ALREADY KNOW WHAT THEY WANT THE STORY TO BE: Popular YouTuber Tricks Mic Journalist With Fake Trump-Inspired Hate Crime.
YEAH, I PRETTY MUCH START WITH THE ASSUMPTION THAT THESE THINGS ARE FAKES NOW: There Have Been Over 100 Hate Crime Hoaxes In The Past Decade. “Victimhood isn’t just used to push agendas and win power. It can also be used to make money. Professional victims like feminist pest Anita Sarkeesian have received thousands of dollars in donations after complaints about unkind words on the internet. Little wonder that there’s been such an epidemic of hate crime hoaxes in the past few years, particularly among regressive activists on university campuses. We’ve seen students scrawl swastikas on the doors of their own dorm rooms, send themselves anonymous rape threats, and falsely accuse fraternities of queer-bashing.”
I NOW BASICALLY ASSUME THAT ANY JUICY RACISM STORY IS FAKE, AND I’M SELDOM WRONG: More damaging evidence in the SUNY Albany racial hoax:
Audio from two 911 phone calls and video footage of the alleged racially motivated assault at a New York college has been released, providing more evidence why the women who made the accusation are now being charged with false reporting.
The three women claimed they were attacked by more than a dozen white people who hurled racial slurs at them as they rode a bus back to the State University of New York at Albany campus. But video footage from the bus and cell phone cameras showed that one of the alleged victims threw the first punch and that one of the accusers is the one who used a racial slur — against a white passenger.
Now some of that footage has been released, but it is difficult to tell what exactly happened. The 911 audio is more damaging, showing one of the accusers saying “I think it’s so funny” and “I beat up a boy” before the call connected to a dispatcher.
When the call connected, the accuser then tells the story that she was “jumped” on a bus and that it was a racially motivated attack. . . .
The incident, which occurred in late January, sparked protests at the campus and a fountain of support for the accusers. Even now that evidence has come to light showing they were not the victims of a hate crime, there are some in the community standing by them.
The Upstate New York Black Lives Matter Organization has issued a letter supporting the women, calling the evidence against them “inconclusive.”
Uh huh.
UNEXPECTEDLY: Another Anti-Gay Hate Crime Turns Out to Be a Giant Hoax.
“Commentator Michelle Malkin has dubbed the phenomenon ‘faking the hate,’ and has blogged about it for many years.“
NINE DEAD IN CHARLESTON CHURCH SHOOTING. Police are calling it a hate crime, though facts are scarce. I’m sure we’ll know more before the day is out.
UPDATE: What we know this morning on the #CharlestonShooting ‘hate crime.’
ANOTHER UPDATE: Charleston Church Shooter Identified, But Still On The Run. “Police have identified the Charleston shooting suspect at Dylann Storm Roof, 21, of Eastover, S.C. Officials said the shooter sat with church members in a Bible study meeting for an hour before opening fire. He reportedly said he wanted to kill black people before he started shooting, hence authorities investigating the massacre as a hate crime. Six women and three men were shot to death, including pastor and state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, 41. All but one died at the church. A federal law enforcement official told the Los Angeles Times that “it appeared from the surveillance images that the assailant may have worn a wig and a fake nose, and may even have dyed part of his skin.” The suspect’s nose isn’t the same shade as the rest of his face, and the hair is a heavy bowl cut. He was wearing layers even though it was a hot evening in Charleston and was carrying a backpack. He drove a dark sedan. He was driving a black Hyundai Elantra with South Carolina tag LGF-330.”
Photos, etc., at the link.
MORE: Suspect arrested in North Carolina. “Charleston church shooting suspect Dylann Roof has been taken into custody in North Carolina, a senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation told CNN’s Deborah Feyerick.”
PRINCETON ASSAULT WAS A HOAX, according to a report in the Daily Princetonian. Another fake hate crime, I guess. Congrats to Fausta’s commenters, who smelled it first. To me, the concussion made a hoax seem unlikely, but that just proves that some people will go to great lengths, I guess.
MORE THOUGHTS ON THE REPORTED hate crimes at Princeton. I’ll just note that they told me if George W. Bush were reelected, unpopular groups would be subject to beatings and intimidation. And they were right!
And as a commenter notes, this would get more attention if it had involved a noose on a doorknob even though in this case, according to the reports, we have an actual physical assault and beating.
UPDATE: Princeton resident Fausta Wertz notes that there’s been no coverage in the town paper.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Further thoughts from Prof. Tom Smith.
MORE: Some of Fausta’s commenters think this is a hoax. That’s always possible with “hate crime” reports, of course (see the Redstate item linked at the top of this post), but this one did involve a concussion, which probably wasn’t fake. At any rate, media skepticism about possible hoaxes — as another commenter notes — seems absent whenever there’s a noose involved.
STILL MORE: But Fausta’s commenters turn out to be right. Jeez. I think hate-crime hoaxes should be punished severely; they cause as much fear and hate as the real thing, oftentimes.
ANOTHER HATE CRIME HOAX, this time at Claremont. Meanwhile there’s genuine crushing of dissent, with apparent support from the Administration, at U.C. Berkeley.
UPDATE: Here’s another one. I think that these hoaxes should be treated as hate crimes themselves. The argument for special “hate crime” rules, after all, is that hate crimes promote fear and division. So do fake hate crimes.
GREAT MOMENTS IN PROJECTION: Salon: first they come for the transgenders, then they will come for you.
Then they accuse us of being violent. Even “silence is violence.” They fake hate crimes every day to prove how awful Americans are too. Here’s their current rant:
Violence is central to fascism. It forms its origin myths and is one of the primary ways that fascism asserts itself. The power to engage in acts of violence against designated enemies with near-total impunity is one of the main reasons people join fascist movements. As history makes obvious, once fascists take control of a society they maintain and expand their power through violence.
In an era when the Republican Party, the “conservative” movement and the larger white right have de facto embraced fascism, political violence is a constant threat — and the “culture war” may no longer be largely rhetorical or categorical. Indeed, the struggle over cultural issues are a principal battlefield in the current struggle for American democracy.
Yep, America’s cities were burnt down in 2020 by White Supremacists, Crisis Pregnancy Centers are getting vandalized at the instigation of Ron DeSantis, and conservative mayors and governors have opened the doors of prisons and invited flash mobs to ransack stores. Right wing violence is rampant. Even exhibit #1 of right wing “violence”–January 6th riot–was mostly selfies and walking around the Capitol. The only person who died was shot in the back by a Capitol Police officer, although the president keeps lying and saying 5 people were killed. When Biden opens his mouth nothing but lies and made up words come out, it seems.
To be fair, Salon has been declaring Republicans to be fascists while begging for socialism to be nationalized for quite some time.