Stoking racial hate: After hundreds of fake “hate crimes” have been exposed as hoaxes, the Fake News media continues to give lavish coverage to each new claim, then ignores the truth when the stories prove false.
An investigative report by the U.S. Air Force Academy has finally leaked out. Remember the media storm that went on for days and days last September when racial slurs were found outside the dorm room of five black cadets at the Air Force Academy? The headline for Raw Story was typical of the “mainstream” media reaction: “‘Get out!’: Lt General rains hell on Air Force Academy after racist messages were left on black cadets’ rooms.” A video of Lieutenant General Jay Silveria, superintendent of the Academy, “raining hell” on the 4,000 cadets went viral, making Silveria the new media darling, supposedly representing a voice of courageous tolerance in the new era of Trumpian intolerance. The problem was, Silveria, like his media cheerleaders, had jumped the gun. Rather than properly waiting for the completion of the official investigation, he rushed into an orgy of virtue signaling that maligned the innocent cadets and the entire Academy with the false and ugly taint of racism.
As we reported here on November 11, the official investigation found that the racial slurs had been the work of one of the black cadets, one of the supposed “victims.” According to the investigation, the perpetrator of the hate hoax (who remained unnamed) admitted to writing the graffiti and was no longer a cadet at the academy. The actual investigation report was not made public; we had only a sparsely-worded statement from an Academy spokesman: We can confirm that one of the cadet candidates who was allegedly targeted by racist remarks written outside of their dorm room was actually responsible for the act,” Academy spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Allen Herritage told the Colorado Springs Gazette. “The individual admitted responsibility and this was validated by the investigation.”
However, as in the case of so many other fake hate crimes, the media coverage of the official finding was zero to minimal by most of the same “news” platforms that had repeatedly splattered the initial story across headline coverage and featured endless commentaries about how this proves America’s racist tendencies “in the age of Trump.”
Not surprisingly, on November 14, Silveria received an award for his speech from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), despite the fact that the alleged hate crime had already been shown to be bogus, and the general’s speech undoubtedly has contributed more to stirring up racial animosity than correcting it. However, the ADL, like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), thrives (financially and otherwise) by fomenting fear and inciting racial discord.
So, were there any “Oh Gosh, we goofed!” expressions of remorse from the chattering classes? Any mea culpas? Any promises to be more careful and restrained when reporting on similar cases in the future? Not really. In fact, as in many similar cases in the past, the media tolerance preachers hastened to lecture America’s “deplorables” that they should not seize on this hoax to challenge the claim that America is awash in a terrible wave of racist bigotry. Frida Ghitis, who writes for CNN and the Washington Post, penned a CNN op-ed entitled, “Air Force Academy hoax doesn’t change overall picture on hate crimes.” “Americans on the far right could hardly contain their excitement, judging by their effusive comments on social media,” declared Ghitis. “A widely publicized incident, which appeared to have been a hate crime, turned out to have been a hoax. It was time to celebrate for extremists, and for others who have joined President Donald Trump in claiming that anyone whose message they dislike is a purveyor of ‘fake news.’”
Likewise, the New York Times was more anxious to insist that we continue to respond like Pavlovian dogs to each and every “hate crime” story they publish than it was to examine its own faux reporting. The Times rushed to get a statement about the Academy hoax from Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who warned: “Any false reports of bias incidents are seized on by those who want to create the impression that no hate crime reporting is legitimate.”
Hooper, the Times, CNN, the SPLC, and the ADL know that isn’t true, but that does not stop them from repeating the lie. Americans are simply sick and tired of seeing the same incendiary scenarios repeated over and over: hate crime claim → massive media hype → racial agitation and polarization → ”hate crime” proven false → media silence (or phony justification). The Fake News media have irresponsibly hyped and exploited literally hundreds of fake hate crimes, as has been documented in numerous investigative reports (see here, here, and here). In fact, entire websites, such as fakehatecrimes.org, are devoted to cataloging and exposing the scandal of hate-crime hoaxes that the establishment media has used to smear conservatives and propagate the false narrative that non-white minorities in America are threatened by a rising tide of bigotry.
Air Force Academy Investigation Now Available
Thanks to Chuck Ross at The Daily Caller, the long-awaited (but hidden) official investigation into the fake Air Force Academy hate crime has now seen the light of day. In an article on February 26, Ross provided the first look inside the 174-page report by the United States Air Force Security Police, which he was able to obtain only through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. Thankfully, he has posted the report online. I called the Air Force Academy Public Affairs Media Relations office to request a copy of the report. They informed me that, even though Ross has already publicly posted it, they would not release the report except through the (costly and time-consuming) FOIA process. Ross informed me that he had received it only recently, after having initiated the FOIA process in October. If Lieutenant General Silveria and the Academy were so keen to blast away before they had any facts and insinuate there was racism run amok amongst the cadets, why are they now trying to hide the facts? Fair question, right? Is it not the right thing to do, to “man up” and admit when you were wrong? Well, it doesn’t appear that there will be any manning up by Silveria; he seems to be too busy promoting all the latest political correctness fads. According to a February 27 news report on the U.S. Air Force Academy website, the cadets are now being steeped in the wonders of transgenderism: “National Character and Leadership Symposium event: Transgender couple speaks about military service, life.”
Among the important details revealed in the just-released investigative report is the fact that the cadet “victim” admitted to investigators on October 24 that he was the perpetrator who had written the offending slurs. However, Academy officials did not report that until November 7. Which means that, rather than fessing up and squelching the continuing recriminations over the fake incident, they unjustly allowed the cloud to continue hanging over the Academy — and over the cadets, who were all being held hostage, by public opinion, as suspects.
The report shows the Air Force Security Police very commendably carried out a thorough and fair investigation. They interviewed all of the alleged victims, as well as multiple witnesses and suspects, conducted forensic handwriting analysis, polygraph tests, and more. Tragically, Silveria and the liberal-left media were not as conscientious; they leapt at the opportunity to reinforce the false narrative that America is brimming with white racism. Then they buried the truth when it contradicted that cherished narrative. They are burying it still. Literally thousands of sensational stories trumpeted the original claim of the racist graffiti. Chuck Ross’s story and the FOIA-released Air Force investigation report have now been out for four days, but we have not been able to find another single report on it.
What about the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, PBS, and all the other members of the “prestige press” who breathlessly reported on and pontificated on the Academy hate hoax day after day? Surely they at least mentioned the newly released investigative report, right? Nope. Nada, nothing, zero. The propagandists that masquerade as journalists are masters at hit-and-run character assassination.
Some critics charge that these racial arsonists in the media simply don’t care that their repeated providing of sensational coverage to hate-crime hoaxes is pouring gasoline on already-enflamed racial tensions. That may be true for some, but the inescapable truth is that after seeing this deadly pattern repeated hundreds of times, it is crystal clear that many of these media arsonists do what they do precisely because they want to see this country engulfed in the flames of racial warfare. The worst of these culprits howled when President Trump denounced them as “Fake News” and said they are the “enemy of the American People.” They tried to hide behind the claim that the president was attacking the First Amendment and attacking all the media, but he clearly was calling out only the genuine media malefactors. And he was right to do so. The media’s continued promotion of the explosion of hate-crime hoaxes is worse than mere Fake News. It is destroying any hope of racial harmony and is fragmenting and destabilizing our nation. Those who do this are indeed enemies of all Americans, regardless of any diferences we may have of race or color.
Image: Marco_Bonfanti via iStock / Getty Images Plus
Related articles:
New Phenomenon of “Fake Hate Crimes” Creates Perplexing Problems for Law Enforcement
Racial Slurs at Air Force Academy a Hoax, Investigation Reveals
The SPLC Is Again Faking a “Hate” Crisis
