Hate crimes are real. What constitutes a hate crime may be somewhat in dispute. Still, the facts are undeniable: people are attacked, injured, and killed by individuals who carry out those crimes because they harbor bigoted, hate-filled feelings toward the targets of their animus.
Proving what someone is thinking when carrying out a crime is a fraught proposition, which is why some legal scholars believe the entire idea of a "hate crime" needs to be re-examined.
While there is a consensus that hate crimes involve attacks against individuals based on bigoted feelings, critics and legal experts often disagree on how to prove a perpetrator's specific animus or motivation.
A major point of contention is where the line is drawn between protected speech (even if offensive) and criminal conduct. In some regions, verbal harassment is categorized as a hate crime, while in others, a physical underlying crime (like assault or vandalism) must occur first.
Accusing someone of a hate crime is close to a guarantee that there will be media involvement to tell the story. This means that there are some people who will make up stories simply to get media attention, or get revenge on a classmate, or because of a pathological need to punish a particular race or religion.
In one high-profile incident, three people were convicted of various charges relating to a hoax video of a cross burning in front of a campaign sign of a candidate for mayor of Colorado Springs. Derrick Bernard Jr. and Ashley Blackcloud staged the cross burning and scrawled racist slogans on a campaign sign for Yemi Mobolade, now mayor of Colorado Springs. A third woman assisted in the hoax and was sentenced to three years probation. She mailed the video to local news outlets.
The video of the cross burning was sent to media outlets ahead of the 2023 mayoral runoff election between Yemi Mobolade and Wayne Williams. Mobolade won the runoff to become the city’s first elected Black mayor. The video featured a small cross burning in front of a Moboblade campaign sign. A racial slur was painted across the sign.
Earlier Friday during closing arguments, the prosecution said that Bernard and Blackcloud were media savvy and used a potent symbol of racism to carry out false information of a threat. They said the defendants felt it’s illegal when the Ku Klux Klan used the symbol, but not when they used it.
“They could’ve done a number of things. They could’ve used their radio station or a podcast,” prosecutor Bryan Fields said. “What they chose to do is send a threat out to the world.”
Also in 2025, the hoax involving actor Jussie Smollett came to a conclusion of sorts when Smollett agreed to a settlement with the city of Chicago.
A Netflix documentary released in 2025 muddied the waters on what was clearly a hoax planned by Smollet. It was broadcast after the Illinois Supreme Court, in 2024, tossed the original conviction on procedural grounds, stating that Smollett should not have been retried after the prosecutor agreed to a plea deal.
In May 2025, Smollett settled a civil lawsuit with the city of Chicago by agreeing to donate $50,000 to a local charity. This settlement officially closed the six-year legal chapter without an admission of guilt from Smollett or an apology from the city.
College Fix has a few other examples:
Muslim students claimed a driver tried to run them over for wearing a hijab. He said he just did not see them in the crosswalk. But the damage was done – an Indiana University report noted many students said they had heard this story.
There are also no corresponding police reports for this claim: “A student reported that a group of students wearing Israeli flags and a Trump flag hit them on the back of their head with a water bottle.”
Most people don’t go to large sports stadiums or tightly packed high school gyms and start yelling racial slurs around their classmates or neighbors.
Yet, hoaxes at sporting events continue to flourish. These hoaxes occurred at New Jersey high school wrestling meets, Texas high school football games, and Washington high school basketball games. (Black sports announcer Robert Griffin III was also falsely accused of using a racial slur while commenting on a college football game).
The most humorous examples are when the left tries to use double-speak to frame someone for a "hate crime."
Other times, incidents do occur, but the action itself is not actually racist. This includes a Michigan State University professor accused of being a “racist” for using the term “mob rule” and a teacher accused of racism for saying he needed a seating chart to learn students’ names. (Thankfully, he has secured some justice).
It could be that 2026 will be just as "hoaxy" with regard to the reporting of hate crimes as 2025. As long as newspapers, websites, and TV networks continue to eschew any semblance of objectivity and refuse to suspend belief to ascertain the truth, and as long as college administrations adopt a "believe a minority no matter what" policy, hate crime hoaxes will find fertile ground to take root and grow.
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