Think Hate Crimes Are Surging in America? Think Again. Real Numbers Devastate Leftist Narrative
A persistent and repeated narrative pushed by the left over the past few years is that there has been a massive surge in hate crimes, whether those be violent assaults, acts of vandalism or simply targeted harassment and threats.
Coinciding with this narrative is the vast majority of hate crimes have been perpetrated by supporters of President Donald Trump, who in turn has been blamed for creating an environment that encourages and condones such expressions of bigotry and hate for various minority groups.
But recent research has undermined that narrative and exposed it as false. There hasn’t really been a surge of hate crimes, but instead, there has been a surge in hate crime hoaxes, fake events seized upon by the liberal media to help perpetuate the anti-Trump narrative.
A recent Op-Ed in The Detroit News looked at the reported surge in hate crimes — supposedly up by more than 17 percent since Trump took office — but discovered that the truth was far different from what the mainstream media coverage would imply.
An associate professor at Kentucky State University, Will Reilly — himself a black man keenly interested in documenting hate crimes — recently published a book documenting how his in-depth investigation of surging hate crimes led him to discover that much of the “surge” was actually due to a dramatic increase in police reporting to the FBI database, as well as a sharp spike in hate crime hoaxes.
“Almost all of that surge is due to the simple fact that in 2017 the number of police departments reporting hate crimes to the FBI increased by 1,000. The surge narrative is pretty dishonest,” Reilly wrote in his book, “Hate Crime Hoax: How The Left Is Selling a Fake Race War.”
The narrative pushed by the left would lead gullible Americans to believe that there are roving bands of hateful Trump supporters ready to perpetrate horrific crimes against minority groups like the LGBT community.
Case in point is the recent incident involving actor Jussie Smollett, who claimed to have been attacked by Trump supporters in the middle of a frozen night in Chicago in January, but which authorities say was staged by Smollett and a couple of friends.
Reilly dug up countless reports of alleged hate crimes on college and university campuses, as well as other locations, such as predominately minority churches and neighborhoods. He ultimately included in his book a total of 409 alleged hate crimes that turned out to be hoaxes, cases which had initially received tons of media coverage but all but disappeared once the particular story began to unravel.
“In major cases, almost all of them have been hoaxes. The number of hate crime hoaxes actually exceeds the number of convictions. The majority of these high-profile incidents never happened,” Reilly wrote.
Cops search for vandal who spray painted an Indiana church with a swastika and “Heil Trump” graffiti https://t.co/0U6z8vKoz6 pic.twitter.com/gRkNATL1K3
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) November 15, 2016
In other words, despite the doom and gloom cries of an America under Trump on the verge of an all-out, hate-based race war, Reilly wrote, “Portraying America as a hate-filled country is wildly inaccurate.”
Writing for Commentary Magazine in March, Reilly presented a synopsis of what his book covered and included numerous examples of incidents that had turned out to be fake news.
“Our nation is not racked with hate crimes. When people in positions of power or visibility say that it is, they should be rebuked for it,” Reilly wrote. “I have done a great deal of research on hate crimes in America, and the tragically underreported fact is that an enormous number of such incidents reported over the past decades turn out to have been hoaxes.”
Reilly explained how he initially began to conduct research on actual hate crimes, but his focus shifted as he continued to discover that an astonishing number of such reported incidents ultimately turned out to be fake hoaxes. These hoaxes are typically perpetrated by the alleged victim or a member of the allegedly targeted minority group, often in a bid to garner attention or further the narrative that “Trump is bad” and his supporters are violent, hate-filled monsters.
The author added that he had no idea how many supposed hate crimes are actually hoaxes, as there are innumerable and often differing variables that go into determining what constitutes an actual hate crime versus a random crime that happens to involve disparate races or religions.
To be clear, nobody is downplaying the horror of real hate crimes, and we strongly condemn such acts of harassment or violence based on bigoted views. As Reilly concluded, “The best defense against the epidemic of false hate-crime stories is probably good old-fashioned skepticism.”
“When some astonishingly unlikely-sounding event is reported — a seemingly targeted attack involving rope, bleach, and MAGA hats during a polar vortex in Chicago, for example — Americans should take a pause for thought and ask some questions other than ‘That’s terrible; what can we do to make up for it?’” Reilly wrote.
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