Reblogged:“Hate Crimes” Go Both Ways

[Michael J. Hurd Ph.D.]

Conventional wisdom and contemporary legal practice hold that if you kill or injure someone in a protected racial or social group minority – i.e., black, Hispanic, gay/lesbian, Muslim – then it’s automatically and always a “hate crime.” A hate crime means you killed or harmed for reasons of hate. Because you killed or harmed for reasons of hate, you deserve extra prosecution, or maybe even federal charges as well as the normal and usual charges associated with the state and local level for such crimes. Why? Because of the crime itself? No. Because of the hatred, and the reasons for your hatred.

Logically, if you commit a crime against someone because they’re Christian, atheist, agnostic, Asian American or white … well, isn’t that a hate crime too? Conventional wisdom doesn’t have an answer. You just don’t ask that question. At least not until now.

Recently, an awful incident in Chicago forced an answer. Four brutal black individuals sadistically and savagely tortured a mentally disabled young white man in Chicago. It was all recorded on Facebook. It’s hard to imagine a sicker, more twisted act, regardless of the race, gender, socioeconomic status, transgender situation or IQ level of anyone involved. In fact, these factors shouldn’t be the defining ones. Yet that’s the state of our culture. If a white person does horrible and illegal things to a black person, it’s automatically and always an instance of racial victimization. To suggest it’s anything other than a “hate crime,” rather than simply a crime, is to get yourself labeled a racist with no further discussion. If a gang of black people do something horrible and illegal to a white person – a mentally disabled white person, at that – well, then, it logically follows that this is a hate crime, too. Right?

No answer is given, and therein resides the whole dishonesty and inherent injustice about the idea of hate crimes.

Hate crimes are not about punishing crimes. They’re about spreading racial or social victimhood, because some people like to paint others as victims whether they are, or not. Isn’t the mentally disabled white victim of sadistic gang torture at the hands of 4 black persons just as much a victim as, say, a black man being unfairly pushed around by a white cop, while the white cop screams racist language at him? Or a KKK mob lynching a black person? No answer is given, other than a sneer, a blank stare, or a defensive, hostile shriek that you’re a racist for even entertaining the question.

That’s where our culture is psychologically and ideologically, and as result that’s where we are legally. And we wonder why people increasingly shoot up airports, discos, black churches, military bases, and all the rest. It’s because our legal and intellectual leaders are no longer interested in justice; they’re only interested in proving victimization, although only victimization in certain cases. If you’re black, Hispanic, gay/lesbian, or Muslim and the victim of a crime, then you’re automatically and always innocent, no matter what, especially if the accused person is not black, Hispanic, gay/lesbian or Muslim. If you happen to not be part of a protected interest victim group – that is, if you’re white, Christian, agnostic/atheist, straight or Asian – well then, tough luck.

Of course, the awful incident in Chicago may have stretched the inherent logical absurdities of the concept “hate crime” to the breaking point. From an insightful article:

… [T]he evil individuals charged in the kidnapping and torture of a mentally disabled young man in Chicago are currently being held without bail. They have also, as was confirmed by the Chicago Tribune, been charged with a “hate crime” over the incident. This has a lot of law and order conservatives cheering, but it really shouldn’t.

… there are no good instances of charging American citizens with a “hate crime” no matter how odious their behavior or despicable their words…

You can think anything you like and, with only very few exceptions, you can say what you like as well. That’s why we protect marches by the Klan and neo-nazi groups. It’s only when you act on your thoughts and engage in behavior which is already illegal that we haul you away.

Exactly right. Hate is not against the law. Hateful actions, behaviors that involve the initiation of force against another’s body or property, are. It doesn’t matter what the reasons for the hatred are. Hatred is not even part of the equation, not under rational and objective law.

If hate crimes are a two-way street, which logic and justice require them to be, then there’s no need for hate crime classification. All crimes are hateful, and you just go back to punishing all crimes the same. You simply punish people when they violate others’ rights: When they rape, assault, murder, defraud or steal, whether for racist reasons, or not.

The classification “hate crime” was only ever necessary to ensure that some crimes become more criminal than others when they’re committed against politically powerful victim groups. It never was about justice; it was always about politics. Because once a government elite can punish us merely for hating, the stage is set to punish us for thinking, speaking or believing. Even in America, we’re perilously close to the edge of entering that zone.

These four sadistic, anti-white racist thugs in Chicago have taught us a lesson we’d do well to learn.

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