Though the legal definition of 'hate crime' may differ across jurisdictions, the common core is 'a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin, et cetera' (National Institute of Justice, USA).
More specifically, a hate crime is an independent criminal offense such as assault, theft, vandalism, et cetera that is:
- Motivated by bias/hate/prejudice, and;
- Caused/explained by bias/hate/prejudice
It involves:
- A discriminatory selection of victims, and,
- Expressions of bias/hate/prejudice towards the victim's group
And has the intended effect of either:
- Causing/risking additional harm of a particular sort, and/or
- Causing a certain harm/have a certain effect more generally (i. e. incite fear).
Alongside deliberate offences of this nature, there has been a storied history of racial hoax crimes that involved either:
- Someone fabricating a crime and blaming it on another person because of that person's race/ethnicity or,
- Someone committing an actual crime and blaming it on someone because of their race/ethnicity.
What I'm interested in is a type of hoax crime that differs slightly from the above descriptions. These other hoax crimes I will call 'hoax hate crimes'.
In a hoax hate crime, a member of a ostensibly disadvantaged group fabricates a crime wherein they are the victim of an attack motivated by malice towards their identity as a member of their disadvantaged group. Such hoax hate crimes are a combination between the hate crime and the racial hoax, but the 'victim' in these cases has fabricated a crime committed against them and/or their community, and the real victim would the be the person who is blamed for the fake crime. So, the true offense committed by a hoax hate crime is the fabrication of a fake crime as well as the framing of an innocent person based on that person's perceived racial stereotypes.
There have been numerous examples of these hoax hate crimes in recent years - particularly in the so-called Trump era that has been said to have ushered in a new atmosphere of racism and bigotry that has 'emboldened' bigots to commit crimes that they would have wanted to commit but couldn't under previous administrations.
Examples of hoax hate crimes involve vandalisation of property with hateful slogans or symbols, claims of physical attack and/or verbal assault, death threats, and even church arson. These hoaxes have been seen all over the place from college campuses and the US Air Force, and committed by everyone from poor people to celebrities.
The reasons for perpetrating such a hoax are numerous:
Examples of hoax hate crimes involve vandalisation of property with hateful slogans or symbols, claims of physical attack and/or verbal assault, death threats, and even church arson. These hoaxes have been seen all over the place from college campuses and the US Air Force, and committed by everyone from poor people to celebrities.
The reasons for perpetrating such a hoax are numerous:
- Gains in social capital from victim status,
- Monetary gain (GoFundMe campaigns are almost a dead give-away),
- Enflaming racial/societal tensions, and/or;
- Attempt to distract from one's own misconduct.
In these cases of hoax hate crimes, the crime that is fabricated is often one wherein a racist symbol or action is made against a person of colour. The perpetrator is often said to be a Trump supporter and is almost always a white man, and that makes the person a white nationalist in the eyes of the media. There are exceptions, but the trend is apparent.
This case is slightly complicated since Smollet never came out stated that his attackers were black, white, et cetera, but the dots were connected and the media and social media went off with the narrative of two white men wearing MAGA hats. The event was made 'racially charged' as people jumped the gun and made their assumptions about the assailants. That should tell us something about the climate we find ourselves in as we had this even called a 'modern-day lynching' by prominent politicians and media personnel.
That said, why do I say 'yes' in some cases? I answer in the affirmative because there is a clear prejudice at play in the selection of the identity of the alleged perpetrators in the hoax hate crime. There is this prejudice towards white people, particularly white Trump supporters, that holds that they are hateful of people of colour and are more likely to commit violence against them or harass. There is this idea that racism runs deeply within society: it's entrenched white supremacy, colonialism, and racial violence that has been tempered by civil rights struggles but still remains alive, if dormant, in a particular group of people: white people; particularly right-wing/conservative white people. Such a climate could incentivise people of colour to fake a hate crime against them because they think that the idea of a white person attacking a person of colour is believable. This is analogous to white people committing racial hoaxes against black men, for instance, because they think it is believable. To differentiate these examples on the basis of past racial injustices holds little water, and only seems to shed light on the psychology of a perpetrator of a hoax hate crime.
The problem for the hoax hate crime perpetrators as well as the media and politicians that are all-too-often jump on the bandwagon to decry society as racist is that their demand for racism isn't being met by the supply. And so people have to make stuff up.
It is apparent that perpetrators of hoax hate crimes are attempting to take advantage of the charged political climate and the anti-Trump bias in the media and culture at large.
So, let us take the now-infamous hoax hate case involving Jussie Smollet.
To reiterate his case: Smollet first received a threatening letter with a stick-figure of a man hanging from a tree alongside the words 'You will die black ni**er.' The letter was also laced with a white powder that was later determined to be Tylenol. About a week later, Smollet was walking home from a Subway at night when he was jumped by two assailants who tied a 'rope' around his neck, poured bleach on him and yelled racist and homophobic epithets whilst exclaiming 'this is MAGA [Make America Great Again] country!'. Smollet reported this to the police and maintained that his story was true in interviews only to have the investigation come back around to him and find him to be suspect in fabricating the crime.
Before being found out, Smollet was interviewed and he insisted on the racial, homophobic, and political nature of the attack.
To reiterate his case: Smollet first received a threatening letter with a stick-figure of a man hanging from a tree alongside the words 'You will die black ni**er.' The letter was also laced with a white powder that was later determined to be Tylenol. About a week later, Smollet was walking home from a Subway at night when he was jumped by two assailants who tied a 'rope' around his neck, poured bleach on him and yelled racist and homophobic epithets whilst exclaiming 'this is MAGA [Make America Great Again] country!'. Smollet reported this to the police and maintained that his story was true in interviews only to have the investigation come back around to him and find him to be suspect in fabricating the crime.
Before being found out, Smollet was interviewed and he insisted on the racial, homophobic, and political nature of the attack.
So, when we look at the hate crime criteria and apply them to this case what do we get? Taking the 'victim' to refer to the framed individual(s) and their identity, and the crime (the 'it') being the framing of an innocent person(s) based on race:
Was it:
- Motivated by bias/hate/prejudice? Yes.
- Caused/explained by bias/hate/prejudice? Yes, partly. There have been reports of fame-seeking/money.
Was there:
- A discriminatory selection of 'victims'? Yes.
- Expressions of bias/hate/prejudice towards the victim's group? Yes, partly.
Was it intended to:
- Cause/risk additional harm of a particular sort? Unsure.
- Cause a certain harm/have a certain effect more generally? Unsure.
This case is slightly complicated since Smollet never came out stated that his attackers were black, white, et cetera, but the dots were connected and the media and social media went off with the narrative of two white men wearing MAGA hats. The event was made 'racially charged' as people jumped the gun and made their assumptions about the assailants. That should tell us something about the climate we find ourselves in as we had this even called a 'modern-day lynching' by prominent politicians and media personnel.
That said, why do I say 'yes' in some cases? I answer in the affirmative because there is a clear prejudice at play in the selection of the identity of the alleged perpetrators in the hoax hate crime. There is this prejudice towards white people, particularly white Trump supporters, that holds that they are hateful of people of colour and are more likely to commit violence against them or harass. There is this idea that racism runs deeply within society: it's entrenched white supremacy, colonialism, and racial violence that has been tempered by civil rights struggles but still remains alive, if dormant, in a particular group of people: white people; particularly right-wing/conservative white people. Such a climate could incentivise people of colour to fake a hate crime against them because they think that the idea of a white person attacking a person of colour is believable. This is analogous to white people committing racial hoaxes against black men, for instance, because they think it is believable. To differentiate these examples on the basis of past racial injustices holds little water, and only seems to shed light on the psychology of a perpetrator of a hoax hate crime.
To believe that a member of such-and-such a group is more likely to commit such-and-such an offense and to use that stereotype to frame them for an offense they didn't commit is prejudicial in the extreme and should be condemned and punished.
What we often have in hoax hate crimes are unfounded rumours or false allegations against white people who are scapegoated for actions committed by the 'victim' of the crime. This is firmly couched in what can only be called 'anti-white bigotry'. [This is too much to get into, here, and will be a subject of a future post.]
The problem for the hoax hate crime perpetrators as well as the media and politicians that are all-too-often jump on the bandwagon to decry society as racist is that their demand for racism isn't being met by the supply. And so people have to make stuff up.
So to the question: are hoax hate crimes, themselves, hate crimes? Why did I answer 'somewhat' or 'unsure' to some criteria?
Well, hoax hate crimes are crimes - at the very least false reporting in most jurisdictions is a criminal offense - and they are directed at a particular group of people, but the malice present in hate crimes seems to be absent in the hoax hate crime. There is certainly a prejudice at play, or even just a belief in the efficacy of that prejudice that can be taken advantage of in the scapegoating, but there doesn't seem to be that intentional curdled malevolence that is apparent in hate crimes, proper.
Unlike many in the social justice crowd: intent does matter. Intentionally attacking someone who you believe is inferior, is a very serous matter, and watering down such things in order to cast a larger net to catch one's apparent enemies is unjustified. Intentionally framing an innocent person for a crime you think others will believe they committed because of racial stereotypes is also serious, and should be denounced and punished.
So,
hoax hate crimes are not necessarily hate crimes, though perhaps they
could be. Perhaps a hoax hate crime that was made to deliberately stoke
up racial tension is a candidate. After all, Blood Libels against Jews
would surely count, and analogous scenarios could count, also. If a Jew faked a Blood Libel and blamed a gentile because he's a gentile, and for the purpose of stoking tensions, then perhaps that could be a decent candidate for consideration.
Even though hoax hate crimes are not as serious as actual hate crimes of course, they are not trivial either as they're motivated by prejudice and can spark unrest or ruin reputations all on the basis of racial/group stereotypes and discrimination.
Even though hoax hate crimes are not as serious as actual hate crimes of course, they are not trivial either as they're motivated by prejudice and can spark unrest or ruin reputations all on the basis of racial/group stereotypes and discrimination.
Now, there are problems with the idea of a hate crime anyway, and perhaps if we could include hoax hate crimes within the rubric of hate crimes proper, we could have further criticism against the notion of hate crimes, themselves, but nonetheless I think we should want the methodology for such categorisations to pass the Goldilocks test: we don't want it to be 'too hot' (include obviously bad examples), or 'too cold' (exclude obviously appropriate examples). If it fails, so be it.
Could a hoax hate crime be seen as 'aggravating' in sentencing? Perhaps. It is an intentional misleading of the pursuit of justice, and it is the intentional scapegoating of a member of a group because of their group identity and stereotypical beliefs about that group. It ought to be taken more seriously and perpetrators ought to receive more ire from the public.
These are not to be considered victimless crimes. They are opportunistic manipulations of racial division enabled by racial disdain and cynicism. The only way to figure that out is to take the time to investigate.
Let cooler heads prevail, and others roll.
These are not to be considered victimless crimes. They are opportunistic manipulations of racial division enabled by racial disdain and cynicism. The only way to figure that out is to take the time to investigate.
Let cooler heads prevail, and others roll.
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