The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Lynching America: Jussie Smollett and the Prejudice of Anti-Trump Hatred

Posted on | February 18, 2019 | 1 Comment

“The media have summoned into existence a Hate-Hoax Industrial Complex that keeps manufacturing fake ‘incidents’ …”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Jan. 28

Americans nowadays consider “racist” the worst thing you could call someone, but I’m old enough to remember a time and place where quite the opposite was true. There is an 11-letter hyphenated compound that, in the South in the old days, was perhaps the foulest insult imaginable. The French phrase Amis des Noirs might be the most acceptable euphemistic substitute to describe white people who exhibited unusual sympathy toward African-Americans, an attitude considered philanthropic in 18th-century France, but less so in the Deep South circa 1964.

Have I ever mentioned that I’m from Georgia, and that when I was in second grade, Lester Maddox was elected our governor? So whenever I hear some allegedly clever liberal speak of “racism” or “white supremacy” in America now, it offends me because it insults my intelligence.

Buddy, I know what real racism looks like, and this ain’t it, OK?

Pete Da Tech Guy actually uses that 11-letter hyphenated compound while invoking To Kill a Mockingbird as an analogy for the liberal prejudices we’ve seen in the Jussie Smollett case. Tom Robinson was wrongly convicted “not only because the accusations fit [the jury’s] existing prejudices but they understand that to suggest in public that they believe a black man instead of a white woman might mark them as outside of their community beliefs and norms.” To say the least.

The profound racial prejudice once typical of the Deep South is quite nearly unknown in America today, but has been replaced among liberals by a partisan political prejudice, the belief that “racism” (or some other species of “hate”) is the only reason anyone votes Republican. The relevant “community” in this case are the Democrats and their media allies, whose “beliefs and norms” are offended whenever a Republican wins an election. Consider this news item:

Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker told reporters Sunday that he would withhold judgment on the alleged attack on “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett after calling the incident “an attempted modern-day lynching” when it was first reported last month.
“I’m gonna withhold until all the information actually comes out from on-the-record sources,” the senator from New Jersey said after meeting with voters in Rochester, N.H. “We know in America that bigoted and biased attacks are on the rise in a serious way, and we actually even know in this country that since 9/11, the majority of the terrorist attacks on our soil have been right-wing terrorist attacks — the majority of them white supremacist attacks.”
Booker cited the deadly shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue this past October as well as the June 2015 shooting at a historically black church in Charleston, S.C.

According to the FBI, more hate crimes have been reported in recent years, however (a) this does not mean “bigoted and biased attacks” have actually increased, nor is it correct to conclude that (b) attacks by “right-wing terrorists” or “white supremacists” are a majority of such crimes. Many incidents that might not have been reported as “hate crimes” in previous years are now being reported because of heightened attention to such crimes, and the category “hate crime” includes a lot of different offenses committed by different people for different reasons.

Go look at the actual FBI statistics for 2017, the most recent year available, and you’ll find that 21% of reported hate crimes (1,359) were committed by black people, and 9% (454) were committed by Hispanics. Whatever sort of “hate” motivated these offenders, I doubt their crimes can be described as “right-wing terrorist attacks.” In terms of motive, of the 7,175 hate-crime incidents reported by the FBI for 2017, more than 10% (741) were classified as “anti-white,” 13% (938) were “anti-Jewish.” There were 1,130 hate-crime incidents (16%) motivated by “sexual orientation” (including 32 “anti-heterosexual” hate crimes) and another 165 incidents (2.3%) motivated by gender or “gender identity,” including 22 “anti-male” hate crimes. My point is that not everything counted as a “hate crime” reflects what Senator Booker intends to suggest, i.e., that such crimes are “on the rise” because of President Trump.

What appears to have happened in the Jussie Smollett case is an effort to inflame and exploit prejudice against Trump voters — a vicious and deliberate slander against 62.9 million Americans:

Four below zero — that’s how cold it was at 2 a.m. in Chicago on Jan. 29, when actor Jussie Smollett claims he was the victim of a racist, homophobic hate crime perpetrated by two white Trump supporters. There were many reasons to be skeptical of Smollett’s story, but the fact that Chicago was experiencing a “polar vortex” of arctic cold was high on the list of doubts. Even if you could believe that two right-wingers would be stalking a not-very-famous actor in downtown Chicago, waiting for a chance to attack him on his way back from a wee-hours trip to a sandwich shop, why would they be doing this in -4°F weather?
Smollett’s story never made sense, and it came completely unraveled last week after Chicago police apprehended two of the Empire actor’s friends when they flew into O’Hare Airport, returning from a trip to Nigeria. According to reports by Chicago’s WBBM-TV and other outlets, brothers Abimbola “Abel” Osundairo and Olabinjo “Ola” Osundairo were paid $3,500 by Smollett to stage the fake hate crime. Police have not yet filed any charges or given an official explanation of exactly what happened, and Smollett’s attorneys issued a statement Saturday asserting his innocence, but there is now every reason to believe that the whole thing was a complete hoax. If this proves to be the case, will any of the liberals who rushed to exploit Smollett’s tale face any consequences for smearing Trump supporters? . . .

Read the rest of my column at The American Spectator.




 

 

Category: American Spectator, Chicago, Crime, Media Bias, Racism

Comments

One Response to “Lynching America: Jussie Smollett and the Prejudice of Anti-Trump Hatred”

  1. Saturday Links – 357 Magnum
    February 23rd, 2019 @ 11:39 am

    […] The Other McCain on why the Smollett fraud got so mucha attention. Lynching America: Jussie Smollett and the Prejudice of Anti-Trump Hatred. […]