There has been a lot written about hate crime hoaxes this week, and many arguments over the bogus data liberals use to paint the United States as a horrible, hate-filled place. Most of it focused on why liberals were so quick to believe such a bogus story from a celebrity, which is interesting. But the more interesting, and important question is why so many non-celebrities create these hoaxes?
The Jussie Smollett saga has been something to behold – who pays for a crime with a check? Actually, TV host Jerry Springer did in the mid-70s when he cuts checks to prostitutes while a city councilman in Cincinnati.
While we laugh at Smollett’s stupid plan to pose as a victim of a racist, homophobic attack by a Trump supporter to somehow get a raise, what the actor tried to pull off happens with alarming regularity. While the reporting of the original stories garner media attention and is front page news, the exposure of the hoax barely rates a mention.
The frequency with which hoaxes are occurring is increasing. It’s easy to simply blame the fetishization of victimhood by the left elevating being a victim to the status of something to aspire to. It’s true, but it’s only part of the story.
Not all hate crime hoaxes involve physical attacks. As real bigotry began to fade, the industry created to combat it had a choice: accept victory and go find new jobs, or move the goalposts and double down on the fundraising. They chose option two.
They created “microaggressions” and “bias incidents” to inflate the numbers of “hate crimes.” And the hoaxes helped too.
I detailed a lot of these hoaxes in my book, and a project started by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Pro Publica partnering with a bunch of news organizations to document the rise of hate immediately after the election of President Trump. The project included the New York Times, which ran a feature called “This Week in Hate.”
The project got off to a hot start because they solicited claims from anyone and required no proof. I wrote in my book:
Curiously, most of the states with reports of hate crimes and bias incidences were very liberal states. California led the nation with 154 reports, followed by New York with 127.25 Washington reported 65 and neighboring Oregon, 50.
Were those deep blue states harboring right-wing hatemongers just waiting for a Republican to win the White House so they could be liberated from holding in all their hatred for everyone else? Or could it be that since the project requires no verification, it simply solicits stories from anyone, and many reported “hate crimes” turn out to be hoaxes, that many people are making them up? Or maybe blue states are full of liberal snowflakes anxiously awaiting their opportunity to be melted, so any slight is a possible report?
The answers were obvious for anyone willing to look, but organizations involved weren’t interested in looking. “The SPLC declared that the groups had ‘collected 1,372 reported bias incidents between the day after the election and February 7,’” I wrote.
They were dutifully counted as fact, but the project was soon abandoned. The Times ended “This Week in Hate” by July of 2017 as so many stories they highlighted turned out to frauds a week or two later. “This Week in Corrections” didn’t have the same ring to it and wouldn’t hurt the President, which seemed to be the only motivation in the first place.
So why would someone fake these incidences?
Those students who fell prey to the indoctrination they’d experienced their whole lives from “educators,” political leaders, and media outlets couldn’t help themselves. Two decades of people they’re supposed to trust telling them how “fundamentally racist/sexist/homophobic/etc.” The country is bearing fruit eventually.
These little social justice warriors boil over at the notion that other people don’t know how racist everything is, so they commit to fighting. They leave their dorms, unshowered and angry, to hunt for the injustices, both micro- and macroaggressions, to “take down.” But they don’t find them.
They search their drum circles, they talk to like-minded people with similarly pierced privates in the social justice warrior army who are just as perplexed over the difficulty of finding droves of white men beating minorities on the streets or forcing women to carry babies to term and can’t stand it anymore. They know it is out there, they know that’s how the country is, but they can’t find it. So they make it up.
While some are likely looking for attention, most are looking to fight what they can’t find but know in their bones exists and is everywhere. They fake it to “draw attention” to the issue.
They’ve been conditioned to think the country is this horrible place, so the inability to find evidence of it is simply a testament to how deeply embedded into society the problem is to them. It’s how you end up with the concept of “only a small percentage of hate crimes are actually reported,” which is a common liberal refrain. If they aren’t reported there is no way to know how many of them there really are. It doesn’t matter, they believe it’s true so it must be. And considering how the liberal mob is quick to angrily mobilize against anyone who questions their orthodoxy, few dare.
Jussie Smollett exposed a problem, but the coverage of his case hasn’t really touched on how that problem came into being, only why so many were willing to believe it. Where the mindset comes from in the first place is more important if you want to defeat the mentality.
Derek Hunter is a columnist at Townhall, podcast host, and author of “Outrage, INC.: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood.” (The Kindle version is on sale for $1.99 for a limited time.) To combat how the political left manipulates unsuspecting Americans to the point that they’d believe their lies and act on them, you have to understand how liberals weaponized important institutions against the American people. And don’t forget to subscribe to his daily podcast, it’s informative, funny and it’s free!