Supposedly Pro-Trump Hoax Hate Crimes

Pro-Trump versus Anti-Trump Violence in the Wake of the Election

In the wake of the 2016 Presidential election, liberals have gone utterly bonkers. A few have seriously asked whether their party has somehow gone wrong and suffered the electoral consequences. But many more have simply produced a bunch of excuses such as “fake news” or Russian meddling in the election.

And worse, they have claimed that newly empowered Trump supporters have gone on a rampage, attacking members of all their favored victim groups. “Reports of Racist Attacks Surge After Trump Win” one headline screamed.

It’s difficult to know how often this has happened, since:

1. People who keep track of such things usually have a liberal bias,
2. It’s sometimes hard to know whether a real assault was provoked by politics, or something else — there are two examples below.
3. Many of these incidents have been faked by people with a liberal agenda, knowing that sympathetic media will eat up their account

Two things are clear, however.

First, there have been many faked incidents, committed by anti-Trump people and blamed on pro-Trump people.

Second, there have been many violent attacks by leftists on pro-Trump people.

First, bogus claims of attacks by pro-Trump people:

• Black woman at gas station in Delaware. More on this here.
• Muslim woman lied about being harassed on subway.
• Supposed homophobic attack at North State Park University.
• Northwestern students and swastika.
• Attack on gay man outside bar in Santa Monica. The attack really occurred, but was apparently the result of an argument in a bar that escalated on both sides. It is not clear that the Trump supporters the man argued with are the men who attacked him.
• Muslim woman at the University of Louisiana Lafayette claimed to have been attacked.
• Fifteen hoaxes (supposed pro-Trump hate crimes) that have been exposed.

Now, violent attacks on Trump supporters (or supposed Trump supporters):

• High school girl attacked for supporting Trump.
• Black men attack white guy on public street. Note: this incident started with a routine auto accident, but the attackers seemed to believe that the victim voting for Trump justified the beating.
• 15 year-old Trump supporter beaten during Rockville, Maryland protest.
• President of College Republicans at Cornell assaulted.
• A compilation of attacks on Trump supporters from Lifezette.
• Another compilation from the Daily Wire.
• Still more cases from The American Thinker.
• Yet more cases from Breitbart.
• Still more from the Daily Caller.
• Video compilation of anti-Trump people attacking Trump supporters.

The libertarian Reason Magazine runs down, and debunks a bunch of reports, and attempts to put the whole thing in perspective.

Media outlets, of course, report news that fits their favored narrative. This applies to the New York Times and CNN, but it also applies to the conservative outlets we have linked to above. So as noted, there is no hard data on the actual number of pro-Trump assaults as opposed to anti-Trump assaults.

But the reader might ask himself or herself: which side has been most emotional? Which side has staged enraged protests that devolved into riots. Indeed, which side has gone on YouTube expressing extreme emotion about the outcome of the election? The answer to those questions is clear.

Another Bogus College “Hate Crime”

Not news, but we wanted to record it here: from the Chicago Tribune:

Marcus Owens is an African-American student at the University of Iowa, and he told police he was set upon by three white men when he left a bar to go into an alley to use his cellphone. The men beat him severely as they hurled racial epithets, he said. And with his front teeth broken, his lip cut so badly it required stitches and his face swollen, he certainly looked the part of the victim.

The attack was given considerable coverage in Iowa City and Chicago-area media, and the Iowa City police “treated the investigation as a major case with the dedication of all available resources,” according to a department news release.

Race-based attacks — hate crimes — are particularly sickening, particularly threatening, as they simultaneously intimidate and indict whole communities of people.

By examining multiple surveillance videos, what police said they found was that Owens, apparently quite drunk, was an instigator, not a victim, in three fistfights inside a bar and on a downtown street.

“The original altercations stemmed from a disagreement between two students who are members of fraternities,” said the police news release. “According to witnesses, the ‘n-word’ was used by one individual at the time of the second altercation … (but) the FBI determined that the facts of this investigation did not meet the criteria necessary to be labeled as a hate crime.”

The police news release also said, “According to multiple witness accounts, Owens was reported to have made statements being concerned about his injuries sustained during the altercations and how he was going to inform his family.”

Of course, the Social Justice Warriors got engaged:

Student and faculty supporters staged a protest on his behalf charging the university with insufficient urgency in response to a racially inspired attack (which did not take place on campus). They created a Twitter hashtag #explainiowa to whip up concern and anger.

“It is being applied to communicate moral indignation of Marcus Owens’ attack,” Cassie Barnhardt, an assistant professor of educational policy and leadership studies, told the Iowa City Press-Citizen. The hashtag was intended “to provoke a response from university administrators, and it is serving as an invitation of sorts to prompt others in the community to think about and pay attention to acts of racial aggression and bias.”

There have been many such bogus racial incidents in the last few years. They are fueled by the fact that campus leftists immediately accept the narrative of black racial victimization, and don’t feel the need to wait until the facts are in. After all, instances of anti-black racism make them feel self-righteous. Blacks exploiting race undercuts a narrative in which they have a huge emotional investment. The campus leftists are, in effect, both encouraging bogus claims of racial victimization, and being exploited by people like Marcus Owens.

Yet Another Bogus Claim of a Campus Racial Attack

We are slow getting this posted, but it’s significant, and we want to record it. From NBC News:

Three university students who claimed they were victims of a racially-motivated attack on a bus in Albany, New York, will now face charges for assault and misleading police about the alleged incident.

The three black, female students at the State University of New York in Albany told authorities they were called racial slurs and “harassed and assaulted” by a group of 10 to 12 white men and women on a city bus just after 1:00 a.m. on Jan. 30, according to a statement from SUNY Albany President Robert J. Jones released at the time.

All three said they were injured during the alleged attack and one of the students was transported to a local hospital with unidentified injuries, according to NBC affiliate WNYT.

But the University Police Department announced plans to charge the women —Ariel Agudio, 20, Alexis Briggs, 20, and Asha Burwell, 20 — on Thursday with assaulting a passenger on the bus and falsely reporting an incident.

Police said in a statement that evidence gathered during their three-week investigation showed the students’ initial claims “that they were victimized, were false” and that the women themselves allegedly assaulted a 19-year-old female passenger.

The charges against the women were supported by interviews with the 35 passengers on board the bus at the time of the incident, security camera footage from the bus and four videos taken by passengers on their mobile phones, according to the police statement.

So we have yet another bogus racial incident. Not only were the black women not victimized, they were the aggressors.

But what was the initial campus reaction?

The three female students reported being “harassed and assaulted” by a group of 10 to 12 white men and women, University President Robert J. Jones said in a statement Saturday, adding that “racial slurs were used by the perpetrators.”

“I am deeply concerned, saddened and angry about this incident,” Jones said. “There is no place in the UAlbany community for violence, no place for racial intolerance and no place for gender violence.”

[. . .]

On Monday afternoon, many of the hundreds who attended a rally in support of the victims chanted “black girls matter,” WNYT reported.

“It’s heartbreaking to hear something like that is happening in such a fine institution, in such a diverse community in 2016,” Darius Fair, a junior at the school, told the station earlier Monday.

More on the reaction here.

Interpretation

So what we have is another case of a knee jerk, politically correct response to a supposed racial incident. Since blacks are a supposed “marginalized group,” any claims of an offense against blacks are to be taken at face value. Indeed, they are an excuse for a lot of self-righteous hand wringing.

The politically correct atmosphere on college campuses thus victimizes black students. They learn that claims of grievance are rewarded. They learn that they can escape the consequences of their own bad behavior by claiming victimization.

But it only works up to a point. When the claims come under scrutiny of professional investigators outside the university, they get trashed.

This is much like claims of sexual assault. Campus kangaroo courts convict males with evidence that would not pass muster in a real criminal proceeding. Often, these males sue, and universities are forced to settle on terms favorable to the accused. The system outside the hot house atmosphere of the campus produces a very different outcome.

Which is to say, life on politically correct campuses is a poor preparation for the real world.

Hoax Racist Incidents on Campus: A Roundup

From the Daily Wire. We won't repost the entire article, but you can read the whole thing here. But we will list the headlines, so you can get the flavor of what is happening.

• ‘Confirmed’ KKK Presence At Mizzou
• Racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism at Oberlin
• KKK is Coming to Berkeley High... Or Not
• Hangman Graffiti
• ‘White Only, Black Only’ Signs
• Students Sends Racist Text Messages to Himself
• Students Target Themselves With Racial Graffiti
• Students Target Themselves With Hurtful Messages
• Fabricated Case of Police Harassment
• Student Posted Racist Facebook Messages to Himself

The number of such faked incidents has become massive. They are the result of the fact that university administrations are easily manipulated by any claims of racial grievance.

Of course, when those bureaucrats try to redress the claimed racism, the policies they implement have no plausible connection to any real racism on campus (and there is very little real campus racism). They respond by hiring diversity bureaucrats. They respond with mandatory “diversity training” (read: Stalinist thought reform). They respond with “programs” that cater to minority students.

Of course, any real racist on campus is not going to repent because of any of this. On the other hand, students who aren’t racists come to resent being marginalized, subjected to indoctrination, and watching institutions treat black activists as privileged characters.

But the entire charade gives the minority students a feeling of power. Unfortunately, it teaches them that articulating grievances (rather than studying, learning and achieving) is the way to get ahead.

It also grows the bureaucratic empires of the campus bureaucrats. Which is part of the reason they react so supinely.

The other reason is that they are scared to death of being called racist. Real racial progress requires that people be willing to stand up to the racial bullies. Principled people might be surprised at how easy it is to endure charges of “racism” now that the term has become so debased, and now that so many people know how debased it is.

Missouri Protests Based on Fake Incidents

From the Daily Wire:

Show us the evidence of systemic racism at Mizzou.

So far, it doesn’t exist.

According to press accounts, four specific incidents drove the ouster of the liberal president of University of Missouri, Tim Wolfe. Three of the four have no evidence to support them, and the remaining incident was rightly investigated by Wolfe’s administration.

Here are the crucial racial incidents that brought down the top official at a major publicly-funded university.

The First N-Word Incident. On September 12, student government president Payton Head alleged that a red pickup truck of young white people slowed and began screaming the n-word at him. Head posted the story on social media along with a litany of supposed slurs experienced by various groups of Americans (“Many of you are so privileged that you’ll never know what it feels like to be a hijab-wearing Muslim woman…You don’t have to think about being transgender and worrying about finding a restroom…”). He then told the press, “this story is not just something that happens here. It’s not a Mizzou issue. It’s a societal issue.” He added, “This happened to me, but it happens all the time, not only here, but everywhere.” According to the campus police, the incident happened near campus, not on it, and the Columbia Police Department did not receive a report on the incident from Head. In other words, other than Head’s social media post, there’s no evidence the incident occurred.

The Second N-Word Incident. On October 5, members of the Legion of Black Collegians were confronted by a drunk white man who called them the n-word. The group issued a public statement: “At about 12:45 AM, we noticed an obviously intoxicated white male staggering down Conley Ave. on the sidewalk…while still on the phone he says ‘These n*****s are getting aggressive with me.’” Members of the campus administration and the police received reports, and the young man in question is reportedly living off-campus and is under investigation. The administration responded with mandatory diversity training on October 8.

The Car Bump. On October 10, Concerned Student 1950 protesters blocked the homecoming parade, and attempted to confront Wolfe by surrounding his car. Graduated student Jonathan Butler said, “We disrupted the parade specifically in front of Tim Wolfe because we need him to get our message.” Butler then alleged that the car had hit one of the students (tape shows no such thing) and went on a hunger strike. Wolfe apologized for asking the police to remove the protesters.

The Feces Swastika. On October 24, officials supposedly found a swastika drawn in poop on the floor and wall in the bathroom. Resident Halls Association president Bill Donley said, “After this event, it has become clear to me that the inclusivity of our residence halls has been threatened.” But according to Sean Davis at The Federalist, “No evidence of the alleged incident…has ever been made publicly available.” Donley refused to respond to requests, and other RHA staffers said they hadn’t seen the poop swastika. There are no public photographs of the swastika. The University of Missouri has now been hit with a public records request by The Federalist.

So there you have it. Four racial incidents, three of them evidenceless, and one of them taken care of by the administration.

Obviously something was rotten at Mizzou, but it isn’t systemic racism by the administration.

Of course, none of this really matters. The entire point is to bully university administrations, and get more politically correct initiatives on campus (“diversity training,” more campus bureaucrats to pander to politically correct groups).

This is all made worse by affirmative action, which admits students who aren’t really qualified and thus struggle academically. Add to this professors and campus bureaucrats who pamper and pander to minorities, and encourage a sense of grievance, and you get a bunch of bullies who seek a sense of power in the hothouse that is campus politics.

[Update]

The Federalist has turned up evidence that the poop swastika actually existed. Of course, a swastika would seem to be more an expression of hatred of Jews, rather than blacks.

Further, a real swastika might have been yet another of the hoax hate crimes that have proliferated on college campuses.

[Further Update]

The Federalist has been all over this. It seems that the key suspect is a student who “has also been reported to have made anti-Semitic remarks to the members of a Jewish fraternity.” This suspect has not been (and probably will not be) charged, but this seems more an anti-Semitic than an anti-black incident.

Fake Victimization Stories Accepted by Media

From NewsBusters, a list of fake victimization stories: bogus incidents stated by members of some “marginalized group” in order to claim victimhood.

We won’t repeat the entire article here, since you can read the original. But we will list the cases.

• Gay bar owner’s business burned down in 2012, he complained he was ‘targeted’ because of his sexual orientation.
• Lesbian couple had spray painted anti-gay slurs on their own garage before burning their house down and blaming it on their neighbor.
• June 2015: Gay pizza shop owner robbed, assaulted, mutilated….by himself.
• Oct. 2012: Black woman claims she was burned by KKK for wearing Obama shirt.
• April 2014: Muslim man kills wife; sets up her murder as an ‘Islamophobic’ hate crime.
• June 2015: Muslim cleric’s suspicious soda tale.
• Nov. 2013: Gay server receives hate note on receipt, snubbed with no tip.
• March 2013: Oberlin ‘KKK’ Hoax.
• February 2012: Hate notes outside dorm rooms target minorities.
• Gay men injured themselves, fake ‘hate crimes’ to cover up for embarrassment.
• October 2014: Racial Profiling Viral Video Staged.

As NewsBusters notes:

The left loves to portray the right as bigots who hate minorities, women, Muslims, and gays. So the media latch onto any claim of perceived discrimination or hate, real or not, and report it with glee (forget investigation and due diligence!).

Obviously, crimes do occur that are genuinely motivated by someone’s ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. But many are simply hoaxes committed by liberal activists for the cause of furthering their agenda. The media makes no distinctions in figuring out which ones are real and which are staged.