BRENDAN O’NEILL: The Danger of “Believe the Victims.” And why Atticus Finch is an evil rape denier now.

It is not accidental that Mockingbird’s focus is a false accusation of rape. Accusations of rape were a key weapon in the armoury of racists in the American South. As everyone will know, black men were frequently lynched on the basis of accusations of rape. Others were lucky and were only imprisoned. What is less well known is that the culture around this racist weaponisation of rape accusations was strikingly similar to today’s “Believe Victims” movement. It likewise frowned upon scepticism, sought to protect women from cross-examination, and created a climate in which accusation alone was enough to destroy a man (a black man, in any event).

The accuser was always believed. In the words of Ida B Wells, the early 20th-century African-American journalist and activist, “The word of the accuser is held to be true”, meaning “the rule of law [is] reversed” and the accused must “prove himself innocent”. Then, as now, it was considered cruel to examine women or ask them to substantiate their accusations. In 1899, a writer for the Atlanta Constitution expressed his horror at “the very thought of a delicate woman being forced to go into the publicity of a court and there detail her awful wrongs in the presence of the brute who had inflicted [them]”. The woman’s goodness was proof enough, he said. This idea finds terrifying echo in Rose MacGowan’s insistence today that she doesn’t need to prove that Harvey Weinstein abused her. “I am the proof”, she said.

Read the whole thing.