The Jessie Smollett Hoax Is Not An Isolated Occurrence; And Hate-Crime Hoaxes Are Not An Isolated Phenomenon: They Are Of A Piece With The Hysterical Racialism Of The Delusional Left

Smollett made it up; in fact, he didn't merely make it up, he staged an actual fake attack. This isn't an isolated occurrence: fake hate crimes are a staple of the hysterical left. And those aren't an isolated phenomenon: they're of a piece with the progressive, identitarian left's general inclination to exaggerate and make up racism, sexism, and all their other -isms and -phobias. The general phenomenon is that the progressive left leans hard into these things, consistently fabricating and exaggerating: they "see" bigotry where it isn't, they fling around preposterous accusations as a matter of course, they believe every story and every accusation and every version of events spit out by their side, no matter how obviously preposterous. They choose loony interpretations of their enemies' words. Their intellectual wing, such as it is, works diligently to crank out new theories of ever-increasing implausibility that aim to bolster their fantasies and obsessions. They live in a fantasy world created by crazy theories, groupthink, and the unshakeable conviction that the rest of us--and America as an institution--is and are evil to the core. Racism and its cognates are original sin, and all of us--whites, anyway; men, anyway; straights, anyway; Americans, anyway--are irredeemable sinners. (Progressives confess their sin/"privilege"...there is no grace and no redemption...but they seem to think it does something for them...)
   One way all this fantastical, cultish obsession manifests itself is hate-crime hoaxes. When the world turns out to be not quite evil enough to suit them, they just go ahead and making up stories to show that it really is, anyway. These are their versions of burning bushes, weeping statues, and Jesuses on tortillas. But it's just one of the crazier, more overt expressions of a big, crazy weltanschauung and a big, crazy zeitgeist that have gripped progressivism.