Fake news & fake crimes

Twitter and Instagram fields report that a certain gay blogger Andrey Petrov was caught faking threats to himself. Marvelous? Well no. In developed countries, this is a fairly popular topic. And you still say "Barnaul, Altai Territory!" - we are not far behind the global trends.

Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War was published last year. Its author is Wilfred Riley, professor of political science at the University of Kentucky (also black - so he won't be offered much privilege). You can also read an article by the author on the Quillette website, dedicated to the case of combating "hate crimes" in Seattle, or listen to a podcast with him on the same site. Riley claims that at least 15% of "hate crime" reports are fake. Here it is necessary to clarify that he considers not only intentional lies, but also pranks and erroneous messages. At the same time, the most important fake is the alleged increase in "hate crimes" in the Trump era. It is explained like this:

Firstly, in recent years, everyone has rushed to look for those same hate crimes - the police began to make statistics for themselves on this, and legislators expand the interpretation of "hate". For example, in the same Seattle, kinship hatred was added to the category of such crimes. Now a typical Seattle hate crime criminal is a drunken homeless man who threatened someone, remembering his mother at the same time (the same "kindred hatred"). By the way, it is interesting that it was the homeless, often suffering from mental illness, who turned out to be the main "criminals" - so for the sake of protecting some vulnerable groups others are being pressed. Secondly, in the past police departments in many states simply did not provide statistics on hate crimes to the feds, but now they have begun. As a result, this new statistics is interpreted as a "sharp increase". All this is multiplied by the hysteria of the charged media and it turns out the illusion of a wave of hatred, as if covering the United States with its head.

But all this, of course, does not mean that the problem does not exist in reality. After all, in addition to 15% of fake messages, there are still 85% of real ones. However, falsifications on this topic harm, first of all, the real victims - after all, they may not be believed next time when they shout "wolves". So, a certain gay blogger Andrei Petrov should be ashamed.

Mihail Pojarsky 2020-01-06