ANOTHER Hate Crime HOAX Exposed? Are They Really On The Rise?
ANOTHER Hate Crime HOAX Exposed? Are Crimes Really On The Rise? Last Thursday in Winnipeg police responded to reports of a crime. But yesterday it was reported that the incident was believed to be a hoax and police arrested the three cafe owners and the woman tho claimed to have been a victim.Stories like this seem to be more and more common place but the far left will tell you that they are rare. They will claim anyone challenging it is far right or lying.But the truth is the data is not so clear as to say one way or another. While social justice groups will tell you things are getting worse the data from the FBI doesn't tell us enough and to make it worse the data collection has been entirely inconsistent year over year.With more hate crime hoaxes appearing in the news it is no surprise that many people doubt these stories when they emerge.
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Last Thursday, police in Winnipeg, Canada responded to a call about a hate crime.
A woman had been attacked, and the cafe she worked at was vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti.
But as it turns out, police now believe the whole thing was staged.
They arrested the three shop owners and the woman involved, saying they made the whole thing up.
Now, this story isn't as prominent as the Jussie Smollett incident, but it's very similar, and they both join a growing list of hate crime hoaxes.
Now, people on the left will tell you hate crimes are on the rise, and they can cite FBI data, but the data is actually complicated.
The increase could be due to more agencies reporting and not necessarily more crimes.
People on the right will say no.
The exposed hoaxes prove the increase is due to people lying about it.
This conversation then bleeds into the political sphere.
The other day at an event, Bernie Sanders was booed and heckled over his response to the question, how would you deal with the increase in white supremacist violence?
Many people on the left are convinced it's getting worse.
But in reality, it's really hard to understand.
Today, let's take a look at this specific hate crime in Canada, and we'll look at some of the data to better understand the nuance in the increase in hate crimes.
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The story from CityNews.ca, police say anti-Semitic attack at Winnipeg Cafe was a hoax.
What looked like an anti-Semitic attack at a Winnipeg Cafe that drew public concern and political condemnation was not a hate crime, but alleged sham staged by owners of the business, police said Wednesday.
Officers responded last Thursday to a report that a woman who worked at the Burmax Cafe and Bistro was assaulted, and that the business was vandalized and spray-painted with hate-related graffiti.
It was the night before Passover.
After a lengthy investigation involving 25 officers and a thousand hours of investigative work, police said they charged the three owners of the cafe, including the woman who was reportedly assaulted, with public mischief.
Last night investigators formed the belief, and came to the conclusion that the incident was staged.
Winnipeg Police Chief Danny Smith said, I am hugely disappointed and frankly angry that this family has used hate and racism in such a disingenuous way.
In doing so, they have allowed cynicism to creep into the discussion, cynicism that trivializes genuine victims of hate.
Police were already investigating earlier reports of anti-Semitic graffiti at the cafe dating back to December.
As news of last week's apparent attack spread, a GoFundMe page was set up to help the owners Politicians also condemned the crime.
Mayor Brian Bowman wrote on Twitter at the time.
of our Jewish community today, and always as we combat racism and anti-Semitism, and
defend human rights together," Mayor Brian Bowman wrote on Twitter at the time.
"...we should all condemn last night's act of hate at Burmex Cafe and Bistro, and support
Winnipeg police in its hate crime investigation."
The Jewish Federation of Winnipeg said it was deeply disturbed to learn of the police
allegations.
"...filing false complaints of criminal acts of anti-Semitism are not only illegal, they
undermine the important work necessary to counter anti-Semitism and hate in all its
The group wrote in a statement to media.
We reiterate our appreciation of the work of the Winnipeg Police Service and their continued support for the Jewish community.
It's hard to know exactly why someone would do something like this.
In the instance of Justice Smollett, it was reported that he was trying to increase his salary By getting more press and making himself a sympathetic figure.
It could be the same thing here.
They were fundraising online.
It generated a ton of attention for them.
But regardless of the motivation, these issues manifest in the public in very dangerous ways.
Yesterday we saw this story from Fox News.
Bernie Sanders visibly frustrated as hecklers unload at She the People Forum for Women of Color. Fox News said
that Sanders faced similar backlash when he responded to an audience question about white
supremacy by discussing immigration and the federal minimum wage as well as his sweeping Medicare
for All proposal. The audience loudly applauded when Allison reminded Sanders that the core of
the question concerned violence against minorities. This is a presidential town hall forum type
event where the left is saying this is happening you need to address it. In reality the amount of
hate crimes in the is actually relatively small.
I mean, we have hundreds of millions of people here and only a few thousand hate incidents.
But whether or not we're seeing an increase, it's really hard to understand.
The first thing we need to do is take a look at some fact checkers.
This story from factcheck.org, the facts on white nationalism.
In the wake of the attack on two New Zealand mosques, President Donald Trump said he did not see white nationalism as a rising threat around the world, but rather a small group of people that have very, very serious problems. Experts, however,
say there are a number of indicators that suggest white nationalism and white supremacy, and
violence inspired by them are on the rise in the U.S. and around the world. The data they cite comes
from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, and a study by the Center for
Strategic and International Studies, which found the number of terrorist attacks by far-right
perpetrators quadrupled in the U.S.
between 2016 and 2017, and that far-right attacks in Europe rose 43 percent over the same period.
Among those incidents, CSIS states, the rise of attacks by white supremacists and anti-government extremists is of particular concern.
Unfortunately, the groups cited by this fact check are unreliable narrators.
They first cite the Southern Poverty Law Center, Which has been discredited for many reasons.
For one, investigations going back decades have found massive issues of racism and sexism within the company, so much so that recently, the founder and president had to resign.
Unfortunately, I don't think we can take the word of a non-profit that was riddled with racism and sexism as an authority on issues of racism and sexism.
And more importantly, for both the ADL and the SPLC, both of these organizations make their money by tackling specifically far-right wing violence.
It doesn't mean that you can't trust these organizations necessarily.
The SPLC can't be trusted because they're essentially outed as being racist from the top down.
That, I'm going to ignore.
The Anti-Defamation League has questionable definitions of left and right, in my opinion.
They believe that black identity extremists are left-wing, and white identity extremists are right-wing, and I don't understand necessarily how that distinction comes about.
More importantly, The ADL makes its money by fundraising off of these issues, which means of course they need to tell you there's an increase, they're trying to get people to donate.
Therein lies the serious conundrum of non-profits.
Take my word for it.
I was a non-profit director for a couple years.
I worked for many of the largest organizations in the country.
I do not trust any of them.
In fact, one of the main reasons I left was because they frequently lie because one of the tenets is to push a sense of urgency.
That's literally what they call it.
A sense of urgency.
Meaning, you have to exaggerate the problem to convince people to help you fight it.
That doesn't mean you can't trust the ADL.
They're not always wrong, but it's questionable if we're going to take the word of a non-profit dedicated to one political wing of this culture war.
The best thing we can probably do is just look at FBI crime statistics.
Unfortunately, it's also substantially more complicated than to just say it's happening or it isn't.
Let's take a look.
From FBI.gov, they say, law enforcement reported 7,175 hate crimes to UCR in 2017, up from 6,121 in 2016.
Although the numbers increased last year, so did the number of law enforcement agencies reporting hate crime data,
with approximately 1,000 additional agencies contributing information.
The report, Hate Crime Statistics 2017, includes hate crime information for last year broken down by location, offenders, bias, types, and victims.
We can see that according to their graph, race, ethnicity, and ancestry was nearly 60% of all incidents, with religion followed in second place, then sexual orientation, disability, identity, and gender.
I do find this interesting.
I want to highlight.
Gender identity made up only 1.6% of hate incidents.
The FBI was clear that this may be due to an increase in agencies reporting and that hate crimes might actually be down.
It's hard to know for sure.
In fact, Forbes even highlights this.
They say, around 5,000 of the crimes were categorized as crimes against persons, while about 3,000 fell into the category of crimes against property.
Such as burglary and vandalism.
It is important to note that much of the spike can likely be attributed to an increase of about 1,000 police departments choosing to report hate crimes.
Nevertheless, civil rights advocates still claim the numbers are vastly underreported because many victims refuse to come forward and the data only includes crimes reported to the FBI.
When we scroll down, we can see that based on this reporting, Hate crimes have gone up for three years, but even Forbes recognizes there are about a thousand more police departments choosing to report the hate crimes.
And this is why I'll question these activist organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center or Right Wing Watch.
They need to tell you there's an increase.
They don't need to tell you the context.
While you can argue that the ends justify the means, I personally don't feel that way.
At any rate, this data is rather unreliable because it doesn't really tell us anything.
How can you have an inconsistent metric year over year and expect to draw a conclusion from that?
Of course, the non-profits that need the issue to exist to raise money will claim it's true.
And this doesn't mean that all non-profits are bad.
But it does show a problem inherent with many non-profits.
Speaking as someone who used to be a director of non-profits, it was widely said among low-level staff, a non-profit's goal should be to put itself out of business.
Tell that to the executive director who's making six figures.
You should be out of a job within a year.
They're not going to be happy.
They need to shift, they need to push, and make sure their message stays the same.
So what do you think people will assume when you see websites like this, fakehatemap.com, which tracks hoax hate crimes?
Or this website, fakehatecrimes.org, which also presents a list Of course, all of this information just becomes part of the culture war.
people believing there is no increase. It's just people lying. Because look at that first story.
For some reason, people are staging these hoaxes. Of course, all of this information just becomes
part of the culture war. People on the right will say the increase is due to hoaxes. People on the
left will say that's nonsense, hoaxes are rare. And they will smear each other because yes,
people have highlighted my videos on the issue claiming I'm lying about hoax hate crimes. But
I'm trying to do my best to present the nuance.
Here's a story from the Washington Post.
An orchestrated attack against truth.
The clash over hate crimes has become one more culture war.
But interestingly, the Washington Post leaves out some very important context.
When they mention the increase in hate crimes according to the FBI, they don't include the very important caveat that it was likely due to an increase of a thousand police departments reporting.
They say hate crimes have grown in major American cities in each of the last five years, according
to the Center for Study of Hate and Extremism.
The trend has been particularly pronounced in places like Washington, D.C., where the
number of hate crimes has nearly doubled since 2016.
Since then, according to the Center's preliminary figures, there have been fewer than 50 false
reports of a hate crime across America out of an estimated 21,000 reported hate crimes
over that time period, a rate of 0.3%.
The story says that white supremacist groups have for years I don't believe the Washington Post is trying to deceive people.
They genuinely think they're right, just like everyone else does.
created in a media environment where news stations and websites have clear political
leanings.
Social media amplifies every political difference, and accusations of fake news and media hoaxes
are regular and pervasive."
I don't believe the Washington Post is trying to deceive people.
They genuinely think they're right, just like everyone else does.
But I need to point out, they don't include that important context.
The increase likely being due to an increase in reporting.
We don't have reliable data on this.
And this is true for most different types of crimes.
The more important thing I think we should take away from all of this is that even if there is an increase in hate crimes, and we should be dealing with them and trying to solve those problems, they make up an overwhelmingly tiny minority of the crimes that actually impact this country.
I'm more concerned about gang violence and gun violence, robberies and theft, than I am hate crimes.
While hate crimes are particularly egregious because of what they represent, they don't happen nearly as often as many other common forms of crime.
that we should be focused on dealing with.
In the Washington Post, they say, Wilford Riley, an associate professor at Kentucky State
University and author of the book that will be released next week,
Hate Crime Hoax, How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War, said,
The left was just as guilty for the polarized debate.
It's politicization to say there's a massive surge of hate under our president.
He said liberals often characterize all hate crimes as attacks on innocent people of color when you don't know
what happened.
And this may be the most important point overall.
In the factcheck.org story, they say, experts caution that the FBI's hate crime stats are an imperfect way to track the rise of white nationalism.
Not all of the hate crimes overall were committed by white nationalists.
The data do not identify the perpetrators that way.
Even if we are to assume that hate crimes are on the rise, many people on the left are assuming it's white people attacking people of color, when in reality, it could be people of any race attacking anyone else of any race.
It could be a Latino attacking a black person.
It could be a black person attacking a Jewish person.
We don't necessarily know.
Or at least, they don't quantify the ideology behind the attacks.
Naturally, you're going to get many people on the left and right divided on this issue, and I think the important thing to point out is, for the most part, data is unreliable.
We should be vigilant and make sure we're not falling victim to hoaxes, and at the same time, we should be aware that sometimes hate crimes happen.
But we should probably treat crimes the same way.
We should investigate, try and determine who the victim is, and who the perpetrator is, prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, And then be done with it.
But of course, this issue is going to be a massive weapon in the coming 2020 election.
Already we're seeing it impact Bernie Sanders, where they're angry that he isn't addressing the issue properly because they really believe it's true.
But we really don't know, so I'll leave it there.
Let me know what you think in the comments below, and we will keep the conversation going.
Do you think it is mostly hoaxes, or do you think the reporting is just wrong?
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