Race Hoaxers Like Jussie Smollett Deserve a Special Place in Hell
There is a particularly nasty place reserved in hell for the likes of Jussie Smollett. Given the fraught state of race relations in the United States, people of good will attempt to pour oil on troubled waters: evil people throw the oil on the flames. Smollett is definitely an incendiary of the first order.
For the most venal of reasons–getting a pay raise–Smollett paid two Nigerian brothers to stage an assault on him. Smollett then told police that he had been jumped at 2AM on a Streeterville (Chicago) corner by two white men in MAGA hats, who beat him, spewed racist and anti-gay epithets, put a noose around his neck, and doused him with bleach.
The story immediately went viral, and became a cause celebre, even although the details of the story were wildly implausible, to put it mildly. The men supposedly yelled “You are in MAGA country.” Chicago? Really?
In point of fact, a Trump supporter is more likely to be assaulted in Chicago than a Trump supporter is likely to assault anyone there. (What? You hadn’t heard those stories repeated 24/7? Go figure!)
Further, two racists are wandering the streets at 2AM, on a freezing cold night, and just happen to have a rope and bleach handy, and just happen to cross paths with a black, gay B-list actor? Whom they recognize? Every racist trope personified just happens to be walking the streets of Chicago in the bitter cold when the city is otherwise deserted, and just happens to intersect with a two-fer in the victim class stakes?
Occam’s Razor much? The lurid details that excited frenzy were in fact what should have cast the most extreme doubts about the story.
Yet despite the sheer improbability (and arguably impossibility) of this, Smollett’s story became accepted fact. And Smollett’s space in hell will be spacious, because those who echoed and amplified his tale are just as evil as he.
And this includes virtually every major Democratic Party figure, most notably the entire throng of presidential candidates (notably Harris, Booker, and Warren), Nancy Pelosi, and the poster girl for the airhead left, AOC. It also includes most of the mainstream media, most prominently CNN and MSNBC.
These arsonists are in many ways worse than Smollett, because they repeatedly asserted that the attack was symptomatic of endemic and epidemic racism in the US, and that any Trump supporter–or any non-Trump-hater–was an accessory, and perfectly capable of carrying out a similar attack. It was blood libel on a grand scale.
Official Chicago largely went along with the Smollett story–just read the Chicago PD’s official spokesman’s timeline on Twitter if you doubt this. But some rank and file cops were apparently furious, and leaked the truth to various local Chicago reporters–who were themselves furious set upon for their heresies, and other “journalists” were well-represented in the mob that went after them.
But inevitably, the truth eventually came out. Smollett had hired two Nigerian brothers to stage the assault. When they were threatened with charges for assault and battery, they rolled on Jussie. They were caught on video buying the rope and hats–they purchased the rope at a hardware store hilariously named “The Crafty Beaver.” The most sickly amusing part of the story was that the brothers could not even find real MAGA hats: they had to settle for generic red hats. So yeah, Chicago is such hardcore MAGA country you can’t even find a MAGA hat for sale there.
Upon revelation of the truth, the responses of the Smollett story enablers and amplifiers ranged from the craven to the mendacious. The craven ones deleted their tweets, or remained silent, or dodged questions about their previous remarks. The mendacious ones doubled down or denied that what we saw with our own eyes–the MSM’s hyping of the story–had occurred. You will search in vain for genuine apologies, or even an acknowledgement along the lines of “I was wrong about the story.”
Unsurprisingly, CNN is the most mendacious of all. Fat tub of goo (especially between the ears) Brian Stelter claimed that only entertainment journalists had hyped the story, but that mainstream outlets–CNN most notably–had reserved judgment. Or consider this from Chris Cillizza:
And so, Democratic 2020 candidates were very quick to believe Smollett’s version of events. And now Republicans — especially those aligned with the Trump White House — are just as quick to seize on the idea this was all an elaborate hoax. Both sides are simply exhibiting confirmation bias. Because we reward that sort of thing in our politics now.
Them damn Republicans. Always seizing on one damned thing or ‘nother. So many seizures. Maybe they have epilepsy.
The fact is, Clownzillia, that one side’s suspicions were confirmed by the facts, and the other side’s assertions proved utterly false. One side was right: it was an elaborate hoax. The other side was horribly, horribly wrong. This assertion of equivalence between wrong and right is disgusting, and earns you a spot right next to Smollett.
I’m old enough to remember when “rush to judgment” was a bad thing. But now it is the default setting, especially on the left, and especially especially when the judgment can be used to attack Trump, or far worse, vast swathes of innocent Americans who commit the mortal sin of holding non-leftist political views.
And their motives for rushing to judgment are even more damning. They want stories like Smollett to be true because it validates their twisted view of America. And worse yet, because they believe that they can use these stories to enhance their power, bludgeon their political and social enemies, and advance their political and social agenda. And worst of all, rather than attempting to tamp down racial animosity, they feed the flames because they believe that it redounds to their political gain.
There would perhaps be room for optimism if those who had flogged the story originally were to acknowledge error, and pledge to do better next time. But this has not happened, meaning that these events can only feed deep pessimism about the prospects for American civil society.