hatred, lies, and the coming storm

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Mar 20, 2004

Anyone concerned for preserving the rule of law has to be anxious about the dodgy notion of a "hate crime" -- an act deemed criminal because of the repellent dispositions that are presumed to motivate it. Lane Core posts a mind-torquing article about a faked hate crime at one of California's Claremont colleges: The whole story deserves a close read, but here are some highlights.

A Claremont McKenna psychology professor vandalized her own car last week and falsely reported the damages as a hate crime against her, police said Wednesday. Kerri Dunn, who spoke at a free speech seminar March 9, reported to police after the lecture that her car had been vandalized -- tires slashed, windows broken and spray painted with racial epithets. Police, however, say two witnesses have come forward claiming they saw Dunn vandalizing her own vehicle.

The incident prompted all five of the Claremont Colleges to cancel classes March 10 for teach-ins and rallies against hate crimes. More than 1,000 people attended an evening rally at Claremont McKenna, where students pushed for racial and ethnic tolerance and Dunn was one of the speakers.

Along with the vandalism, Dunn reported $1,700 in property missing from her car. The epithets on Dunn's car included derogatory remarks about blacks and Jews. Police said Wednesday that Dunn could be charged with filing a false police report but said it was unlikely that she would be charged herself with a hate crime.

Point One. If ethnic hatred is the salient characteristic of a crime, how is there less hatred and less criminal intent in falsely and maliciously imputing hostility to a racial group than in actually manifesting that hostility in the concrete?

Point Two. Dunn's profile makes it obvious that she is neither black nor Jewish. By the reckoning of hate-crime theorists, shouldn't her graffiti still be legally "in play"? Would a Jew who passed her vandalized car and winced at the slur, or a white supremacist who saw it and was empowered by it, revert their emotional states to the default setting when the ruse was exposed ("I feel cherished and loved after all")?

Point Three. Justice and intellectual integrity demand an equal number and intensity of rallies and teach-ins denouncing Dunn's fraud as were provoked by it. Otherwise the college ipso facto ratifies our natural determination to take both its moral posturing and its scholarship as a joke.

Point Four. Leftist orthodoxy enjoys virtually absolute power now, but it may not last forever. And this kind of gross injustice cannot help but provoke a backlash. When it comes, it won't be pretty. And the gutless poseurs who have wrung their soft white hands in sympathy over spurious hate crimes for the past twenty years will vanish at the first hint of real violence. Imagine that you were a black muslim whom CBS, ABC, the New York Times, and the Cornell Comp Lit department were all out to lynch. The brownshirts are coming down the street for you with broken bottles in hand. Who's the guy you'd want standing between you and the mob, Peter Jennings or Nino Scalia?