Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to part two of
my reading of Larry Wilcox's Crime Wolf Hate Crime Hoaxes
in America. Just remind you Thomas and I do. We
watch movies and comments on them and talk about the
culture of the time how it relates to our culture now.
And the last one we did was The Warriors from
nineteen seventy nine. Real cult classic, but an awesome movie.
You can find those at you can find links to
where they are at freemambyond Thewall dot Com Forward slash Movies.
All right, let's get into this. The wrap up on
chapter one is going to be very fast, and then
we'll jump into chapter two. And I think chapter two
is rather short, So yeah, let's see how far we
get new heading hate groups in America. In nineteen eighty,
the US Commission on Civil Rights contract did with the
Anti Defamation Lead to produce a report on extreme right
hate groups for a twenty thousand dollars fee. The ADL
hardly needed the fee, but was thrilled at having the
implied endorsement of a government agency for one of its reports.
This did not work out so well, however, Last time
I told you about the ADL's budget, and I think
it was say it was something like sixty million back then.
They claim now it's one hundred and one million. No,
it was thirty four million then they claim it was.
They claim now it's one hundred and one million. They
had they claimed four hundred employees back then, they claimed
five hundred and one employees now, So it doesn't look
like it's grown massively, especially when you consider inflation and
things like that. But power wise, I think, yeah, you'd
have to admit that's a different story. After the report
was published, a Commission reject identity cline to publish it
on several grounds. A letter dated March eighth, nineteen eighty two,
from Paul Alexander, acting General Counsel of the Commission, to
John Hope, the third Acting Staff Director, gave the following reasons, quoting,
I would like to raise several policy considerations. The ADL
report does not in any way resemble a standard USCCR report.
It is not a dispassionate attempt to present a balanced
accounting of facts. The Commission previously has had no difficulty
in publishing reports containing defamatory information when it was verifiable
and necessary to the report. Our Voting Rights Report is
the most recent example. In that report, however, we did
not find it necessary to mix epithets and emotionally laiden
labels with the facts. The ADL report is ranked with
epithets and labels that only serve to distort the factual
accountings of the activities of the KKK and similar organizations.
The liberal use of hyperbolic epithets throughout the the ADL
drafts that's a tone that probably precludes correction and through
simple adjectival laundering. The alleged inaccuracies and misrepresentations noted by
the respondents present very serious problems if they are at
all representative. The report probably contains many inaccuracies. It is
doubtful that the report could survive the normal process of
a source check, as there does not appear to be
sufficient date data to support the allegations. Alexander further noted
that the ADL reported report bordered on jingoism. Although the
USCCR wisely declined to lend its name to the report,
the ADL published in any way with epithets, emotionally laiden labels,
and jingoism intact. Like all ADL publications on the People
and groups that it hates. Its tone is one that
encourages contempt for the civil liberties of its subjects and
treats them in a dehumanizing matter, behavior as the ADL
purports to oppose. The report has now appeared in several
editions and is widely circulated to journalists and police departments
accuse others of what they do always always been the
remo hate group membership new heading. If determining the extent
of anti Semitism, racism, or hate crimes is problematic, consider
determining the strength of anti Semitic and racist groups. Some
of the most wild speculation has been made in this area.
At a time when the ADL estimated nationwide KKK membership
at roughly twelve thousand, a Saint Louis TV station claimed
a fantastic fifty thousand members in Missouri alone. In this case,
the ADL's estimate is much closer to the truth, though
it probably didn't take into account several multiple memberships. Some
clans been belonged to several clans and a few card
and a few carry cards from virtually all of them.
According to the ADL in nineteen ninety, the various ku
Klux plan organizations had to come bind membership under four thousand,
down from forty five thousand in nineteen sixty four and
twelve thousand, five hundred and nineteen eighty one In nineteen
eighty seven, during a period of growth, the ADL estimated
hardcore neo nazis that no more than four hundreds of
five hundred the much publicized skinheads recently estimated at five
thousand nationwide are almost certainly no more than a third
of that. Determining who is and who is in a
neo Nazi racist skinhead involves a lot of pure guessing.
A recent possible hoax in Denver initially focused on the
local skinhead population, and an estimate of two hundred was
made a great surprise to bonafide Denver racist groups. Many
bikers adopt the skinhead appearance while having no affinity for
their views, and there are many anti racist skinhead groups around.
The actual number of bonafide racist neo Nazi skinheads in
Denver is probably under twenty five at the time of
Kansas City KKK group made national news in nineteen eighty
eight with its plans for a public TV show. It
had only two members. Speculation had ranged as high as
one hundred, and rumors of alleged KKK vandalism and crossburnings
spread through the community. Groups like the Posse Comme Tatis
attained almost mythical proportions in the early nineteen eighties, with
estimates as high as forty thousand given by irresponsible writers.
This was absolute fantasy. Although Jim Wickstrom POSSE leader claimed
the incredible figure of a million and a half, having
talked with police agencies, journalists, farmers, and local officials, and
with POSSE members themselves, I seriously doubt if more than
a thousand serious POSSE activists ever existed at any one time.
The Posse was never tightly organized, and the national group
was primarily a literary distribution group. Local groups were autonomous
and virtually anyone could claim membership and be believed. In Kansas,
for example, state police officials monitoring farm auctions in the
early nineteen eighties made the incredible mistake of estimating Posse
presence in one case by noting that a POSSE acted
this was present and he had thirty or so people
gathered around him reading the literature passed out. Hence there
was a Posse presence in the neighborhood of thirty at
the auction a single individual distributing Posse literature in several
stations and restaurant restrooms caused near panic in one county
the situation got so far out of hand in nineteen
eighty five, three Kansons filed a civil rights lawsuit against
Kansas Attorney General Robert Stephen for creating the Posse Committatis
to further his political career. A suit brought on behalf
of Free to Steel, James Steele, and Harold Hovander, all
rural Kansas residents, charged that unnecessary police powers were utilized
during a repression action against mister Steele, which included air
support and a small army of Kansas Bureau of Investigation assets,
Kansas Highway Patrol troopers, sheriff's deputies, and local police personnel,
all heavily armed as for combat who descended on said
farm like an invasion. Among the various problems in determining
memberships and groups is the fact that is the fact
that claims by the groups themselves can't be believed uncritically. Invariably,
they will exaggerate their own strength. Both Ku Klux Klan
and anti clan groups routinely distort the KKK's power, influence
and threat to the established order. Also, in most cases,
the membership list and the mailing list are usually two
distinct entities. Ku Klux Klan organizations have maintained large complementary
mailing lists in the past, although that practice is faded
for reasons of economy. Some groups don't have members as such,
only people who receive their mailings, and others make no
distinction between members and people who write nas for information.
A few groups even send out blank membership cards with
their solicitation letters. In nineteen eighty four, a terrifying right
wing Halsteed, Kansas organization with a creative name of the
Farmer's Liberation Army was finally determined to have one member, founder,
Keith Schive. Anti racist groups took the organization very seriously
in references to it appeared in the national press. Shi
was absolutely delighted with the response. Similar cases involving alleged paramilitary,
constitutional patriot, and tax protest groups consisting of one or
two members are not uncommon. A creative trickster with access
to a photocopy machine can create havoc in a community
with the help of a properly sensitized local media on
the watch for Witches to burn. Robert Depew's Kansas City
area based paramilitary Minute Men organization of the nineteen sixties
suffered from similar distortions. Primarily a paper operation with a
handful of activists, a Pew topped out at five hundred members,
most of whom were essentially inactive literature collectors, and several
of whom were government agents. Media estimates ranged in the thousands.
By nineteen sixty eight, the FBI had refined its intelligence
on the group to the point where they stated that
there were less more than fifty persons upon whom Minutemen
leaders can call for overt action. My own subsequent investigation
suggested a more realistic figure of under a dozen. During
the McCarthy era, By the way, the membership of leftist groups,
including the Communist Party itself, was similarly exaggerated. Probably ah
here we go the Southern Poverty Law Center. In February
nineteen ninety two, USA Today reported that Clan Watch, a
subdivision of Morris D's Southern Poverty Law Center, had identified
a total of three hundred and forty six white supremacist
groups operating in the USA up in alarming twenty seven
percent from the past year. Included were ninety seven KKK
and two hundred and three allegendio Nazi groups. This figure
is outrageously inflated. What Clan Watch apparently did is locate
any mailing address they could find, including the large number
of pobox chapters maintained by several organizations, police, government agencies,
and private groups monitoring the Klan. They probably listed many
groups whose actual affiliation is neither KKK or neo Nazi,
and who would argue with the designation of white supremacy.
This writer publishes an annual directory of these groups and
companion directory on the left, and can attest to the
irresponsible inflation of Clan Watch's numbers. In terms of viable
groups not one or two man local chapters with more
than a handful of members, the actual figure is a
combined total of thirty, a far cry from three hundred
and forty six. Unfortunately, this is this kind of exaggeration
is typical. Obviously, if you're an organization who is crying
wolf all the time and you rely on well, if
you rely upon donations, crying wolf is a great way
to get it. I mean, I think any of you
know how I feel about Dave Rubin. But Richard Lewis,
the now elderly Jewish comedian, was on his show and
was talking about the ACLU, and it was a Southern
poverty law center, I believe, And how you know, I've
always given money and like to his credit, Dave Rubin's
schooled him on it. It's like this. He goes, maybe
at one time they did good work, it goes, but
not now. Now they're just there to shut down speech.
So we know they're there to do more. But the
Southern Poverty Law Center has been faultered on other grounds
as well. In February nineteen ninety four, the Montgomery Advertiser
ran a series of articles exposing various aspects of the SPLC,
including a questionable fundraising tactics and other dishonest practices. I know,
I'm shocked. Among the issues raised were the SPLC has
reserved funds of fifty two million. Just what the Loss
Center does with all that money? As a source of concern,
some who have worked with Morrisd's call them a phony.
The television evangelist of civil rights who misleads donors for
fifteen years. People throughout the country have sent millions of
dollars to the SBLC to fight the KKK and other supremacists,
but critics say the law center exaggerates the threat of
hate groups. The SPLC responded to the series with a
number of veiled threats in charge that it was a
hatchet job. Nevertheless, the series was widely praised and is
regarded as a model for courageous objective reporting. The SPLC
legal offensive. In nineteen eighty seven, DS and the SPLC
made national headlines with a civil judgment against United Clans
of America and two of its members for the nineteen
eighty one slaying of a black teenager. Unable to afford
company counsel in the complicated matter, the UKA was forced
to turn over all of its assets and went out
a bit business. At issue in that trial was the
liability of the UK for the acts of its members.
Had this doctrine that organizations are responsible for the acts
of their members been established as the legal president in
the nineteenth President in the nineteen sixties, it would have
decimated the early civil rights movement and would have bankrupted
the NAACP and CORE, both of which this writer belonged to.
Even the labor movement and the anti war movement could
have been crippled by lawsuits arising from the violent acts
of some of their participants. Suppose a black activist group
was hit with a seven million dollar judgment because one
of its members killed someone in the Watts riots. This
sounds far fetched, but had the dece precedent existed, then
it could have happened. Conscientious civil libertarians, although they disdained
the kukux Land and neo Nazi groups, also disdain unfair
and underhanded methods used to go after them in the courts.
The SBLC proclivity to use civil suits were constitutional protections
are minimal against poor, working class and often semi literate
klansmen who are unable to afford council has been compared
to shooting fish in a barrel. I know about the
whole semi literate thing. I think he threw that in
there on his own, but I don't know. The issue,
of course, is a classical moral one, i e. Whether
the ends justifies the means used to accomplish them. Most
moral philosophers would say that the means indirectly determines the
determines the ends, and that unjust means necessarily leads to
unjust ends. Another D's civil case involved three neo Nazi
skinheads who killed a black man during a November nineteen
eighty eight fight in Portland, Oregon. The skinheads pleaded guilty
in our, serving long prison sentences. This was the end
of the matter. However, this was not the end of
the matter. However, Morris D's in the SPLC, with the
cooperation of the ADL, filed civil suits on behalf of
victim's family. None of the Skinheads were worth suing, so
Morris d saw a judgment against Tom and John Metzger
and their White Air In Resistance organization to which the
Skinheads allegedly belonged. The Meskers, it was agreed, did not
even know the men who committed the crime, nor had
they directed their actions. The issue was whether, by virtue
of the Mesker's attitudes, opinions, and beliefs, they had somehow
motivated the killers. The Metsikers in War had minimal assets,
not nearly enough to even cover the cost of the lawsuit.
DS and the ADL were clearly trying to put War
out of business. The Meskers were, of course unable to
afford counsel and attempted to defend themselves. After a long
trial before a judge with one year of experience, a
tired jury found against the Metsikers in October nineteen ninety
and awarded the victims families an enormous settlement. A subsequent
appeal was denied, largely because the Metsikers, with no legal training,
had failed to bring up specific objections during the trial.
At one point, when Tom Metzker attempted to pay for
a transcript of the trial with donated funds in order
to prepare the appeal, the appeal des garnished a payment,
thus impending their efforts. Do you see how they play?
I mean, wasn't it was it Ian Smith who has
the the New Jersey Jim who during COVID they closed
it down and he raised money I think on GoFundMe
and the government seized it. It may not have been
Ian Smith, but it was there was This definitely happened
in twenty twenty where I mean the government just stepped
in and seized it and said no, no, you're not
You're not getting money from the public to defend yourself. Yeah,
that's that's where we are. That's where we are. But
I'm sure if we just ignore it and we talk
about how bad they are. You know, criticism of Deeds
does not come from right wing sources alone. In a
column appearing under the banner of the Los Angeles Times
Washington Post news service, Ray Jenkins, a writer for the
Baltimore Sun, noted that while the state of Oregon like
that to put Metzger on trial for murder in the case,
what more as Deeds did was to quote convert the
civil law, whose basic purposes to settle disputes between individuals,
into an arm of the criminal law. In legal abercadabra,
the standard of proof, and civil cases usually only preponderance
of evidence is a good deal easier to meet than
the higher standard of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt required
in criminal prosecution. Let's not forget there are cases on
record where civil law was tortured into criminal law to
punish communists in the nineteen fifties than civil rights groups,
including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
inties in the nineteen sixties. That is why you need
your own That's why you need people who are sympathetic
to you in power. An unnamed philosopher once said to
beware of those in whom the urge to punish is strong.
The zealous and vengeful nature of those self appointed hate
crime vigilanties, so quick to abuse long established legal processes
designed to protect the civil rights of all citizens, renders
them as dangerous as the hate groups they claim to oppose,
and perhaps even more so that they maintain an image
of legitimacy, militancy, and fanaticism. In any pursuit, even one
that is objectively laudable on its face, is bound to
produce results that are injurious in the long run. Whoever
fight's monsters should see to it that in the process
he does not become a monster. And if you gaze
long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back
at you. Friedrich Nietzsche, eighteen seventy eight. All right, here's
all the scrolling by all the references for that first chapter,
of which there are fifty eight. All right, Chapter two,
Hate Crimes Legislation. If membership figures for antisemitic and racist
organizations are hard to determine, and data on incident to incidents,
marking and conflate and conflicting statistics on so called hate
crimes are problematic as well. In nineteen ninety, Congress pass
legislation based on the ADL's model Hate Crimes Reporting Statute,
requiring the United States Attorney General to set up a
system for collecting statistics on hate crimes, known as the
Hate Crime Statistics Act. In addition to serious crimes such
as murder, arson, and manslaughter, relatively minor offenses such as
simple assault, intimidation, and vandalism, which includes graffiti, were to
be included in the tabulation. The legislation contained no provision
for reporting incidents that turned out to be hoaxes. As such,
when an incident is discovered to be a hoax, it
might be dropped from the statistics, or it might not.
Even more disturbing, the legislation contained no provision to exclude
unsolved defenses, many of which are probably hoaxes. Offenses having
the mere appearance of a hate crime or to be
reported as such, calling, unsubstantiated telephone including unsubstantiated telephone threats,
anonymous graffiti, and unproven claims of name calling. Local police
departments quickly stepped in line. The LAPD adopted a policy
that classified all hate crimes as Category one crimes, like
felonies with named suspects. Robert Vernon LAPO, Assistant Chief of Police,
LAPD Assistant Chief of Police, announced that even misdemeanor offenses
such as alleged threatening phone calls or malicious mischief would
be aggressively investigated by police. In nineteen ninety one, FBI
Director William Sessions announced that the implementation of the Hate
Crimes Program will continue to be a top priority to
the FBI. However, Sessions also commented that while there appeared
to be an increase in hate crimes to rise may
be due partly to required reporting. The decision to even
classify incidents as racially motivated is fraught with issues of
subjectivity and bias. Although racially motivated seems to be a
neutral term, it is not. In practice. It's been a
code phrase for crime by white and not black racists.
It creates the anomaly of a white youth receiving a
stiffer sentence from mere graffiti on a black business than
a black youth might receive for burglary of its owner.
A little narcotyranny going on here. Racially motivated is a
legal distinction that justifies preferential statuses and discriminatory punishments. In
many cases, the law actually provides for civil penalties and damages,
which actually encourages hoaxes and fabrications. More importantly, we are
in grave danger of institutionalizing a double standard, where some
citizens are accorded special protections based entirely on their race,
while others are penalized for theirs, a problem of a
rights movement originally sought to redress. A dramatic example of
that double standard was illustrated in the nineteen ninety nine
dart Man case in New York. Dart Man was a
black man who went around Manhattan shooting blowgun darts into
women's behinds. Although all of dart Man's two dozen plus
victims were white, including two light skinned Hispanics, it was
reported that authorities do not think race is a factor.
Nineteen ninety police are quoted that's me commenting saying this
happened in nineteen ninety, Now would he get a medal?
Police are quoted as saying that they have no reason
to believe the attacks are racially motivated. However, in New
York City's diverse racial mix, the odds of picking two
dozen white women at random are the order of winning
Latto America. Imagine for a moment what the conclusion would
have been if the dart man was white and all
of his victims would have been black. Quite another story,
isn't it. Imagine if the roles reversed. The selective police
attention to allege hate crimes is shadowed by selective media
in attention to hate crime hoaxes. Many hoaxes are only
reported to the local media and die when they reach
the wire services. I've also been told that a fair
number are simply spiked once their nature is ascertained, out
of sensitivity to minority concerns, or so as not to
give ammunition to racists. Absence some kind of clipping service,
a network of local monitors, or the intelligence capability of
the American law enforcement community, one is at a considerable
disadvantage researching this subject. There could be a much bigger
story here than initially appears. In Kansas City, for example,
Terrence Weaver to face a wall near a major art
museum with racist and anti Semitic graffiti in September nineteen
eighty nine. He was observed, chased, and apprehended. The local
newspaper reported the incident as a hate crime. Along with
the interesting fact that the perpetrator had checked himself into
a local mental hospital immediately after his arrest. The incident
quickly faded and no more was heard of it. The
Kansas City Star has declined to pursue the matter. My
own investigation developed that this young man was well known
to local leftists, and that he had talked of a
plot to entice all KKK and neo Nazis to a
meeting and then blow up the building and kill them.
He was, in fact, not racist, but anti racist. Kansas
City police sat the case, and local anti fascist activists
seemed to be holding their breath until the story faded
into the memory hole. If you didn't live in nineteen
eighty nine, okay, if you didn't live in Kansas City
and read the local paper, you wouldn't know it had happened.
If you hadn't investigated, you wouldn't know. It's a probable
hoax incident. And there are many cases like this? Are
there many more? Kit? Pardon me? Are there more cases
like this? Probably? So? Vallid objections to Hate Crimes Reporting Act.
There are many valid criticisms of the hate crime reporting concept,
but by far the most legitimate is that selective reporting
exaggerates a phenomenon by calling selective attention to it. If
statistics were kept of crimes committed by Methodists or left
handed Democrats, or by service station employees, or of crimes
against these groups, it would quickly seem to have it
would quickly seem that we have a serious crime problem
in these areas. To answer an objection to this argument
from a Jewish friend, I asked what the probable consequences
of compiling and publicizing statistics on crimes by Jews in
the United States might be so as to draw attention
to them. He quickly conceded that it would seriously distort
the picture and lead to dangerous false conclusions by singling
out a particular group, and would be unfair selective attention.
Enough said, civil liberties are traditionally concerned with two issues
more than any other. In criminal law, they are concerned
with due process issues, e. The fairness of the criminal
justice system and its adherence to procedural processes that ensure
even handedness and protection for the rights of the accused.
In constitutional law, the issue of free speech overshadows most
other concerns, since it is regarded as the bed rock
upon which all other freedoms depend, and rightly so. The
ADL is acutely aware that too scrupulous and adherence to
civil liberties can be counterproductive to its interests. For example,
inconvenient standards of evidence in criminal trials may allow individuals
they would prefer to seek convicted to go without punishment
and ritual defamation. Hence their clever advocacy of civil action
against individuals and groups who offend their interests, whether or
not they have been convicted of an actual criminal offense.
In civil cases, evidence is allowable that wouldn't get past
the door in a criminal case. Among other things, the
standard for conviction is merely the preponderance of evidence and
not the more rigorous beyond any reasonable doubt. Put, if
you can't prove a crime, you may still be able
to punish with the civil judgment. Similarly, although they routinely
deny it, free speech is troublesome to the ADL when
it includes values, opinions, and beliefs they regard as retrograde
to their interests, such as criticism of Jews, Israel, or
Jewish institutions. When the ADL condemns anti Semitism, they are
usually condemning some form of expression of values, opinions, or beliefs. Accordingly,
while the ADL is officially given muted oppositions as discredited
and unconstitutional hate hate speech legislation, it has worked mightily
to create the climate that produced it the hate speech
in case. The hate speech case in question was a
Saint Paul, Minnesota ordinance outllowing mere expressions of racism and antisemitism,
including speech, writing, art, as well as symbolic acts such
as cross burnings. The United States Supreme Court decided unanimously
in I N two that the ordinance was in violation
of the Constitution. On the other hand, the issue in
the ADL's model hate crime statute, which they have successfully
lobbied through most state legislatures and which is being embodied
in federal legislation as well, is that certain forms of speech,
such as hostility or contempt for racial or ethnic interest groups,
may not be unlawful in itself, but when expressed in
conjunction with a criminal act such as graffiti, vandalism, or assault,
it should result in a mandatory increase in sentence. Hate
crime laws. Bona fide criminal activity, including violence, is always prosecutable,
as it should be. But the ADL clearly feels that
criminal activity directed against Jews and their clients in the
minority community deserves special punishment. However, to make a lass
singling out a particular interest group for special protection as
a touchy subject and consistence of a Libertarians have tended
to oppose the tactic affirmative action programs aside, so they
want they say criminal activity directed against Jews and their
clients deserve special punishment. If you listen to if you
ever heard me talk about the book The Authoritarian Personality,
which has the f scale in it, which if you
take that test you can find out if you're a
fascist or not, or how prone you are to fascism.
You can find it online. One of the questions had
to deal with do you think that people who touch
children should be punished beyond the law? Interesting, huh, they're
worried that that that wanting to and I go back
to Leo Frank. You know Leo Frank being dragged out
of prison and being lynched, that was a problem. But here,
if you just say anything, you don't have to act.
You just have to say, if you have belief, if
you heard my recent substact talking about how basically total
war is war upon belief, then you deserve special punishment,
But someone who touches a kid, now they don't deserve
special punishment at all. I always thought it was really
weird when I read that. One question why did the
American Jewish Committee want that in there? The ADL anticipated
that laws outlawing acts directed at specific groups is hate
crimes might present constitutional difficulties, particularly the equal Protection clause.
Such laws may also encourage public perception that special people
get special protections of you, that the ADL wishes to discourage.
Americans tend to reject group rights, and public awareness that
the ADL is promoting precisely what could be a public
relations blunder. The ADL chose to minimize these complications by
focusing its legislative offensive on the sentencing phase of the
criminal procedure. This way, one can say that the accused
has not been convicted of a special crime designed to
provide special protections to special groups, but rather have been
convicted of an ordinary crime, only the punishment is to
be more severe because of the circumstances surrounding it. No
one is being convicted of a thought crime because of
their values opinions or beliefs only sentenced to longer terms
because of them. I've said enough, But why this convoluted tactic.
Wouldn't that appellate court. Wouldn't the appellate court see the ruse.
In nineteen ninety three, the Wisconsin Supreme Court did exactly
that when it invalidated a state law mandating longer sentences
and hate crimes. Many civil libertarians applauded this development. Censusing
practices are the neglected area of due process. One can
see this immediately by noting the wide disparity of sentencing
in similar crimes. A simple one hundred dollars burglary may
bring probation in one case in twenty years in another.
Factors only marginally relevant to the seriousness of the crime
at hand or allowed in the sentencing process, such as
the defendant's appearancing or courtroom demeanor, the judge's perception of
the defendant's repentance, which may say as much about the
judge as it does the defendant, or whether or not
the defendant pled guilty or had the temerity to demand
a trial. In other words, evidence can be entered into
a sensencing hearing that would be admissible in the trial itself.
More than one civil liberty's attorney has cringed at the
arbitrariness of sentencing procedures. It could be said, with respect
to hate crimes, that all the penalty enhancement statutes do
is formalize the kind of discrimination that is is already
being a curring on an ad hoc basis. Unfortunately, penalty
enhancement makes it mandatory new heading racial motivation and sentencing policy.
The particular case that brought this issue before the US
Supreme Court in nineteen ninety three involved not a white
but a black defendant in a case of aggravated battery.
Todd Mitchell was one of a group of black teenagers
who severely beat a fourteen year old white boy in Kenosha, Wisconsin,
in nineteen eighty nine. The group adjusting the film Mississippi Burning,
which glorifies the civil rights movement in the nineteen sixties
and vilifies its opposition, not a particularly difficult task. When
Mitchell and his gang came upon the victim, Mitchell said,
there goes a white boy, go get them. They did,
and the boy was seriously injured in the beating that followed.
A jury found Mitchell guilty, and he was sent to
two years in prison, the maximum for aggravated battery in Wisconsin. However,
the jury, finding that Mitchell chose his victim on the
basis of race, went on to increase his sentence to
a maximum seven years, or a three hundred and fifty
percent increase. Paradoxically, had Mitchell merely beaten a black person
for some other reasons, such as wanting his shoes, he
would have been so thoroughly. He would not have been
so thoroughly savage, as sentencing two years would be two years,
and he probably wouldn't have gotten that. Mitchell appealed, and
the Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidated the longer sentence. They said
the state legislature had violated the First Amendment by criminalizing
bigoted thought with which it disagrees. Civil rights groups and
the ADL were outraged. In civil rights groups were outraged.
In April nineteen ninety three, Wisconsin Attorney General James E.
Doyle argued the case before the US Supreme Court, making
the distinction that the case involved conduct and not ideas.
As a result of a massive lobbying effort in which
the ADL played a major part, forty nine other states
had filed briefs in support of Attorney General Doyle. The
Supreme Court agreed with Doyle and unanimously reaffirmed Mitchell's three
hundred and fifty percent sentence enhancement. The Supreme Court's reasoning
bears special examination. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing for the Court,
said that quoting a defendant's abstract beliefs, however obnoxious to
most people, may not be taken into consideration by a
sentencing judge. Reinquists offered that those beliefs are no longer
abstract once they provide the motive for discriminate discriminatory action. Thus,
according to his reasoning, a physical assault is not, by
any stretch of the imagination, expressive conduct protected by the
First Amendment. Of course, it is, and no one argued
that it was. Physical assaults are and always have been
punishable by the law. The Court decision is, of course,
the can of worms. With this logic, it would be
possible to legislate penalty enhancement for thieves whose crimes are
motivated by a disrespect for private property, or shoplifters whose
pilfrage was occasioned by adherence to social doctrines that denigrate
the virtue of capitalism. Although one might only be convicted
of one offense, the net effect may be to get
the equivalent of two times to normal sentence. It might
as well be double jeopardy for all practical purposes, accompanied
by two convictions and two sentences. However, all may not
be lost. If these laws are applied equally to all
interracial hate crimes broadly defined, not primarily in the case
for minorities or the alleged victims, the intended but denied
discriminatory effect against whites may be blunted, perhaps severely in
the end they this may become another nuisance law that
has been proven embarrassing to its proponents by sorry, sorry, sir,
nice thought, but nope. Unforeseen consequences of hate crime legislation.
New York University law professor James B. Jacobs has written
that the proliferation of hate crimes laws has resulted in
apparently unforeseen problems. Attributing the degree of prejudice or racial
animosity necessary to establish a hate crime motive is not
the least of the problems. Virtually all interracial crimes may
be perceived as a hate crime if the conditions are
defined loosely enough, Noting that the original impetus of hate
crime legislation was to protect allegedly victimize blacks from victimizing whites,
he says, indeed, at some point in the future, some
supporters of hate crime laws may be dismayed to find
that these laws are frequently used against black offenders, such
as stative affairs may already be on the horizon. According
to no less of a source than the SPLC's Clan Watch.
In December nineteen ninety three, New York Times reporter Peter
Applebaum reported Clan Watch said that in the last three years,
forty six percent of all racially motivated murders tracked by
the group were committed by blacks on victims who were white,
Asian or Hispanic. In an unsigned editorial in the comments
section of a June nineteen ninety three issue of The
New Yorker, these concerns were also expressed with reference to
the nineteen ninety three US Supreme Court ruling in Wisconsin v. Mitchell.
The editorial noted that the black youth who had taken
part in the beating of a white youth was essentially
being punished because his victim wasn't black. The editorial also observed,
quoting in Wisconsin, where less than a tenth of the
population is non white, half the defendants and hate crime
cases have been minorities. A preliminary FBI report on hate
crimes earlier this year found that thirty percent of the
offenders whose race was reported were black. However, in another zinger,
the editorial also raised the specter of the old saw
what goes around comes around. He said, now that the
Supreme Court has upheld the Wisconsin statute, it is a
safe bet that the law enforcement community, which more often
than not as largely white and largely conservative, we'll find
black offenders a more targeting, attempting target for hate crimes prosecutions.
What might have been the civil rights establishment's worst nightmare
occurred in December nineteen ninety three, when Colin and Ferguson,
a black man of Jamaican ancestry, deliberately shot and killed
six white passengers and would nineteen other on the Long
Island Railroad commuter train. It was clearly a hate crime,
for Ferguson raged at black Uncle Tom's and carried notes
on his person expressing his hatred toward white people. Ferguson
had been indicted on ninety three accounts, including civil rights violation.
Black spokesman Jesse Jackson immediately went into damage control, expressing
fear of a blacklash and preaching a message of healing
and reconciliation. Jackson was reported as saying his second thought
upon learning of the killings was hoping, against hope it
wasn't a black person, because I knew there would immediately
be a rash of irrational conclusion. But not so worry
clan watching Jesse Jackson, for Ferguson was portrayed in the
media as a victim of white racism on the one
hand and a victim of mental illness on the other hand.
Had even a white man who would killed six black
people solely because of their race, we would still be
hearing about it. In the meantime, however, the story has
disappeared from the news. Kind Of shocked that Jesse just
didn't go well, I mean, he's Jamaican, he's not Ados
American descendant as slaves, so he ain't black. Kind Of
shocked he didn't do that. He probably do that now.
It's the opinion of this writer and many other observers
that an even handed approach to the hate crime controversy,
in which equal standards apply and behavior that is considered
a hate crime for whites would also be considered a
hate crime for blacks or anyone else, would reveal a
picture much different than militant anti racist groups would prefer.
Let's take a few examples from the nation's campuses. In
nineteen eighty nine, the situation of black on white violin
it's got so bad at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island,
that university president Vartan Gregorian said he was considering asking
for federal help. Brown University was actually built on slaving money.
It built on slaving money, ship money, according to Robert Reichley.
According to Robert Reichley, vice president for university Affairs, there
have been sixteen reported cases since classes began in September,
a six week period. Mister Reichley said. In most cases,
he said, black men have attacked white male students or
have sometimes drawn guns or other weapons. In nineteen ninety one,
University of Illinois officials met with police to discuss an
alarming series of assaults on white students by black gangs
who apparently attacked the students as part of a gang
initiation right on campus. According to news sources. Police said
the gang initiation right requires the potential gang to find
a large white male and knock him out with one punch.
The two gangs involved in the assaults, from Champagne and Urbana,
traveled in groups of four to twenty and members ranged
in age from fifteen to twenty three. According to news reports,
Officials expressed concern about a backlash resulting from the attacks.
The preceding two cases involved college campuses. It would be
inaccurate to say they were commonplace, but neither are they rare.
Almost every major university his had its incidents such as these.
Sometimes they made local papers, occasionally in the national press.
Sometimes they were undoubtedly spiked. At the University of Kansas,
for example, a group of black students ascended on a
white fraternity with clubs and other weapons, shouting threats and
insults after a black student had allegedly been insulted there. Fortunately,
there was no violence, in spite of the fact that
terroristic threats were apparently made. Neither the campus press or
the local daily mentioned the incident. One has to wonder
how many times that occurs nationwide in a year. In
virtually every case. However, we can be sure the issue
of sensitivity and issues of sensitivity are raised along with
the fear of backlash and misunderstanding. If one includes crimes
in which an awareness of the victims race or ethnicity
is a factor, then most interracial rapes, armed robberies, and
assaults might be considered hate crimes. Blacks are the perpetuator
perpetrators of the vast majority of these offenses. Relatives to
their representation of the population. One could even say that
the alleged raged a blacks feel towards white society is
a race specific rage directed at individual victims on the
basis of racial identity, and, as we see in the
Colin Ferguson case, often has the same tragic consequences to
innocent individuals as any nineteen si twenties lynchings in Alabama.
They mentioned interracial rapes up here. I don't know if
it's been picked up again, but when Obama. I think
the last year that interracial rapes was reported was two
thousand and eight, right before Obama got into office, because
it was if I remember the numbers correctly, from two
thousand and seven, so over twenty thousand black men raped
white women, and there were zero reported whites raping blacks.
Not saying that it didn't happen, but oh wow, he's
quoting Sam Francis. Here. Editorial writer Samuel Francis cites the
nineteen ninety two case of a fifteen year old white
girl who was raped by a gang of young blacks
who allegedly told her they picked her because she was
white and perfect. According to Francis, the story made the
tabloid headlines and passed from human memory the next day.
Obviously disillusioned, he adds, hate crimes aren't for white people.
They are the special political and legal privileges of racial
and religious minorities, and there are weapons by which white
people can be bullied, bludgeoned, beaten, prosecuted, and persecuted into
shutting up a rate about race and the cultural institutions
that attended. When an even handed approach is denounced and avoided,
of course, the issue becomes highly politicized. Powerful racial and
ethnic interest groups have compelling reasons to manipulate the rules
and to keep up an appearance of perpetual victimhood. Not
only is it extremely useful in promoting a political agenda,
but it can have a considerable financial benefits to the
victims as well. Many hate crime statutes have provisions for
recourse in the civil courts from monetary damages. These allow
victims to suit for special, general and punitive damages, a
powerful insensitive for professional victims and hoaxers hate crime McCarthyism.
Professor Jacobs also observed that since the state of mind
is pivotal in establishing a hate motivated offense, trials may
turn into inquisitions on the values, attitudes, and opinions of
the defendants. Not unlike in nineteen fifties, McCarthy, i'd invest
investigation into the values, attitudes, and opinions of subjected to
versives by the House on American Activities Committee. I always
hate when they well, first of all, you know, fuck communists,
But I always hate when they talk about McCarthy and Ack.
McCarthy was a senator and Hughack was a House committee.
He cites a case in which a man suspected of
a hate motivated offense was grilled about his relationship with
the black neighbor. Did he ever have dinner with her,
invite her for a picnic, or go with her to
a movie? It's quite likely that the magazines and books.
It's quite likely that the magazines and books of defendants reads,
presents or past memberships in present or past memberships in organizations,
religious and political beliefs, as well as those of family
and friends, could become subject to inquisition and discovery and
has reason. Article Jacob Solom quotes Kevin O'Neill who wrote
the American Civil Liberties Union's brief against the Ohio hate
speech law. Although different from hate crime legislation because it
penalizes his speech unrelated to criminal conduct, the law raises
related civil liberties issues. O'Neill says, our basic concern about
hate crime's legislation in general, and Ohio's ethnic intimidation law
in particular, is that it is an effort by government
to punish people for their ideas. Indeed, it is no
amount of weaseling or double talk can obscure the fact.
Obscure that fact George Rowell himself could not have imagined
as diabolical a scenario for the legitimization of thought crime
in a supposedly free society. Then we have a bunch
of a bunch of citations here looking for the San
Francis one. Sam Francis One was from The Washington Times
February fourth, nineteen ninety two, entitled feeding hate to the
crime Colossus. Huh. All right, well that's the end of
chapter two. We finished off chapter one, got into chapter two.
Chapter three will be the prevalence of hoaxes and fabrications.
If you enjoyed this and you want to get these
episodes early in ad free, head on over to Freemammy
on the Wall dot com forward Slash Support. You can
get RSS fees through substack and Patreon, Gumroad. You can
play them right there on the website. And then if
you get it through subs, if you subscribe through subscribe
Star or my website, I signed you the file. All right,
that's it, see you for part three. Take care,