If the latest apparent hate-crime hoax of the the Trump era is what it looks like, it isn’t merely a story of a desperate actor doing something insane. It’s a story of today’s progressive identity politics and how it elevates group victimhood to the highest of virtues.
In the early morning of Jan. 29, actor Jussie Smollett of the Fox series “Empire” claimed that he was ambushed outside a restaurant in Chicago. According to the police, Smollett claimed “two unknown offenders approached him and gained his attention by yelling out racial and homophobic slurs towards him. The offenders began to batter the victim with their hands about the face and poured an unknown chemical substance on the victim. At some point during the incident, one of the offenders wrapped a rope around the victim’s neck.”
Smollett also said that his attackers knew who he was. He later confirmed accounts that his attackers had identified him personally and shouted, “This is MAGA Country,” a reference to President Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
From the beginning, the story was difficult to believe. Obviously, Chicago is not “MAGA Country.” Even in “MAGA Country,” one seldom finds roving bands of Trumpers carrying nooses and randomly assaulting people late at night for what appears to be political intimidation. The odds also seem small that redneck MAGA people anywhere in the country watch “Empire” and know the personal lives of the actors.
As of this writing, Smollett’s story seems to have unraveled. Prosecutors are reportedly investigating whether he filed a false police report. The two “attackers,” both reportedly Smollett’s acquaintances, have told police that he paid them to help stage the incident. He was allegedly unhappy that a threatening letter sent to his studio hadn’t gotten more attention.
But this isn’t just about Smollett’s need for attention. This apparent hoax, the latest of dozens of fake hate crimes alleged against Trump supporters in the Trump era, has an ideological root as well. It comes from the same playbook as the lies leveled last month against the now-famous students of Covington Catholic.
At the heart of both deceptions is a postmodern belief system whose central tenet is that one’s racial and social identity supersede truth and reality. According to this intersectional system of thinking, the distinction between not only good and evil but also between fact and fiction is determined not based on choices made and moral reasoning, nor on evidence and facts, but rather on one’s position in a grand hierarchy of historical victimhood.
In short, if your ancestors might have been oppressed, then you have stored up treasure in heaven, even though it happened before you were born. If your ancestors might have been oppressors, then you are stained with original sin, a sin you did not directly commit, the stain of which no baptism or penance can ever wash away. (Well, maybe not if you’re a powerful Democratic officeholder.)
In the case of the Covington students — white, all boys, Christian, marching against abortion, and some wearing red Trump hats they had just purchased from D.C. vendors — the assumption of their guilt was, naturally, automatic. The first question about their conduct led to an immediate and national swarm of defamation, online bullying, and violent threats. And the defamation and bullying (which could happen to your kids, dear reader) continued even after all the facts were widely known and they had been exonerated.
According to intersectional thinking, all of this bullying and lying are justified. If you happen to come from a background adjudged as historically privileged, then by default your conduct is considered blameworthy upon accusation, and your opinions or accounts less valuable.
That is the one side of the coin. It was on the other side that Smollett was trying to imprint his own image with his apparent deception. Being both black and gay, and thinking himself a great deal cleverer than he is, he expected people to believe his implausible story without tracking down the facts.
Those who wanted to believe him did so, just as they had initially believed dozens of hoaxers in every part of America. But the story appears to be false. And Trump’s supporters, thus maligned by an influential celebrity, are as right to be joyful in their vindication as any other class of person falsely blamed for something none of them did.
Unfortunately for all the hoaxers, defamers, online bullies, and postmodern thinkers of the modern Left, courts of law do not buy into intersectional theory, nor can they as long as law and justice remain as live concepts. They look at facts, and they do not care about the backgrounds of those who attest to them.
Prosecutors are investigating whether Smollett paid two acquaintances to stage a fake attack against him. A civil court may soon decide whether multiple rich celebrities and deep-pocketed news organizations showed negligence when they defamed a group of ordinary Kentucky high schoolers.
In these and all other cases, let justice be done based on facts and evidence, for the law is no respecter of persons.
