Days before the incident that made him infamous, accused hate-crime hoaxer Jussie Smollett tweeted out, “Frauds are everywhere y’all.” In retrospect this seems…
Days before the incident that made him infamous, accused hate-crime hoaxer Jussie Smollett tweeted out, “Frauds are everywhere y’all.” In retrospect this seems like either an ironic warning or a subconscious cry for help.
Why did Smollett believe that his alleged plan to manufacture outrage would succeed? Most probably because is was designed to fit a specific, well-established victimhood narrative. In this case, it was the young, gay, black celebrity versus the beastly, MAGA-preaching white racist homophobes. There is no ambiguity in that almost cartoonish scenario.
The props (the rope and the bleach) and Trump-implicating rhetoric were necessary to establish the supposed hate motive. Otherwise Smollett might have been viewed as just another Chicago crime victim. And it was important to tie the faux attack to the idea prevalent on the left that the advent of the Trump era has unleashed an unprecedent wave of violence against “the other.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) helped push this idea when she tweeted out after the initial reports of the alleged assault that “it is no one’s job to water down or sugar-coat the rise of hate crimes.”
Read more commentary:
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That is true, but it is no one’s job to exaggerate (or fake) hate crimes either. According to FBI statistics there were 7,175 total hate crimes in 2017, of which 28 percent were anti-black, and 9 percent aimed at gay men.
