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MAY 9, 2023
The public’s hatred of racial, sexual, and religious minorities is so out of control that it imperils our democracy. At least, that’s what influential leaders from Joe Biden and Barack Obama to former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden and California Governor Gavin Newsom want us to believe.
Last week Newsom announced a state initiative for citizens to report disfavored speech (non-criminal “hate incidents”) they see online:
California’s “Civil Rights Department” (CRD) invites citizens to speculate about the motive of the “perpetrator.”
In a statement, Newsom’s office said the legislation was “in direct response to the rise in reported hate crimes in California, which in recent years, reached their highest levels since 2001 – jumping almost 33% from 2020 to 2021.”
But convictions of hate crimes have been flat. In 2012 there were 107 hate crime convictions in California. In 2021, there were 109, according to the same data.
It’s possible that hate crimes, not just reports, really did rise by 80%. Perhaps California’s District Attorneys decided not to prosecute them, or juries decided not to convict. In San Fransicko, I assemble a large body of evidence to show that California’s D.A.s, laws, and residents have become more tolerant of crime.
But it’s also possible that convictions stayed the same because there was no increase in prosecutable hate crimes. And it may be that Californians simply labeled more crimes as “hate” crimes because they were primed to do so by the media’s 700% - 1,000% increased focus on racism between 2011 and 2020.
Zach Goldberg, “How the Media Led the Great Racial Awakening,” Tablet, August 4, 2020
Whatever the case, California's total number of hate crime complaints is trivial. There were just 285 hate crime complaints in California, a state with 39 million people, in 2021. There was an order of magnitude more homicides in California, 2,361, in 2021.
Prejudice still exists in the United States. The California church shooting from May 2022 was motivated by political hatred. And the recent mall shooter in Texas may have been motivated by racist ideology.
But the ideologies don’t line up neatly politically. The California church shooter was Taiwanese and motivated by an obscure political grievance. The Texas shooter may have been racist, but he was also Latino. And the recent shooter in Nashville was trans and targeted Christians.
And in many instances, the political ideology is plainly secondary to mental illness. That was certainly the case with the psychotic and drug-addicted homeless man from Berkeley who attacked the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco last year. And it may have been the case with the shooters in Texas and Nashville.
In truth, acceptance of racial, religious, and sexual differences has never been higher in recorded human history. Never before have same-sex and mixed-race couples have been more accepted across all Western nations, which are far more tolerant than most other nations worldwide.
Trans people are celebrated, with an entire reality show dedicated to documenting in celebratory fashion the sexual reassignment surgery and hormone use of a trans girl named Jazz Jennings. And few places are more celebratory of transgenderism than California.
All of which raises a question. If there’s no evidence that “hate incidents” are rising, abundant evidence that tolerance is rising, and overwhelming evidence that the media created a moral panic about racism, why are nations and nation-sized states like California urging mass spying and creating blacklists?
In essence, California’s government is encouraging its residents to report people who use disgusting rhetoric against others based on immutable characteristics. Of course, any decent person detests bigotry in all its forms.
But the notion that we should be filing reports with the government seems rather Orwellian, doesn’t it? It is the same type of behavior that other states encouraged during the COVID-19 pandemic when people were calling hotlines to snitch on their neighbors for not complying with the onerous restrictions their governments imposed.
There are several other problems with this program.
For starters, the hotline system relies on individuals reporting “hate incidents” or acts of bigotry, which can be subjective and open to interpretation. This leaves room for potential misuse and false reporting, as people may exploit the system to settle personal grievances or silence those with differing opinions.
The lack of clear criteria and guidelines for identifying and verifying hate incidents could lead to a chilling effect on free speech and the expression of unpopular views. Also, considering the fact that folks on the hard left view any utterance with which they disagree as bigoted makes this even more problematic.
Secondly, the program’s emphasis on bypassing law enforcement and offering civil legal options raises concerns about due process and accountability. By encouraging individuals to seek alternatives to the criminal legal system, the program could undermine the principles of fair and impartial justice. It may result in a lack of proper investigation and legal protection for both the accused and the alleged victims, potentially leading to unjust outcomes.
Lastly, the program’s broad definition of a hate incident, including actions such as name-calling and refusal of service, raises questions about the proportionality of the response. While such behaviors may be undesirable, categorizing them as hate incidents and potentially subjecting individuals to legal or social consequences could be seen as an overreach of governmental authority, especially if these incidents end up in the hands of law enforcement. This approach risks stifling open dialogue and debate, as individuals may fear retribution for expressing controversial or unpopular opinions.
This is the type of program that could easily be taken to a dark place despite its supposedly noble intentions. It could be weaponized to crack down on speech and intimidate people into censoring themselves. This outcome wouldn’t exactly be surprising in the People’s Republic of California, would it?
So it seems to me that if my asshole neighbor calls me a right-wing Trumper, I could narc on him. I mean, can you imagine a greater insult?
But seriously, imagine a day when I refuse to play the make-pretend pronoun game...or tell someone to fuck off. You do the math.
We are at war.
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