This article was provided exclusively to the New York Analysis of Policy and Government by the New York Analysis of Policy and Government by the distinguished retired judge, John Wilson.
Recently, in Virginia, a 12 year old African American girl accused three of her male white classmates of pinning her down, and cutting off her dreadlocks. Before the girl recanted, she received an “outpouring of support” from across the nation, including some kind words from Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.
This is only the latest in a series of racial incidents that were either falsified or exaggerated by the victims themselves. In December of 2016, an 18 year old Muslim girl in New York City claimed that a group of men yelled President Trump’s name as they tried to remove the hijab from her head. This girl admitted to making up the story. Just a month earlier, a college student in Lafayette, Louisiana also admitted to fabricating a story about two men ripping off her hijab during a robbery.
Though Jussie Smollett has not admitted to perpetrating a hoax when he claimed to be attacked by two men wearing MAGA hats on a Chicago street, all the evidence gathered to date would indicate that Smollet hired his alleged attackers in an effort to boost his salary.
Of course, claiming falsely that someone of another race has assaulted you is not exclusive to African or Arab Americans. In January of 2019, a woman in Columbia, SC admitted that her allegation of being assaulted by a black man in a Walmart parking lot was not true. In April of 2019, a Quincy, Massachusetts woman admitted to falsely reporting that she lied to the police about being attacked by a black man in a park, and in 2015, a Texas woman also admitted to lying about being attacked by three African American men. That “victim” had gone as far as to take photographs of her “black eyes,” which were obviously blackened with makeup.
But there is a difference between the false reports of Jussie Smollett and the young Arab women, and the claims made by the three white women described above. In the case of Smollett and the Arab girls, there is a decidedly political angle to their allegations. Smollett claimed that the men who attacked him were wearing MAGA hats, while each of the Arab girls claimed that either her attacker had worn a similar hat, or referenced the President during the faux assault.
The motivation for perpetrating a hoax of this nature is complicated, and usually involves an effort to gather sympathy for oneself as the victim of a crime. But many of those reporting false incidents have a political agenda. As reported by Wilfred Reilly in USA Today, “in college campus hate hoax cases…the individuals responsible almost invariably say that they staged incidents to call attention to real incidents of racist violence on campus.”
While researching a book on the topic, Reilly documented approximately 409 “confirmed hate hoaxes.” In fact, there are so many “hate crime” allegations that have been proven to be false, a website called Fake Hate Crimes exists, and at last count, has documented 371 faked crimes since 2012, including “dreadlock girl.”
More than anything, this political underpinning of a hoax of this nature drives the majority of the press coverage for the incident. In the case of “dreadlock girl,” much of the initial media coverage for the story emphasized that the wife of Vice President Mike Pence, Karen Pence, was a teacher at the school, even though she had nothing to do with the reported allegations.
The “shoot at the MAGA hat first, and ask questions later” style of reporting was most in evidence in January of 2019, when a group of white students from Covington High School in Kentucky were filmed wearing red MAGA hats while being confronted by a Native American activist in Washington, DC. The video of one young man in particular, smiling while Native activist Nathan Phillips beat a drum uncomfortably close to the young man’s face, went viral, and sparked a firestorm of criticism for these students.
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More often than not, there isn’t any real “victim” of the false allegations – the faux attacker and his MAGA hat don’t exist in anything but the hoaxers’ imagination. Occasionally, the person who made the fake allegation is arrested, and prosecuted for making a false complaint to the police. But many of the faux “victims” continue to have their defenders. For instance, in defending Jussie Smollett, Susan X Jane incoherently writes that “no matter how many times Trump lies, white men stay mansplaining and they certainly believe themselves. But the accusation is that Smollett staged an assault — that’s a little more than trying to get your neighbor kicked out of the pool, right?”
The real story here isn’t that people will seek attention for themselves by claiming to be the victim of a crime. It’s the speed with which the media picks up on these allegations, and publishes them without any effort to verify the facts. As former Milwaukee Sheriff David Clark states in The Hill, “the media love stories of race so much that they sprint to unfurl the ‘breaking news’ banner before knowing the facts. It seems facts don’t matter, or more precisely, facts are inconvenient if they can use the story as a political bludgeon to smear all conservatives and Republicans as racists.”
Besides the obvious “click-bait” such stories provide for the media, publicizing an uninvestigated hoax gives certain media outlets the opportunity to whip up a frenzy among the “perpetually outraged.” In a vicious circle of support, the false story is shared across the internet, providing more readership for the news outlet that publishes the untrue allegations.
When more responsible investigators and news outlets finally get to the bottom of the story, and reveal the story to be false, no apologies are made by the people who supported the false narrative. Instead, these media outlets and the “on-line mob” move on to the next outrage that supports their view – that Trump supporters are all racists, and anyone wearing a MAGA hat is violent.
Meanwhile, the opposite is demonstrably true – there have been an increase in attacks on people wearing hats that support President Trump. (For a detailed series of incidents, including an attack on an 81 year old. Yet, when a New Jersey man was attacked in Manhattan in August of 2019 while wearing a MAGA hat, the headlines all proclaimed that he “claimed” to be assaulted for his support of the President. To date, there has been no evidence to indicate that the victim’s story is anything but the truth.
There is no controlling or stopping the media and its support for the “perpetually outraged.” But to be forewarned is to be forearmed. The next time you hear about an alleged racial incident, particularly if it involves someone in a MAGA hat, take a deep breath, and wait a few days before sharing the story on line – you may find yourself sharing the truth instead of spreading the lie.
Photo: Pixabay