Jussie 'Juicy' Smollett this week. (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
Jussie Smollett was convicted yesterday evening of staging a racist attack on himself in January 2019. Coming just weeks after Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted in Kenosha and the killers of Ahmaud Arbery were convicted in Georgia, the Smollett case reveals an uncomfortable truth about race in America: that the constant exaggeration, or even invention, of incidents of bias by activists and media members is probably a bigger problem than the residual violent racism that still exists.
The Smollett trial has been worth following for a few reasons. The first, if least important, is the pure entertainment value of the story that Smollett initially told police. For those who have forgotten, the former actor — famously dubbed “Juicy Smollé” by the comedian Dave Chappelle — originally said he was attacked by Trump supporters wearing ski-masks, in the integrated heart of Chicago, at 2am on the coldest day of the year.
The details were even more absurd than the big picture. Smollett claimed that after leaving his condo to buy a sandwich, he was approached by two white men who recognised him from the television show Empire, a hip-hop musical with a 61% black audience. The men assaulted him, tied a noose around his neck, and doused him with bleach, all while call him homophobic and racist slurs and shouting “This is MAGA country!” Per Smollett’s initial report, he heroically fought both off his attackers (“I hit his ass BACK!”), and escaped to his building with a noose around his neck and the hoagie still clasped tightly in one of his hands.
Of course, as was obvious from the beginning, none of this was true. The alleged “MAGA country” area of city-centre Chicago went 83% for Hillary Clinton in 2016. The real perpetrators of the “assault” turned out to be a pair of Smollett’s gym buddies from Nigeria, one of whom, we learned at trial, used to accompany Smollett on drug-fuelled excursions to gay bathhouses. The brothers testified that Smollett had paid them $3,500 to “fake beat him up,” call him slurs, and make a MAGA reference, allegedly so that the actor could garner public sympathy. The hoax took place early in the morning because Smollett’s flight to Chicago that evening had been delayed.
What is remarkable, in retrospect, is just how seriously Smollett’s story was taken. In a famous, widely circulated tweet, then-Senator Kamala Harris tweeted that the attack on Smollett was an “attempted modern day lynching”, a sentiment echoed by Senator Corey Booker. President Trump condemned the “horrible” attack. Even today, after Smollett’s story has definitively fallen apart, he has a handful of defenders. On Wednesday, Black Lives Matter released a statement in support of the actor, saying “We can never believe police… over a Black man who has been courageously present, visible, and vocal in the struggle for Black freedom”.
It is indisputable that Smollett’s allegations reflected what many mainstream Leftists believe about the United States. His claim was, very specifically, that “the attack” was an indictment of just how racist and homophobic America still is — he, a black gay man, had been assaulted in a liberal city just for existing. We hear this sort of thing often: that police violence is constant, that “systemic racism” and univariate “white privilege” plague the land, and that interracial crime is at near race-war levels. A famous and solidly-selling 2019 book was titled Open Season: The Legalized Genocide of Colored People.
Content like this has an effect. The average “very liberal” American believes that between 1,000 and 10,000 unarmed black men are killed annually by police, when the actual number in 2020 was 17. However, beliefs like this are not based in reality. Only about 1,000 people of all races and sexes are killed by police in a typical year, and only around 250 of them are black. We may be overrepresented among those shot by police — 14% of the population vs. 25% of police shooting victims — but even this gap largely vanishes when one adjusts for black crime and police-encounter rates, which are about 2.5 times their white equivalents (no surprise, given that we are a younger and more urban population). And while violent interracial crimes involving blacks and whites are rare, accounting for only around three percent of serious crimes tracked by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than 80% of them are black-on-white.
While the incident Smollett claimed he survived would no longer be a metaphor for America, what actually happened arguably is. Many very high-profile incidents of ‘racial hate’ have unraveled similarly in recent years. The Covington Catholic affair, which was at first alleged to have involved a mob of white high school punks chanting “Build the Wall” at a Native American elder, turned out to have been a shouting match between the high-schoolers and a group of radical “Black Israelites,” which the Israelites started. Other incidents that turned out to be fake: Klansmen roaming the bucolic campus of Oberlin College, a white man harassing a black Georgia state representative in a grocery store, racists placing a “noose” in the garage of black NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, Trump supporters tearing a hijab off of Yasmin Seweid on the New York subway, white bigots urinating on a young black girl in Grand Rapids, white men setting a biracial teenager on fire in Madison, and so on and so on. One could go back farther and add the Duke lacrosse case and the fabricated assault on Tawana Brawley.
Even these famous cases represent just a small sample from a larger data set. For my 2019 book Hate Crime Hoax, I spent several weeks conducting targeted searches of Internet research platforms for term sets like “hate crime hoax” and “hate crime: narrative collapse.” By the end of the research period, I had compiled a set of 409 cases, concentrated between 2014 and 2019, in which an undisputed claim (police report or story in national or reputable regional media outlet) was made about a serious incident involving racism or bias that was later utterly debunked.
This data set, which is available to anyone who requests it, has now grown to include more than 1,000 incidents. Of course, no one claims that the majority of hate crime allegations, including allegations of lower-profile offences, turn out to be hoaxes. However, given that there are fewer than 7,000 hate crimes reported in the US in a typical year, and that only perhaps 10% of these receive the sort of coverage necessary to be included in my data set, the numbers just given are sizeable.
Although many modern allegations about the social effects of race are not true, Mr Smollett does possess one characteristic that is likely to protect him: he is rich. The power of the 1% has increased to a sometimes ridiculous extent within the United States in recent years. This real advantage has operated to Smollet’s benefit repeatedly throughout his legal ordeal. He has friends in high places too. CNN’s Don Lemon tipped Smollett off that the police were skeptical of his story. At one point, the Chicago DA’s office simply dropped all charges against him (they were later reinstated). Some friends and colleagues apparently still say that he is innocent; he may well work again one day. Smollett faces up to three years in jail, but he seems unlikely to ever go down into the bowels of CCJ as a convict. Expect instead the rich man’s sentence: probation or community service.
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SubscribeI won’t speak to the racial element of Juicy’s faked double racial/homophobic hate crime – the hilarious Dave Chappelle does an excellent job of that (‘justice for Juicy!’). I will speak to the element of his sexuality because I was genuinely assaulted by a gang of homophobes late at night in the 90s, walking home alone from a gay bar. These men left me in no doubt they meant it when they said they were trying to beat me to death and only a heroic passing cabbie put a stop to it. That and the aftermath of being victim blamed by A&E staff and the indifference of the cops I called told me I wasn’t considered fully human by sections of the population. Thing is – progress has been made. Such attacks are far rarer, public attitudes have been transformed and the police and health services are kinder and more responsive now. I like that! So, to see some spoiled millennial celebrity essentially spit on all of our achievements in racial and gay equality and exploit public sympathy towards black and gay people by staging the kind of crime that has been a genuine trauma for people of my and previous generations just to raise his public profile is almost too dispiriting to express. The spectacle of the liberal political/media establishment leaping immediately to condemn this ‘attack’ was particularly unedifying. Isn’t it chilling that the real damage being done to racial and sexual minorities these days isn’t coming from increasingly lazy stereotypes about conservatives but from the excesses of the ‘woke’ so called liberal left?
Accepting what you say at face value–horrific. Glad you are ok now. I’ve never been in that situation, but I’d like to think that I would be on side with the cabbie. I just don’t understand at all–zero–this anti-gay bias/violence. I’m a straight guy and I just don’t spend a lot of time on gay or anti-gay thoughts. As Al Murray says “I was never confused,” but that doesn’t mean I’m not sympathetic to injustice.
But, with respect, not talking about the racial element here is a bit like saying “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?” In the US, everything is racial. It’s sickening–though not unexpected–that this fraudster played the race card–not even from the deck, but from up his sleeve–for his own personal benefit. I think the article was rather thin but the podcast was just excellent. Worth your time.
See what you’re getting at but felt that actual African Americans can (and are) no doubt speak more eloquently to the racial dimension of this hoax. I know about the gay stuff, which is why I focused on that. As I said, I’ve not experienced real homophobia in many years – most folk are admirably live and let live, despite the impression Juicy was trying to give.
Actually, they’re not. In fact–and this goes back to Tawana Brawley (if you don’t know, Google it)–the new “thing” is that even though it’s clearly not true, (DC, people who are connected with reality [think OJ]), it seems true, it could be true, AND there are MAGA hoodlums lurking on every street corner with bleach and nooses at all times in all weather ready to grab any gay dude who walks buy in the middle of the night on the coldest night of the year getting a sandwich @ 02.00, BUT if the dude is black AND gay–BINGO! DOUBLE PLAY! They must be Boy Scouts, because the Boy Scout motto is “Be Prepared,” as those thugs certainly were, with the bleach and the noose already in hand just waiting for JS to walk by. Now that’s dedication to racism!
The point is that there are racial agitators out there who make a living, make a life, based on stirring up racial hatred, and creating it where it doesn’t exist. That’s what they do. To your point, the black community, writ large, is “oddly silent” on this (DC) or maybe they are supporting JS by not furthering this ridiculous lie. The podcast show how these fraudsters are essentially acting as rational agents, since they are almost always rewarded for the hoax and even when they are caught, almost always suffer little if any punishment. There are still those who champion Tawana Brawley, and Al Sharpton is one of them. That case made him, by the way.
Whatever you say, mate. I commented on the parts of this story where I can offer some insight based on personal experience. You can listen and learn from that or not as you choose … but … just a stylistic tip … your use of caps lock and boldface makes you seem a bit shouty and domineering. One important lesson from this sh!t show surely is that people need to relax more and dial the tone down a bit.
Fair play. Point taken (but it will be hard to change).
I am replying here to your original comment as my post has been classified as awaiting approval, which I suppose will not take place over the weekend and I can’t see what might have triggered the potential disapproval. I will do so in separate chunks to reduce the chances of some word triggering deletion of the whole post.
The media handled this the way you would expect. Superficially and playing on familiar race themes just as this grifter expected them to.
The case highlights the whole retrograde nature of the race conversation in the States which has seeped across the water to the UK. When the Lovings were arrested under Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws against interracial marriage in 1958 it was just about possible to argue the 18th century idea that there were distinct black and white races, despite the fact that Mrs Loving was of mixed ancestry. In 2021 advances in DNA and scientific research into the origin of Homosapiens makes it pretty unarguable that Europeans, Asians etc all originated in Africa and their ancestors emigrated at different times, and that there is only one race on earth of various different shades of skin pigmentation. Nor is there any scientific evidence that skin pigmentation correlates to any other human quality or characteristic.
I am on side with your point about the original comment being flagged, and I am outraged that I am limited because of my race, skin color, however you want to put it–that I must use “the n-word” instead of the real word, as Dave Chapelle does often and with seeming impunity. JS even tried to pull this nonsense at trial, objecting to the white prosecutor READING the n-word out loud in a text JS wrote–out of respect for all of the African Americans in the courtroom. Presumably, as per JS, they lack the resiliency to survive such an insult (though written by him), and would somehow collapse or worse. The inmates have taken over the asylum. I think the science shows that I am an African-American, since I am a descendant of Lucy (our common ancestor) who hails from what is now Africa. Can we stop with the nonsense?
But I do believe in “tribalism,” for lack of a better word. Different societies have different languages, traditions, and customs, and I see nothing wrong with this–I even see this as cause for celebration, in moderation.
I don’t think Dave Chapelle could use the n-word if he posted on Unherd any more than you or I. But I take your point that if you are a member of one of the formerly oppressed groups you can be more transgressive in general in what you say and how you say it. It is noticeable that many of the most publicly effective voices critical of woke are black or gay. They can say stuff the straight and the white now hesitate to argue robustly.
I think I have worked out that what triggered my post being suspended was reference in scientific form to our common race, which I strongly suspect triggered the algorithm because it though I was using a rude reference to a gay. Again I don’t think if I was gay the algorithm would have given me a pass.
I certainly agree that someone from Nigeria say will likely have a different cultural tradition to someone from Italy say. We all are influenced by the cultural habits and traditions of our milieu, whether regional or religious. It is up to us how we react to those differences. With tolerance and interest hopefully, unless perhaps they differ in ways that are in direct opposition to our own traditions.
I’m the other way around I think cultural difference is far more important than race. When ethnic British people (yes I do think they exist) express concerns about mass immigration if you dig even slightly it’s really culture that’s the concern not race. Race can give an initial clue that someone is not of ‘traditional’ British heritage but within a few second of talking to a black guy with an English accent and talking about Eastenders you’re practically brothers. A white guy spouting off about the superiority of Islam or a white group of travellers messing up the local field or something would not be accepted more readily or given a pass because of their skin colour. A Sikh speaking good English will probably integrate better than a Frenchman who doesn’t speak English. I would be wary about being around a group of men and women in full Islamic garb that I didn’t know because that is an expression of the strength of their beliefs and perhaps cultural origin too (either unintegrated or recent import) and I have personal experience of intolerance from people with these beliefs. Their skin colour has nothing to do with it. It also doesn’t mean I’d be mean to them or not engage if they were nice to me. We are programmed to instinctively make instant assessments about people for our own safety but most of us are smart enough to reserve judgement unless a real and present danger is evident. The idea we all see skin colour and nothing else just seems ludicrous to me as there are so many other factors at play including dress, mannerisms, behaviours etc.
Excellent comment, though I’m not quite sure I understand why you start by saying “I’m the other way around….” We’ve danced here before and you have had thoughtful comments.
Are you ethnic British or ethnic English? There’s a difference, right? And perhaps you are reflecting differences between the US and the UK, because in the US, everything is discussed all the time in the context of race. Race first, maybe then culture, but Race uber Alles! Unavoidable.
BBC once asked me (not only me, part of a show) if I was liberal or conservative. I took a risk and threw it back at them, saying I believe this–you tell me what I am. Got a worldwide response, with some slagging me off because I said I was against multiculturalism in any form. Fair play. But I am.
At least in the US, and I believe the West writ large, the “welcoming” of (insert scientific term for rabbits in Australia, pythons in the everglades), was achieved only by massive, massive lies. The Immigration Reform Act of 1965 was a massive fraud on the American people, as it opened the floodgates to the flotsam and jetsam of the Third World. The result is an America I no longer recognise and no longer want to live in. What where these people thinking? In the case of the US, only the elites wanted this–VERY few normal Americans would have voted for this. A massive historical mistake. Where is the accountability?
You discuss what is essentially “profiling,” the mere mention of which would get you cancelled in the US, unless you are a COW (Citizen of Wakanda). Jessie Jackson–the race-baiting poverty pimp–even said that when he’s walking at night, and he sees young black dudes walking behind him, he gets stressed and changes his behaviour. Racist? Let’s get real.
Any poker player knows that profiling is imperative, though it only goes so far. One has to be VERY attentive to details, but certain things provide clues. All this angst about skin colour–waste of time really.
That being said, why is it wrong to be proud of one’s culture, and not be “open” to massive immigration from massively foreign cultures? Perhaps we should ask Messr. Zemmour.
Yes I agree. ‘Profiling’ has become a bad word but we all do it, instinctively, all the time. The difference is we have the capacity to override that instinct and use more rational judgement. Trying to eradicate profiling is essentially to try avd engineer us out of millions of years of evolution. It’s more leftist utopian thinking.
Quite right, but if you are a psychologist you call it heuristics rather than profiling since that carries undesirable overtones.
We all operate on the basis of heuristics. When successful blacks in the UK talk about race prejudice towards them it is almost invariably just that they have been on the wrong end of people operating heuristics.
If you are a court usher who has only come across blacks as defendants you are likely to assume a smartly dressed black woman is a defendant rather than the black barrister they in fact are. The downside is it gives the barrister a chance to write an article in the Guardian about how racist we Britains still are.
I know about this story–The Guardian–hah!–and I can tell you from the poker table that real women poker players love, love, love it when other players “profile” them and determine that they are not good players, because they are women. PLEASE underestimate me, they cry! You will play differently against me, and I will take your $$$$. Thank you!
I don’t know if it was intended to be your point, but I think the Guardian is effectively the same as the poker table. The victim mentality can be monetised, so it just becomes another opportunity.
We’ve seen this a lot with things like Youtube comment moderation. A lot of the time, the worst stuff is left behind because it allows people to cash in.
And yet, the phenomona is the same each way it is viewed – assessment of someone in a negative way based upon either experience or stereotyping is prejudicial. But also, the expectation that an unwelcome reaction is evidence of prejudice – the Guardian’s readership will overwhelmingly view racism as ubiquitous so it’s possible to exploit that particular prejudice like the women around the poker table.
Let me just amplify your comment, which is spot on. At the US Southern border (region–there is no border), it would be all right for the Border Patrol to look for tall, blonde Viking types, but it is not legal–because it is “racial profiling” to look for people 1m tall who look like they are from the highlands of Guatemala. That is the apex of “racism,” and we are better than that–millions of years of evolution be damned.
When I was worked as a prosecutor, something similar happened. When a white guy was in a black neighbourhood to buy drugs, defense lawyers used the defense that he (white dude) was “racially profiled,” which was illegal, violated our Constitution, etc. etc. In other words, it is illegal to use common sense, to use your brain….. The questions might go as follows:
Q: What attracted your attention to the defendant?
A: He was white, and seemed out of place in a black neighbourhood which was a known drug location.
Q: What was your reaction?
A: I thought he was there to buy drugs.
Aha!!!! Gotcha!!!!
If one was permitted to ask further questions, they would go like this:
Q: What happened next?
A: He bought drugs!
So presumably now police officers know to claim he was walking furtively and looking around, or some other non-profiling reason, whatever the real reason. I was somewhat startled to see criminal claims for profiling could be brought in Texas that I assumed was a robust no nonsense Republican State.
There do seem to be multiple ways of frustrating police officers doing their job built into the system.
‘Flotsam and jetsam’ from the 3rd World’?. How is that not a dehumanising term? You mean people coming to work and make a living in the US (and many other Western countries)?
It is true that the ‘West’ is conflicted on this, we have often wanted the labour, but many people don’t like the consequent social changes. But they are here now; the US has always, no, not always, but often, been a migrant society and overall has integrated people far better than Europe has with the immigrant societies becoming proud Americans. That is the case with the large Hispanic community, who increasingly reject the divisive siren calls of the Left.
I dislike hate mongering and ‘othering’, whether directed at immigrants, Brexiteers or Trump voters.
By far the biggest ‘race’ issue in the US has nothing to do anyway with the Immigration Reform Act. It is that the Black population largely derives from people who were imported as slaves.
Utter tosh! I mean people illegally invading the US and the West, and/or the flotsam and jetsam of the Third World being invited ONLY by the elites, in blatant disregard of the natives.
I’m not conflicted–I don’t want them here, or in the West, period. As Al Murray says “I was never confused.” You disagree. Fair play.
“But they are here now;” Are you referring to the tens of millions of illegal immigrants in the US? Are you against the rule of law? Are you in favor of open borders? Would you object to my view that each and every one, w/o exception, should be immediately rounded up and deported–no exceptions? Why do you hate Western society, rule of law, borders, reality?
Your last paragraph–you don’t know what you’re talking about. But I can infer what you are about from your capitalization of black. How woke! How Guardian.
You are quite right. Who really cares what colour someone’s skin is. Thomas Sowell highlights how so called race problems are in fact cultural problems in Black Rednecks and White Liberals.
Totally agree-and I would have thought obvious surely……..
I’m not sure that I am exactly ‘outraged’ at not being able to use the ‘n-word’ itself. We all know what it is. You should be able to use it as a quote in public discussion, and anyway, you should be allowed to say nasty things in a free society. But it’s a matter of consideration of people’s feelings; good manners, if you like. I can also see no reason why you would need to use the word. Apart from anything else, why, potentially, fall out on that minor issue with black people who oppose the Identitarian Left?
I suppose as a gay man I’d rather not be called a ‘queer’ too often.
You misunderstand my point. I don’t use racial slurs or anti-gay slurs–really any slurs–though my language, w/o descending into the gutter, can be quite intemperate.
What I object to is limiting one’s vocabulary by race. If Dave Chappelle wants to use the n-word, up to him. I wouldn’t do it because I think it’s low class, but hey, up to him. What I object to is the distinction made by race.
What I find odd about the claim that there is no such thing as race is that the race grievance industry itself appears to experience no difficulty in identifying races.
The more intelligent race grievance-mongers accept that there is no such thing as separate races, but get round it by saying it is a social construct.
In other words because our forebears mistakenly thought there were distinct races and enough people still think this we have to accept it as a social reality. So you should treat the idea as valid even though it isn’t, so that the social justice warriors can continue their lucrative social engineering project.
Instead of abandoning the absurd racial classifications a whole industry has been built on the errors of our ancestors. During the period of slavery in the US and for some time after fine classifications of race were recorded in censuses in which mixed “race” individuals could be categorised as mulatto, quadroon, etc until by the 1930s a simple one drop of black blood and you were black classifications was introduced. Who is black today? According to Biden if you vote for Trump you ain’t black.
However, skin colour seems to be the main test, and race grifters like JS identify as black because it feeds into the oppressed black man MSM theme. Historically Jews have experienced great oppression and still get beaten up in the States for being Jewish, but the leftist popular image is of the rich and powerful Jew supporting a racist Israel so he didn’t claim any ant-Semitic abuse, although the German National Socialist Workers Party, would certainly have classified him as a Jew in 1933. Of course, JS is manifestly not oppressed. Again because gays have historically been discriminated against they are now viewed sympathetically so the grifter is happy to draw on this theme.
Is it not time to follow the science and abandon the whole concept of race and simply accept that we are one race with various shades of skin, and that skin colour provides no automatic assurance that we have any particular useful qualities which might contribute to diversity of thought? Let us at last move to a more rational post-racist society.
I would say rather that everything is POLITICAL, with a radical, utterly unrepresentative and now almost demented Left largely using the race issue as an emotive hot button topic to justify and impose extreme and unpopular policies. These include defunding the police and not prosecuting rioters. Those policies are definitely NOT supported by Black ordinary people any more than they are by the vast majority of the American population.
The activists are malevolent actors, but you have to give them their due; they work extremely hard to infiltrate institutions and shield their extreme views and policies from public scrutiny. They are political fanatics, most of the rest of the public are not.
Glad you came out of that OK. One of the reasons I think attitudes have changed is that most people are fair minded. If you show how you’re being discriminated against on the basis of something you don’t choose, can’t change and harms nobody, then most people will agree that isn’t fair or reasonable.
It’s ironic that Stonewall’s attack on gay women now is based on the supposition that they actually can decide who they’re attracted to after all. If they aren’t attracted to men declaring themselves to be women, that’s a choice deserving of hate.
With all human activity there’s a bell curve in place. We’ve now got a body of lefty opinion insistent on a generalised entitlement to special treatment for racial minorities because everything is racist. It seems statistically inevitable that the tails of that bell curve distribution are going to include people like this Smollett character. His sense of entitlement is so high that he fakes the required incidents to support his case for whatever he was after.
O tempora! O mores! as they say in Japanese-Cockney fusion restaurants.
Stonewall’s attack on gay women is because they don’t accept men can become women if they want to. The fact that gay women don’t want to sleep with these “women” doesn’t show they can change their desire to sleep with women merely that they are transphobic because they don’t recognise these women as women and hence attractive bedmates.
Of course, as was obvious from the beginning, none of this was true.”
I just finished listening to the HONESTLY podcast with this author, and I highly recommend it, along with the Dave Chapelle clip (only about 4 minutes) that is pitch perfect. In fact, Chapelle’s riff could easily have been used at the trial in summation, because it shows how ridiculous the story was. Spoiler alert: the best line: the African-American community didn’t do much for JS “because we understood that this n-word was clearly lying!” DC further kills the audience by referring to JS as the “victim,” (DC actually loses it for a bit here) and then talks about how he feels sorry for the police taking the report…..
The author omits a few relevant details here that I think are important to the story—I only learned of them through his podcast—for example, that JS is bi-racial and his father is a Jewish scientist from the former Soviet Union—yet oddly, in this article JS is described as black.
The author also posits that it is likely that JS experienced little to no racism in his life, and hugely benefited from his bi-racial makeup, it doesn’t take Freud to consider that since he is told over and over again that he is a “victim,” how can that be if he is rich and successful, and has never been discriminated against? Maybe he’s not black enough? How could he be blacker? Well, if he experienced an horrific attack of racism—that would be a form of bonding with the brothas—almost like a bar mitzvah to reference the other side of his lineage—he would be fully initiated in the group.
What’s missing from this piece is much of a discussion of how the media handled this—the unquestioning acceptance of this ridiculous lie. Surely this is an issue of space, because the author discusses this extensively in the podcast—worth a listen.
Finally, I’m not so sure that JS won’t go to prison—I certainly hope he does. JS committed the additional crime of perjury by falsely testifying at trial. He simply can’t be given a pass for this, as it is raising your middle finger to the entire foundation of the American justice system. Stay tuned. There are probably ten perjury trials a year in the US, but sometimes the system just can’t sit idly by while its very essence is so publicly questioned. It is worth noting that Lady Ghislane will also face a trial for perjury after this current trial, where she seems to be doing quite well!
The media handled this the way you would expect. Superficially and playing on familiar race themes just as this grifter expected them to.
The case highlights the whole retrograde nature of the race conversation in the States which has seeped across the water to the UK. When the Lovings were arrested under Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws against interracial marriage in 1958 it was just about possible to argue that the 18th century idea that there were distinct black and white races, despite the fact that Mrs Loving was of mixed ancestry. In 2021 advances in DNA and scientific research into the origin of Homosapiens makes it pretty unarguable that Europeans, Asians etc all originated in Africa and their ancestors emigrated at different times, and that there is only one race on earth of various different shades of skin pigmentation. Nor is there any scientific evidence that skin pigmentation correlates to any other human quality or characteristic.
Instead of abandoning the absurd racial classifications a whole industry has been built on the errors of our ancestors. During the period of slavery in the US and for some time after fine classifications of race were recorded in censuses in which mixed “race” individuals could be categorised as mulatto, quadroon, etc until by the 1930s a simple one drop of black blood and you were black classifications was introduced. Who is black today? According to Biden if you vote for Trump you ain’t black.
However, skin colour seems to be the main test, and race grifters like JS identify as black because it feeds into the oppressed black man MSM theme. Historically Jews have experienced great oppression and still get beaten up in the States for being Jewish, but the leftist popular image is of the rich and powerful Jew supporting a racist Israel so he didn’t claim any ant-Semitic abuse, although the German National Socialist Workers Party, would certainly have classified him as a Jew in 1933. Of course, JS is manifestly not oppressed. Again because gays have historically been discriminated against they are now viewed sympathetically so the grifter is happy to draw on this theme.
Is it not time to follow the science and abandon the whole concept of race and simply accept that we are one race with various shades of skin, and that skin colour provides no automatic assurance that we have any useful particular qualities which might contribute to diversity of thought? Let us at last move to a more rational post-racist society.
I just watched Dave Chappelle on the Jussie Smollett Incident – brilliant!Thanks for the heads up.
This whole episode is so sick. I would like to say it is bizarre but, given today’s topsy-turvy world, it doesnt surprise me one bit.
We have to STOP FETISHISING VICTIMHOOD. The Smollett episode is just a logical consequence of making victimhood desirable and – for those lost in showbiz who don’t occupy the same world as the rest of us anyway – an effective path to increased publicity and big bucks.
It’s just so tawdry and denigrates the people who really have been the subject of hate crimes.
I’m against “hate crimes.” I haven’t committed any. But you are exactly right when you say that “victimhood” is a fetish. Like all fetishes, I suppose, some people are into it. But some people are paedos, too. We can’t call them “minor attracted people,” we have to call them what they are. AND STOP THEM!
Commentator Clay Travis once said of Jussie in 2019, “The demand for racist hate far exceeds the supply of any racist hate incidents. Because of this, we are seeing one racial hoax charade after another.” Should someone tell these misguided people about The Boy That Cried Wolf?
Sadly this is where politics for some seems to be but I reject this topic. This insubstantial gadfly really isn’t of any significance. Adult politics needs to wrest debate back to a profound level instead of giving ground to ‘sleb’ nonsense. After coming across articles on wokery and identity I assume nearly all of the public frown a bit at this stupidity and, apart from those wandering pathetically around campuses or moping in their bedsits pursuing useless artsy jobs, turn back to the real world of work and family and colleagues and get on with making things or selling things or looking after people.
Yawn.
Is identity politics still interesting ?
Not really. Unfortunately, it’s being used by the media and academic establishment to divide us all up into neat little boxes that can be manipulated by hot topic issues. I’m glad for publications like Unherd to call it out.
divide and conquer/concur