Jussie Smollett Hate-Crime Hoax Proves That We Should Take "Hate-Crimes"...MORE Seriously...
facepalm
Hoo boy that's a dumb article:
Smollett was lying. He was obviously lying. As I noted from the beginning, there was basically no chance that he was telling the truth. His story made no sense; it was an obvious progressive fantasy, not a real assault. And, in fact, it sounded like a lot of other, similar hoaxes--complete with the assailants allegedly identifying themselves as Trump-supporters. (Hell, the Smollett story was about as incredible as the UVA-Rolling Stone gang rape hoax--which was also obviously fake. And let's not forget that those of us who called that one from the beginning were accused of being "rape denialists"...)
Nobody thinks that such things never happen. And nobody thinks that they're no big deal when they do. Assaults are bad, and assailants ought to get the book thrown at them. But any objective observer has to admit that--at least of the alleged hate-crimes that hit the news--a lot of them turn out to be fake. And that's not because they hit the news as fakes. Rather: they hit the news and subsequently turn out to be fake.
But, then, among the many intellectual pathologies of political extremism is an addiction to self-sealers. So, honestly, is anyone that surprised to find arguments by progressives alleging that fake hate-crimes prove that hate-crimes should be taken more seriously? Not me.
Hoo boy that's a dumb article:
Paradoxically, however, Ngo’s tweets and the rightwing rush to make Smollett’s case emblematic, show exactly why it should not be: They display a dangerous tendency to doubt hate crimes, and minimize their pervasiveness—focusing the attention instead on the ones that turn out to be made up.I think you mean: a dangerous tendency to doubt hate-crime reports that obviously make no sense...and a dangerous tendency to argue for a realistic view of the prevalence of such crimes...given the undeniable fact that many of them have been proven to be fake...not to mention that only the most ostentatiously fake ones will likely be proven to be hoaxes...
Smollett was lying. He was obviously lying. As I noted from the beginning, there was basically no chance that he was telling the truth. His story made no sense; it was an obvious progressive fantasy, not a real assault. And, in fact, it sounded like a lot of other, similar hoaxes--complete with the assailants allegedly identifying themselves as Trump-supporters. (Hell, the Smollett story was about as incredible as the UVA-Rolling Stone gang rape hoax--which was also obviously fake. And let's not forget that those of us who called that one from the beginning were accused of being "rape denialists"...)
Nobody thinks that such things never happen. And nobody thinks that they're no big deal when they do. Assaults are bad, and assailants ought to get the book thrown at them. But any objective observer has to admit that--at least of the alleged hate-crimes that hit the news--a lot of them turn out to be fake. And that's not because they hit the news as fakes. Rather: they hit the news and subsequently turn out to be fake.
But, then, among the many intellectual pathologies of political extremism is an addiction to self-sealers. So, honestly, is anyone that surprised to find arguments by progressives alleging that fake hate-crimes prove that hate-crimes should be taken more seriously? Not me.
posted by Winston Smith at
10:35 AM
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