Marcus Clintonius
The MSM is attributing actor Jussie Smollett’s hate crime
hoax to dissatisfaction with his TV series salary and a desire to raise his profile
in the entertainment industry. That’s only part of the story... in fact a small
part of the story.
The bigger issue is not Smollett’s clumsy staging of an
assault, but the political climate in the country that invites, no—actually
demands—hate crime hoaxes. A meme mocking Smollett making the rounds on social
media declares that the proliferation of hoaxes is due to the “supply of racism
not meeting the demand.”'
This hits the nail on the head. In evidence is the response
by media talking heads expressing their outrage at the alleged attack before
the hoax was uncovered.
“This is America... in
2019,” CNN’s Brooke Baldwin somberly intoned.
A View harpy sneered, “I’m disgusted by people who wear hats that
say MAGA.”
Lesbian actress Ellen Page was almost moved to tears as she
lectured Stephen Colbert’s Late Show
audience that the attack was caused by Trump and the Vice President:
“... Mike Pence... who
like wishes I couldn’t be married. Let’s be clear. Connect the dots. This is
what happens if you are in a position of power and you hate people, and you
want to cause suffering to them. … you spend your career trying to cause
suffering. What do you think is going to happen?”
A vast swath of America wants to believe that Trump’s
election spurred a spike in “hate crimes” across the nation perpetrated by MAGA
hat-wearing white supremacist Trump supporters. This narrative is pushed by the
MSM, social media, Hollywood and the entertainment industry, and fertilized on
virtually every college campus by the diversity droids who now call the shots
in the Academy.
Why would anyone believe that a video showing a young man in
a MAGA hat smiling at a Native
American man banging a drum... was really mocking him? Even when the rest of
the video surfaced, revealing that the boys had been verbally accosted with
racial and sexual epithets by a group of black thugs, and that Nathan Phillips,
the Native American, joined the attack... why would reporters and pundits still
insist that the boy’s awkward smile was a smirk, an expression of his “white
privilege”?
Because Brooke Baldwin got it almost right. This was what they
want America to be... in 2019.
Demonizing whiteness, and particularly, white masculinity, has become part of
the national zeitgeist.
Contrary to the MSM’s slanderous narrative, the behavior of
Nicholas Sandmann and the boys from Covington Catholic High School at the
pro-life rally in Washington was beyond
reproach.
“They called
us ‘racists,’ ‘bigots,’ ‘white crackers,’ ‘faggots,’ and ‘incest kids’’” Sandmann says in his statement, describing the taunts
hurled at them by the self-styled Black Israelites.
The provocations of the Native American group followed:
“You stole our land,”
and “Go back to Europe,” were some of
their insults. And eventually, Phillips approached Sandmann to get right in his
face, banging his drum and chanting.
Here’s how Sandmann describes what it was like and how he
responded:
“I never understood why either of the two groups of protesters were engaging with us, or exactly what they were protesting at the Lincoln Memorial. We were simply there to meet a bus, not become central players in a media spectacle. This is the first time in my life I've ever encountered any sort of public protest, let alone this kind of confrontation or demonstration.
“I was not intentionally making faces at the protester. I did smile at one point because I wanted him to know that I was not going to become angry, intimidated or be provoked into a larger confrontation. I am a faithful Christian and practicing Catholic, and I always try to live up to the ideals my faith teaches me -- to remain respectful of others, and to take no action that would lead to conflict or violence.”
Sandmann and the rest of the
high schoolers acted with remarkable
restraint. It is gratifying that they are now suing several media outlets and
personalities for the outrageous libeling of their actions.
* * *
Hate crime hoaxes are legion. The majority of such “hate”
incidents are faked by the supposed victims. On the college campus, I’m aware
of none that weren’t faked.
The Daily Caller
recently published a list of 21 hate crime hoaxes in the “Trump era,”[i]
including:
· the Louisiana Muslim woman who claimed two MAGA-hat wearing white men grabbed her wallet and hijab while yelling racial slurs;
· the Church organist who spray-painted a swastika and “Heil Trump” on his own church;
· the Texas man who set fire to his car and spray-painted “n----- lovers” on his garage;
· the black student who spread racist notes around the campus of St. Olaf College in Minnesota to “draw attention to concerns” about the racist climate on campus;
· ditto the Kansas State U. black student who placed racist notes on his own car, reading “Go home n----- boy,” and “Whites only”;
· the hate crime hoax of Khalil Cavil, a waiter in a Texas restaurant, who posted a picture on Facebook of a racist note calling him a “terrorist” on a bill in lieu of a tip.
* * *
On the heels of the revelations of the Smollett hate crime
hoax there’s a rash of calls from conservative pundits to set the penalties for
hoaxes equal to those for real hate crimes. This misses the point.
Certainly, bearing false witness to a hate crime should be
treated at least as severely as the law prescribes for the actual thing, but
there is a larger issue… a greater transgression of our sense of the morality
that underlies the laws and customs we in the West have chosen to employ in our
self-governance.
The original sin lies in the conception of “hate crimes” in
the first place. Anyone with a lick of sense could see where this was going
when it first reared its ugly head in the California state legislature (where
else?). Most, if not all, violent crimes contain at least the seed of hatred. Adding
an extra degree of “hate” to the motivation for the crime has now proven to be
a recipe for legal mischief. (Just ask Chicago Police Chief Eddie Johnson.) Who
decides the who-what-where-and-how much of this extra hate?
Hate crime mania is a child of identity politics—that branch
of political correctness that establishes a hierarchy of groups categorized by
oppressors at the bottom and a competing victimhood scale for all the other “oppressed,”
“marginalized” and/or “minority” groups. Whites and males are implicitly exempt
from the oppression sweepstakes.
On your typical college campus, the adjective most
frequently associated with the word “masculinity” is “toxic.” “White privilege” is now a standard fixture
in curricula, and special forums on it are regularly held to reach those
students that manage to avoid it in the classroom.
The identity politics commissars aren’t bashful about the
double standard. Members of the oppressor groups cannot be victims of
discrimination. Case closed.
* * *
Implicit in the prosecution of a “hate crime” is the notion
of the aggressor’s state-of-mind. Hatred is an emotion. It requires a thought
process. The thinking of the “hater” must be divined, and proven to a jury.
You can see where this is going: George Orwell’s dystopian
future, where Thought Police round up citizens guilty of “wrong” thinking. It
is not hyperbole to suggest that this is now the reality on the college campus.
When a professor runs afoul of the canons of political correctness, it’s not
because they have a policy of treating students differently according to their
identity. No professor has a policy of grading blacks lower than whites. The
notion is absurd. When someone on campus is painted with the Scarlet Letter
“R,” “S,” or “H,” and now “T” (the most
common identity politics transgressions) it’s because they are believed to
harbor racist, sexist, “homophobic” or ”transphobic” ideas. The Thought Police have arrived. They’ve been patrolling our
campuses for years now.
Hate crime hoaxers serve a higher calling. The ends justify
the means. It harkens back to Marxists who justify the slaughter of thousands
to bring about the perfect proletarian state. It’s the same mind-set as that of
radical feminists who pick male student’s names at random and put them on posters declaring them rapists—because all men are potential rapists.
Meanwhile, the true believers dismayed by the revelations of
Smollett’s faked hate crime seek plausible deniability in explanations that
avoid the larger truth. If Smollett’s hoax can be attributed to greed or
“aberrant behavior,” then the “woke” social justice warrior can avoid the unpleasant
task of questioning one of their core beliefs: the inherent racism and sexism
of America.
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