SALON

Friday, Oct 24, 2008 11:35 PM UTC

Fake hate crimes: not just for liberals anymore

Ashley Todd's faked beating and mutilation by an Obama supporter recall the hate crime hoaxes that have so irked conservatives.

By

Topics: 2008 Elections, War Room, Language Police,

Ashley Todd’s fake story wasn’t just an incident that threatened to add a potentially dangerous element of racial tension to this campaign — it was a near-perfect mirror image of the fake hate crimes that conservatives have long loved to hate. (That’s not to say this is the first time a conservative has perpetrated such a hoax; it’s not.)

This history goes back to the throw-down in the 1980s and 1990s over “political correctness,” and the history of that in turn goes back to the 1960s. The notion of political correctness is an outgrowth of the civil rights and feminist struggles on college campuses. The result of this fight, one of the left’s few enduring victories from the late 1960s, was the acknowledgment of literature and art outside the Western canon, the establishment of departments of African-American studies, Feminist studies, and, accompanying them, a gradually developing consensus that people should quit acting as if women and minorities are less than full people.

Actually, consensus may be too strong a word. A favorite pastime of conservatives for decades now has been wielding some of the sillier “PC” claims as weapons against the whole project. Of particular delight for the right are claims of hate crimes that turn out to be hoaxes. The basic logic goes like this: if hate crimes have to be faked, then there isn’t really any need for the institutions erected to combat discrimination.

The most infamous example, one that still gets mentioned, is Tawana Brawley’s claim that she was raped. In the furor that ensued before Brawley’s lie was exposed, Al Sharpton was a central player. In a 1999 column, the National Review’s Jonah Goldberg quoted Sharpton, who dismissed criticism directed at him by saying, “We’re trying to build a movement here.” Goldberg went on to say,

Remember, we’re “building a movement” and calling “attention to serious problems in our society.” The mere fact that the evidence of the problem they are calling peoples’ attention to is very often a staged fraud is irrelevant. The Nazis knew that Communists were bad (and they were) so by this reasoning the torching of the Reichstag was justifiable because it called attention to the serious problem of Bolshevik infiltration in Germany.

There are plenty of examples in this vein. In a May 2000 issue of US News and World Report, for example, John Leo wrote,

[M]ore of the college hoaxes seem to reflect an acted-out commitment to a cause, not just personal difficulties. One factor is that colleges now stress the need for each identity group to express its “voice” or “narrative,” without much scruple about whether the narratives are literally true.

This list wouldn’t be complete without links to Michelle Malkin — who, to her credit, called Todd’s story what it was early on — and Ann Coulter doing cruder versions of much the same thing.

Gabriel Winant is a graduate student in American history at Yale. More Gabriel Winant.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 25 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Journalists file suit against Manning's trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
144 points145 points | comment
vote
Report: Nearly a quarter of Americans struggle to afford food
127 points128 points | 12 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
121 points122 points | 91 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
109 points110 points | 32 comments
vote
Ted Cruz against the world - How the Junior Senator is igniting the GOP civil war
78 points79 points | 19 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations