Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War

by Wilfred Reilly

If you believe the news, today's America is plagued by an epidemic of violent hate crimes.

But is that really true?

In Hate Crime Hoax , Professor Wilfred Reilly examines over one hundred widely publicized incidents of so-called hate crimes that never actually happened. With a critical eye and attention to detail, Reilly debunks these fabricated incidents—many of them alleged to have happened on college campuses—and explores why so many Americans are driven to fake hate crimes. We're not experiencing an epidemic of hate crimes, Reilly concludes—but we might be experiencing an unprecented epidemic of hate crime hoaxes .

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Sociology, Crime, Audiobook, Race

256 pages, Hardcover

First published February 26, 2019

Reviews

[Somethingsnotright · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was drawn to this book on the back of recent hate crime hoaxes, specifically Jussie Smollett, Erica Thomas and the Covington kid drama. The mentality of people who concoct hoax reports is kind of fascinating. Why do they do it? What benefits are people seeking to gain? What makes them think a hate crime hoax will achieve this for them?

This book was written by Wilfred Reilly, a professor of political science at Kentucky State University and a researcher specialising in contemporary American race relations and using empirical methods to "test sacred cow theories". Oh, and did I mention he is Black? I wish I didn't have to but this kind of social category information might be Mr Reilly's safety net, given the topic. Not that he denies bigotry exists - just not at the level some people would have us believe. He quotes Barry Glassner's "The Culture of Fear": When millions of people are terrified of threats that do not even exist there is strong evidence someone is trying to scare us."

Mr Reilly believes that hate crime hoaxes are extremely damaging to impressionable young people, especially young Black Americans like those he teaches at KSU. This is one of the quotes that impacted me the most:

"In and of itself there is nothing remarkably wicked about organizations such as BLM [SPLC, NAACP, NOW etc] using scare tactics to increase their visibilty and expand their donor base... But this game has a dangerously negative effect on many real people. Having taught in colleges for many years, currently at a top-thirty historically Black university, I can testify that the primary thing holding Black students back is not racism but rather the heartfelt belief that the 'white'world... is a pervasively racist place."

He goes on to explain that his students don't want to become police because "those are the murderers"; "doing poorly on the SAT or GRE is not seen as a liability [because] those are the white man's tests; they won't study majors (e.g. economics) that will lead to lucrative employment, preferring "activist ones such as post-colonial studies". He says Black people in the US believe the government is actively trying to "exterminate the Black race", hence do not feel any sense of patriotism and, therefore, will not join the military - "America's opportunities are closed to them - not because of widespread racism, but because of their erroneous belief in widespread racism." I doubt Mr Smollett was thinking about these kids when he perpetrated his hoax.

Mr Reilly seeks to clarify a few things, wanting people to re-think their beliefs and look at the facts. One major problem with hate crime hoaxes is that the initial hysterical "fanfare and breast-beating" of the media and celebs, when "virtue signalling blazes at a thousand lumens", is in no way matched by the coverage of or reaction to the mumbled retractions. The stories just fizzle out. He suggests Googling "Yasmin Seweid hate crime". I did and I saw that the bulk of the discussion of her hoax is from 2019, not from 2016 when she falsely reported having her hijab ripped off her head by white men shouting "Donald Trump". Perhaps that means the media is becoming wise to the interest in these hoaxes.

Mr Reilly dissects multiple hoaxes, in an easy to read case study format examining the nature of the reported hate crimes, the background, media and police responses, legal outcomes, etc. He uses hard facts and some humour to dispel the myth of widespread racism and bigotry. White people are not exempt either - with the majority of white hate crime hoaxes involving gay and Jewish folk.

He doesn't just lay out the problem and leave - the last chapter is "Solution Sets: How to Deal with the Epidemic of Hoax Hate Crimes". In summary, he asks firstly that people accept many hate crimes are hoaxes and do not automatically assume they are real; ensure perpetrators are "actively and agressively" punished (possibly in line with the penalty the imaginary perpetrator/s would have received); stop making excuses for hoaxers; and, stop the benefits currently flowing to the hoaxers.

In all, a fascinating, shocking, yet very enjoyable read. Not to diminish the gravity of the topic but I never grow tired of true stories about people behaving badly.

[Roxy · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book purports to demonstrate the epidemic of hate crime hoaxes in the U.S and how those who falsely report hate crimes are just attempts to ignite racial and political wars. However the majority of the cases he cited to support his belief were cases in which a person was attempting to cover up a crime, like damaging their own property to collect insurance money or harming themselves to receive donations. Although he didn’t know the political views of the those people, he often labeled them as “political extremists.” According to this logic, people who falsely claim to have a terminal illness in efforts to gain money are “starting a war” against the terminally ill rather than just seeking personal gain.

Even more alarming was how he promoted his own personal research as facts to support his beliefs even though he gave no specific explanation on how his results were concluded. He often cited inconclusive cases in which no hoax was ever determined. He also willingly omitted important facts to certain cases. For example he expressed his anger at a case in which he believed a man unjustly received 15 years in prison “for just throwing bacon at a Mosque” but failed to mention that same man had also vandalized the entire building.

His dishonest reporting and apparent superiority complex made this book interesting for the wrong reasons. I will say he made a fair point that hate crime allegations should be investigated thoroughly before we jump to conclusions and those who falsely report them should be lawfully punished. Overall, I felt the book was more of an attempt to show off how smart he thinks he is rather than actually informing people. He described himself as a “cocky” person and it shows.

[Janet Billings · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, while sometimes opinionated and witty/sarcastic, was a comprehensive and well-done review of a serious problem. The author points out the obvious: that many high-profile recent hate crime cases - think Jussie Smollett, Covington Catholic, Yasmin Seweid, the Hopewell Baptist fire, the Rolling Stone rape hoax, Air Force Academy, Eastern Michigan...Duke Lacrosse...Tawana Brawley - have turned out to be hoaxes. He argues, fairly persuasively, that these cases are not isolated anecdotal examples; the book includes more than 100 very recent cases and cites an available data set of more than 500 (?). He also points out that other books like one called "Crying Wolf" have discussed hundreds of MORE hoaxes that he does not cover. Since there are only 5-6,000 hate crimes per year and "only 8-10% of these are nationally reported," allowing him to access them, he concludes that a substantial percentage of hate crime claims logically have to be fakes.

The most interesting portion of the book deals with Reilly's attempts to explain WHY hate hoaxes are so high profile and widely publicized. He concedes that many hate hoaxers themselves are motivated by "tawdry personal incentives" like a desire for insurance money. However, 'grievance industry' activist groups, and left-leaning media outlets like CNN and MSNBC, often seize on stories like Yasmin Sewid's or Jussie Smollett's, and make them internationally famous for political reasons. Other hate hoaxers, like the protesting students at U-Mizzouri and Kean College, are themselves directly motivated by a desire to look woke and score leftist political points. Reilly situates the narrative of a hate crime surge inside the context of a broader narrative of sort of ongoing oppression: Black Lives Matter's claim that police officers kill thousands of Black people a year, the "Barbecue Becky" storyline of white vigilantes attacking Black people, concepts of universal white privilege and cultural appropriation as a serious problem. He argues, VERY convincingly, that many of these ideas do not hold up to statistical scrutiny.

Worth noting: Reilly doesn't just pick on the left. He devotes the book's longest chapter to hate hoaxes by alt-right white people, and describes WHITE identity politics as a serious rising threat, although he seems to view this at least partly as a predictable response to "endless screeching" on the political left.

Good book, and surprisingly balanced and quantitative. Well worth reading.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr. Wilfred Reilly is a black sociology professor who has been researching crime hoaxes, particularly hate crime hoaxes. While it seems like a fairly recent problem (at least on this scale) aided by knee-jerk social media outrage, Reilly documents cases back to the 1980s. And while the title of the book accuses the Left, Dr. Reilly doesn’t let the Right off the hook, either.

Dr. Reilly covers hate crimes in several broad categories: college campus hoaxes (the vast majority), general hate crime hoaxes, and hoaxes featuring religious, LGBT, and sexist incidents, and white hoaxers. He also looks at the “wave” of hate crimes following Trump’s election. The motivation for hoaxes generally fall into one of only a few categories: pushing a narrative that Everything Is Racist, covering up a crime (including disobeying parents), and serious mental illness problems.

The phenomenon of hoaxes is pretty interesting just from a sociological and psychological point of view. But such hoaxes cause real harm: they distort reality, detract from real solutions to real racism and bigotry, and cause real revenge assaults—not to mention the insult to real victims of real crimes.

The book is well written in a casual, borderline snarky tone. It has tons of great points that you just have to read.

Language: Occasional strong language
Sexual Content: Mentions of rape and prostitution; not at all explicit
Violence: Accusations of assault that are often false; real domestic violence and murder
Harm to Animals: None
Harm to Children: None
Other (Triggers): Real murder and domestic violence

==========================================

One major issue poisoning relations between whites and people of color (POC) in America today, and to a lesser extent relations between the two sexes and our nation’s social classes, is an ongoing epidemic of patently false claims of oppression. Making outrageous claims of oppression—“Baseball is racist”; “The math SAT is culturally biased!”—is arguably the main thing the modern activist Left does, and the backlash against such patently absurd contentions is largely responsible for the rise of the even more god-awful alt-right, which is a sort of twisted doppelganger of the SJW identity politics movement for white dudes glued to computer screens in their parents’ basements. Bigotry does exist. But that fact is no justification for false claims of oppressive violence, which are rife.

Many Americans today, especially on the activist left, seem to believe that the United States is a racist hell-hole on the brink of civil war. In the mainstream media we hear almost constant talk about scary new forms of racism: “white privilege,” “cultural appropriation,” and “subtle bigotry.” The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement argues that a near-genocide is under way in 2019 America, including police and vigilante murders of “tens of thousands” of Black men annually.

Many of the specific examples cited by activists in support of what I call the “Continuing Oppression Narrative” are demonstrably false. There is no violent genocide against African Americans currently going on: both FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics data indicate that interracial violent crime is fairly rare—and roughly 80 percent Black on white. The total number of people shot by police officers, a particular focus of Black Lives Matter, was under 1,200 in the representative year of 2015, and 76 percent of the individuals shot were not black. The total number of African Americans killed by law enforcement officers during that year was 258, and the total number of unarmed Black men to die in such clashes was thirty-six. By my best estimate, the total number of unarmed black men shot by white cops was seventeen. The percentage of police shooting victims who were Black (23.5 percent) was slightly higher than the overall Black population percentage in the U.S. (13 to 14 percent), but this disparity is wholly explained by the fact that the Black violent crime rate is roughly 2.5 times the white rate.

An astonishing edifice of power and profit rests upon the assumption that the United States is a racist nation: affirmative action, minority business set-asides, NGO donations, corporate diversity initiatives, and academic departments of post-colonial brother-man studies are all highly profitable for their beneficiaries. ... In many situations were a reasonable person might well conclude that there is no racism present—Hollywood’s Oscars ceremony, for example—it has proven quite profitable and rewarding to invent some.

I can testify that the primary thing holding Black students back is not racism but rather the heartfelt belief that the “white” world—defined to include everything from techno music to craft beer—is a pervasively racist place. ... Doing poorly on the SAT or GRE is not seen as a liability; those are the white man’s tests. Substantive majors such as economics, which set their graduates up for lucrative employment, are often rejected in favor of activist ones such as post-colonial studies. Judging from at least a dozen in-class practice surveys, at least one-quarter of my students—roughly the same percentage as that found among Blacks nationally—believe that the U.S. government is trying to exterminate the Black race by doing things like intentionally giving African Americans AIDS. Naturally, many of these incredibly impressive young people find it difficult to be traditionally patriotic. They would never consider military careers. America’s opportunities are closed to them—not because of widespread racism, but because of their own erroneous belief in widespread racism.

Where there exists a reward or payoff for victimization—such as media coverage, popularity, or the chance to punish enemies—the temptation to create it where none actually exists will be very strong.

[There is a] general trend … for affirmative action to increase hostility between racial groups wherever it is implemented. Members of the races that are disfavored by the affirmative action polity (whites and especially Asians, in America) tend to resent the boost that is given to favored groups at their expense. And many members of favored races (Blacks and Latinos) naturally resent the fact that their accomplishments are called into question by that favoritism.

Apparently, you [as a white person] can never stop or overcome white privilege, but only hope to contain in—while apologizing as often as possible for existing.

Black and Latino fatherlessness rates remain the worst of a troubling lot. Largely as a result of the Black illegitimacy rate, only 16 percent of Black households consisted of a married couple (gay or straight, of any age) with children, while fully 20 percent are female-headed households with children. Fifty-four percent of all Black children live only with their mother.

As a result of both high rates of unemployment and low levels of academic performance, African Americans’ incomes tend to be low. ... The “racial wage gap” between Black and white Americans was actually greater in 2015 than it was in 1979. ... The discrepancy in household incomes is due in very large part to the proportion of Black families headed by a single mother rather than two parents. Recall that the illegitimacy rate is currently 70-75 percent for Blacks in a typical year, versus roughly 30 percent for whites. The $3.55 discrepancy between average wage rates for whites and Blacks, while troubling, would not correlate to a household income gap of $27,118. ... It is easy to understand how someone hearing these arguments and viewing these troubling statistics could come to the conclusion that the Black community is under brutal and sustained assault from powerful racist forces. But this is simply not the case.

White privilege theory and its ilk simply collapse when they are subjected to empirical scrutiny. ... Multiple well-done empirical studies demonstrate that being white in the United States today is simply one of dozens of factors that sometimes correlate with increased income and success at various life outcomes, and it is by no means the most significant among them.

Even more sophisticated definitions of cultural appropriation such as Maisha Johnson’s claim that it occurs only when a powerful group takes something from a group they themselves have oppressed or warred with, face crippling problems. First, the Johnson standard would still preclude probably half of all civilized exchange. No Mongol could drink Russian vodka or play Chinese checkers. No Turk could eat gyros, which originated in Greece. The United States and Japan, nations which fought a war of extermination less than a century ago and treated each other’s majority race terribly for some time after that, could trade almost nothing. We would have to shutter our sushi bars, and their salarymen would have to give up their beloved Brooks Brothers suits and go back to silk kimonos and Masamune swords.

Though the activist Left often seems to forget this, there is no rule that the loser of every long-ago racial or ethnic quarrel will be the winner’s bitch for the rest of time. Assertions that only whites can be racist, or only men sexist, or that only majority group members can engage in intellectual theft all seem to rest upon this premise—that the victims of any harm done in the past will forever be victims, and the descendants of the group that perpetrated the ancient injury need to make amends by embracing double standards essentially forever. But conquerors and oppressors regularly find themselves conquered and oppressed in their turn.

The fact is that many of the very real disadvantages under which Blacks in America labor today are the result of a relatively recent collapse of the American family, not of prejudice. ... Marriage is one of the surest routes to household financial stability. And tragically, in the very time period when the success of the civil rights movement should have allowed Blacks to benefit from equal treatment under the law and the drastic diminishment of racism in the U.S., Blacks as a community moved away from marriage, which not only bolsters financial stability of a household but is also key to the success of the children raised in that household. ... Even high rates of Black incarceration are a surprisingly recent phenomenon. ... The increase of the Black incarceration rate, almost entirely caused by recent surges in the Black crime rate, becomes even more dramatic if we pick a starting date earlier than the 1960s for comparison.

It is indisputable that African Americans were the victims of horrific racism in the United States, with Black men and women used as human cattle for the enrichment of enterprises like the South’s great cotton and tobacco plantations. The peculiar institution of slavery was the law of our “land of the free” from 1776 to 1865. It is worth noting that, while horrible, slavery in the United States did not endure “for four hundred years,” as activists often claim. This number seems to based upon the fact that Europeans living in various parts of the vast Americas very distinct from our own thirteen colonies—Spaniards, Portuguese, and French—owned slaves from the time of the European discovery of the New World in 1492. That’s true enough. But this has literally nothing to do with the United States, which was not established until the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The first successful English colony in the new world, for that matter, dates to 1607 at the earliest. And we all know that slavery in the United States was abolished in 1865, not 2007. Human beings owned slaves well before any human beings were Americans, and that unfortunate fact is not America’s fault.

But the widespread false belief that racism is fueling police murders of Blacks is itself responsible for many problems. First, any amount of time that serious people spend chasing ghosts takes away from their ability to solve real problems. The obsessive focus of scholars and the media on white-on-Black and police-on-Black violence diverts attention from the much more serious issues of Black-on-Black violence. Second, and more important, many of the solutions to nonexistent problems that activists on the Left push have deeply harmful real-world results. Black Lives Matter’s demand that police stand down from active policing in minority communities, for example, has already increased crime in the United States. ... The focus on the fake problems of police genocide exacerbated the real problem of epidemic urban crime, especially urban Black crime, and real people died as a result.

A logical person might wonder why students enrolled in liberal academic institutions, where any deviation from the prevailing center-Left orthodoxy is policed with remarkable vigor, would be more likely to report that they were the victims of ugly bigoted attacks. The truth is that certain aspects of the politically correct culture on many campuses—including mostly radical faculties, formal speech codes, and activist mobs on the quad—create a perfect environment for (1) normal words and actions to be redefined as hate speech and violent attacks and (2) actual hoaxers to receive support from a predictable contingent of allies.

In its written materials, FIRE accurately criticizes speech codes: “These codes lead students to believe they have an absolute right to be free from offense, embarrassment, or discomfort.” This has real-world consequences. If those Americans enrolled in our nation’s top colleges “learn that jokes, remarks, or visual displays that offend someone may rightly be banned, they will not find it odd or dangerous when the government itself seeks to censor [citizens].” How true.

There seems to be little if any evidence that Trump is an actual racist—that is, a person who believes that some races are genetically inferior. ... I can find almost literally no evidence of Trump being called a bigot in mainstream print before he chose to run for president against the hot-sauce toting Hillary Clinton. If anything, Trump seems to be guilty of saying that which must never ever be said, rather than of evil racism. Unfortunately, honest discussion of race and class are absolutely taboo in today’s America. The media chatters on endlessly about “white privilege,” but serious conversations about race—on any issue from crime rates to affirmative action—are verboten.

Interestingly, the mainstream media—even the doughty Daily News—seems to have almost totally ignored the real story of oppression threaded throughout the [Yasmin] Seweid case. That true story is that violence against women is epidemic in most traditional cultures and among immigrants from many of those cultures and among immigrants from many of those cultures to the United States. Seweid’s motive for her lies has been lightly reported, but it will receive proper notice here: she made up her wild story because she was genuinely terrified of getting in trouble for breaking a family curfew after staying out a bit late drinking with friends. Her strict parents, both practicing Egyptian Muslims, objected to any use of alcohol and were apparently also upset that she was dating a Christian man. She may have feared serious physical violence, and there is strong evidence that such a fear would not have been unjustified. (136)

It is difficult to persuade fanatics of any variety that they are wrong. The actual reaction of the Left to the fact that Hassenen’s killer was not white and her death was not a hate crime was … educational. As is surprisingly often the case, many activists simply refused to accept that the left-wing narrative had collapsed. In a nationally circulated column published in the Washington Post’s features section Petula Dvorak opined that, while Torres’ attack on [Nabra] Hassanen might not have technically been a hate crime, it “feels” like and “has the effect of one.”

The Continuing Oppression Narrative never changes. But, of course, we are free not to believe it. Those who do not believe the narrative and want to pursue actual solutions to America’s greatly improved but still real racial problems can do two things to commemorate the tragic death of Nabra Hassenen. First, they can take a moment to genuinely mourn a brave young woman. More importantly, they can recall that while all the ecumenicalism and kumbaya singing in the world would not have saved Hassenen from Torres, actual enforcement of the immigration laws would have.

I may be the first writer to comprehensively document the astonishingly case in which virtually the entire “epidemic” of threatening calls to Jewish Community Centers reported after the 2016 turned out to be a hoax orchestrated by two men—Black American Juan Thompson and a nameless Israeli hacker now in custody.

In comparison to false allegations made on college campuses or by racially identified Blacks or whites, fake hate crime allegations brought by religious minorities or LGBT taxpayers seem much more often to be aimed at material gain—such as insurance money or avoiding prosecution for a crime—than at illustrating some obscure moral point.

The individuals faking hate crimes on the modern campus are not moody losers or rebellious outliers. They are respected core members of the campus community in leadership positions. At the University of Missouri, the young man who falsely claimed to have seen KKK fighters on campus was the student body president, Payton Head. the people hunger-striking and canceling games to support him were, respectively, a multi-millionaire and the members of the men’s varsity football team.

Simply put, these two men [Juan Thompson and Michael Kadar] were responsible for essentially all of the widely cited surge in JCC threats in late 2016 and early 2017 that is generally blamed on the election of Donald Trump and attributed to the alt-right. ... One of the biggest hate crimes propping up the Continuing Oppression Narrative, the alleged attacks on American religious minorities around the time of Donald Trump’s election, turned out to be the work of two minority hoaxers.

If a Black woman falsely accuses a group of white men of rape, she must have done so because she was a victim of racism, and whites as a group need to figure out how best to apologize to her.

The backlash to the phony story about an attack on two Black kids involved one hundred actual hate attacks against whites and Hispanics.

CONTINUED IN COMMENTS

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me, and after hearing the author give some interviews I thought I would give it a shot. While the author seems informed and likable, I was underwhelmed by the book. Note that I listened to the audiobook, which makes it hard to collect exact quotes. For this reason my review will be more general than I would normally prefer for a critical review.

The introduction and first chapter or two read like well-researched and professional academic work altered to be easy reading for publication. This is a good thing for this sort of book, and I thought these parts worked well. The book was dedicated to Thomas Sowell, and the numbers-based approach was reminiscent of Sowell.

Unfortunately, Reilly doesn’t seem willing to commit to this numbers-based approach. In the introduction he states that he refuses to take a stand and estimate the percentage of hate crimes that he would consider hoaxes. (In spite of this, he does give some numbers in later parts of the book, although they are frequently limited to just university hoaxes, etc.) My biggest complaint is that it is exactly this percentage that I think would be the most supportive of his thesis. The vast majority of the book catalogues hate crimes that were revealed to be hoaxes. Without using this evidence to draw conclusions about a general rate, what is accomplished by listing these hoaxes? It is true that while the most strident might contend that there are precisely zero hoaxes, most reasonable people would be willing to concede that of course there are some hoaxes. The critical piece of his argument would be to try and define their prevalence, which he refuses to do. He mentions that Ann Coulter claims the real occurrence of hate crimes to be near zero. While he says he doesn’t agree with her, it seems that someone writing a book to catalogue non-hoax hate crimes, aimed at an audience of people like Ann Coulter, would be as compelling as Reilly’s own book, but in the other direction. In fact it could be moreso, because the numbers he gestures at suggest that, by and large, more hate crimes are genuine than are hoaxes.

Put simply, by refusing to commit to numbers I think that he opens himself up to criticisms of cherry-picking. Certainly the fact that prominent politicians tweet supportively of hate crimes that turn out to be hoaxes is a bad look. But by refusing to commit to numbers it is hard to be sure that these examples represent the general case rather than the exception to the rule.

Another criticism is how he treats current versus historic rates of hate crime hoaxes. Here I wish I had a physical copy of the book to look for a quote, but unfortunately I do not. He calls the current era the “age of fake hate crimes”, yet when looking at historic rates he suggests that the rate is not so different now than it used to be. Especially when arguing that fake hate crimes will foment racial discord and lead to strife, he seems to be saying that doom is just around the corner. But his claim that the rate is unchanged also suggests that doom has been waiting just around the corner for decades, which undercuts his argument. Maybe instead there is always a low rate of hoaxes of all crimes, and this is benign.

Several times he suggests that certain acts were “probably” hoaxes. These vary from Rachel Dolezal’s numerous reports of hate crime to a supposed majority of those reported in “the Trump surge” of reported hate crimes after Trump’s election. There was an entire section on events that were “probably” hoaxes. This was too fast and loose with evidence for an academic.

Numerous times he used things that I would not consider sound evidence as evidence. A Wikipedia article was used as evidence of the general spin of coverage of an incident, for example. This is better than using Wikipedia as a primary source, but I don’t think it should be used as a barometer for general public opinion either. Multiple times he also used Google search results for a specific term as evidence of the prevalence of a sentiment or phenomenon. My understanding is that Google search results are frequently tailored to you specifically--I do not think they should be used for evidence.

At one point he said that he could find no evidence of Donald Trump being accused of racism before running for president. This surprised me given the lawsuit over the apartment complex he ran with his father decades ago, but it is possible that this was somehow not revealed until the run for president. A quick look at Snopes, however, shows that indeed there were questions about Trump and his attitudes toward race before his presidential run. The fact that Reilly didn’t turn this up doesn’t inspire confidence, especially when he admits that much of the research comes from Googling and other electronic searches.

My final complaint is that after the first few chapters the book becomes significantly less professional. While hoax hate crimes are reprehensible, the mocking tone in some of these passages was unpleasant and hurt my faith in Reilly’s ability to be dispassionate and present the whole story. Here are a few examples. When writing about someone that had faked a hateful letter, Reilly said that the hoaxer had since made their address a secret to protect themselves. Reilly said that he had obtained the address but would not reveal it in the book so that the hoaxer might not receive “a nasty letter”. At one point when talking about LBQT he said something along the lines of “LGBQTAI+ (I hope I got that right)”. I see his point, but I expect more professionalism and less snideness, especially in a book about a controversial topic. At one point when writing about the number of semen samples found on a hoaxer he joked something like “I wonder if her boyfriend knew just how open their relationship really was”.

In sum, this book was disappointing. Without question the exposure of some of these prominent cases as tawdry hoaxes deserved more attention in the mainstream media. But by refusing to lean on numbers, and by losing professionalism in the later parts of the book, I think that Reilly undercuts his own role as would-be messenger. I would suggest a podcast interview as an alternative to reading the whole book. You’ll get the main points and be spared many of the weaknesses.

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book. I know the title calls out the "Left", however the book covers a much larger problem. This book covers 81 "Hate Hoax" cases. Reilly covers some insane, IMHO, notions of White Privilege and Cultural Appropriation.

The notion that somehow people that are white have more chances and more opportunities is a fallacy. What does have "privilege" in this country is wealth. Think about it, who do you think would have more "privilege" John Smith (a fictional white person) or the family of Jay Z and Beyoncé, or the kids of Will and Jeda Smith? How about the daughter of the CEO of SoSo Def, Jermain Dupree? These people would have and DO have greater opportunities than any "normal" white person. How about those white people that grew up in the inner city (many do), went to the same schools, had the same friends, of parents in the same socioeconomic circles; these people are equally challenged by their surroundings. Additionally, look at most of the CEOs of the largest, most successful companies. Very few are overweight. Is there a "thin privilege"

In "Cultural Appropriation", this is another insane notion that occurs when normally ONLY a white person appropriates someone's culture. The problem with this is that if you follow it to its logical conclusion, non Mexicans will not be allowed to go to Chili's Bar and Grill, no one would be able to eat Chinese food except for Chinese people, no non-black people would be able to listen to hip hop etc. It's absolutely insane.

What is shocking to me in most of the cases he covered in the book is the continued support of the hoaxer even after they were discovered. It goes against all logical thought process. Anyone representing a particular group should be appalled by someone hijacking their causes. Furthermore, it diminishes real hate crimes.

Some of the hoaxers said they did it to call attention to something they were fabricating. However that is like me saying I robbed a bank to call attention to the weak security they have. And the organizations that support them are on record saying it does not matter if they lied because they are sure that other crimes are probably happening.

[Jennifer Snow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly researched

An interesting look at the pervasive problem of hate crime hoaxes and the damage they do to race relations in America. Reilly can be a bit too self-congratulatory and droll at times but his research is substantive.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revealing, though it loses some steam

This book is certainly an impressive work in the scale of data it has assembled to confirm something that many of us already knew, if mostly by instinct - that many supposed “hate crimes” are actually frauds (my general first instinct is to assume, for example , that anything involving the KKK in a liberal enclave is a fraud),

The book, however, is stronger on the where, who, when, and what than the why and eventually the recounting of incidents becomes less effective.

[Philip · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stars because Reilly does make a few good points, but I was really tempted to go with one star.

This book mostly just pissed me off. I can't wait for the day when one of these debunkers and self-professed fact checkers actually checked their own facts - what a day that'll be, forget flying, pigs will ascend accompanied by heavenly chants - when righteous anger at intellectual dishonesty wasn't delivered with an unhealthy serving of intellectual dishonesty.

The first few chapters of the book are ok. Here, at least, he lays out an argument and makes an effort to present a nuanced perspective on a few very divisive topics. It's also where he makes a few good points. For example, both mainstream media and academic institutions lean left, and more prestigious academic institutions tend to lean heavier. I think there's something to be said for the academic and journalistic echo chambers, and how they sometimes skew reality and opinion in a dishonest way.

However, Mr. Reilly, while one could argue that the journalists and academics are blatantly biased since they more often vote Democrat, one could also argue that they vote Democrat since they are better informed and educated. See what can happen when you oversimplify an argument?

The rest, the majority of the book, is essentially a collection of case studies, examples of alleged hoaxes. Some of which are confirmed fake hate crimes, some of which aren't. Illustrative examples are absolutely relevant to an argument like Reilly's, but really, he could have stuck to a handful and moved on with empirical evidence for his argument. As it is, while it's clear that hoaxes exist, the book reads more like a cherry-picked collection of stories than a serious argument.

Now, I think it's important to not assume something (a hate crime in these cases) is real just because it can't be proven false (which, admittedly, is an argument many on "the left" uses) - and it's particularly important to not jump to conclusions of hate without meat on one's bones (something media, clearly, has failed and continues to fail miserably at with regard to alleged hate crimes) - but one probably shouldn't trust someone who finishes every anecdote and case study of allegedly fake hate crimes with a shitty joke targeting the specific group/s an alleged victim belongs to either. Regardless, bottom line, Reilly doesn't really make a good empirical case, so he falls back on examples and leads the reader down extrapolation alley.

Honestly, what Reilly succeeds best with in this book, is being a douchebag. The number of derogatory gay jokes, snide "SJW" bashing, snickering references to individuals' likely victimization while incarcerated, and snide remarks about fake mental health issues might not be criminal, but they definitely amount to a preponderance of evidence for assholery.

It's a shame. I legitimately think there's a positive message buried here. Instead of this bad excuse for academic and political dirt-throwing, Reilly could have delivered a positive message. Namely that neither hate crimes nor racism are quite as endemic in today's America as one would be forgiven thinking when reading newspapers or watching the news.

While, according to the FBI crime statistics, reported hate crimes have increased somewhat, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (by way of the National Crime Victimization Survey) indicates that the instances have decreased substantially. Keeping in mind that the U.S. population has also increased by roughly 11 million people, this is a legitimately positive trend - i.e. a greater proportion of a decreasing total number of crimes are reported, and the numbers are even better proportional to the growing population.

However, maybe don't brake out the bubbly and dismiss concerns either, hate crimes are also not quite as rare as Reilly would have us think. Taking his own numbers - 409 false or questionable hate crimes (over a period of five years), 10% of the 7000 or so hate crimes reported each year (since, he argues, only that many received enough attention to make a legit determination of veracity) times five years - that would land us at a fake or dubious percentage of 11-12 percent. That's not quite the 15-50 percent he mentions in the book.

If one instead uses the numbers from fakehatecrimes.org (that he references), the total reported number of fake hate crimes total 140 during the same five years. Which, using the same calculations, would yield a four percent fake rate. Some sources - such as the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at CSUSB - argue that the percentage of fake hate crimes is even lower (although, they do appear to assume "true" if a case is unclear).

Nonetheless, perhaps the most interesting thing when looking at the statistics, is that hate crimes - real and fake - spike in election years. The bigger the stake, the more hate crimes. Politics, particularly partisan politics, drives people apart. Indicating, in an ironic twist, that Reilly - when one sifts through the unpleasantness and disingenuity - is somewhat right after all; beating the hate crime war drums, appears to foment more hate crimes.

If that isn't a good reason to keep clear of polemic fearmongering, I don't know what is.

[Raelle Rey · Rating 1 out of 5]

I stopped reading it when the author said how many rape allegations are false accusations by mentioning how many allegations cannot result in a criminal conviction. It seemed so stupid to me. Rape and sexual assault are crimes that are frequently committed without eye witnesses and the nature of the crime means its difficult to gather "evidence" of an assault. The culture we live in is actually so lenient towards sexual assault and rape. Marital rape wasn't even criminalized until 1993 and cultural attitudes towards date rape and domestic violence has barely shifted in the public eye - including judges, jury and police. And pornography has normalized sexual violence. Even when women have bruises and physical evidence of sexual assault, the justice system has a difficult time discerning the evidence. There can be physical evidence that sexual intercourse occurred - but that doesn't "prove" it is a rape even if there are bruises and physical damage. Defendants have argued in cases where the victim reports physical jury from sexual assault that the injuries were simply "bdsm gone wrong".

[Peter Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hate Crime Hoax by Wilfred Reilly

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...

Dr. Reilly properly points out that hate crime hoaxes ("HCH") are not harmless jokes intended to promote the mission of social awareness. Rather HCH rips at the social fabric by perpetuating noxious stereotypes and pitting communities against each other. Although Dr. Reilly did not mention it, another social injury that runs through his text is that HCH bankrupts social trust in our institutions, whether government, universities or journalism, as people know on some level that they are being gaslit.

I came to realize even prior to the 2016 election that many of the reports of hate crimes were mere hoaxes. During the aftermath of the 2016 election, I watched the social media outrage as one after another apparently fake hate crime was reported. Of course, it was impermissible at the time to suggest that a given hate crime was a hoax until long after the hoax had been exposed, by which time the narrative had moved on to another outrage.

Dr. Reilly's book is useful for those of us trying to hold on to our sanity in demonstrating in detail that what we are seeing is actually there.

Dr. Reilly's book is, in addition, quite enjoyable. He systematically dismantles HCH after HCS, invariably with humor and insight. Some of the cases he addresses are both pathetic and funny in their absurdity, such as when "Bias Outreach Response Coordinators" create the HCH they then blow up into a cause celebre to justify their existence. On other occassions, Dr. Reilly ably explicates the pathos of mentally broken individuals pathetically looking for some attention.

I came away from Dr. Reilly's book wondering about the mystery of evil. Some of these cases I can understand as ordinary venality, such as efforts to defraud insurance companies. Other times, the depth and extent of planning is completely baffling. Also, it is amazing how quickly these affairs unravel under the weakness of the plot's contradictions.

People should read this book. The key point of Dr. Reilly's argument is that HCH are ripping at American social fabric. Dr. Reilly, an academic, a conservative, and a POC, honestly believes that America is at risk of being ripped apart by HCH, which, though largely perpetrated by the left, have recently become appropriated by the alt-right. God protect America if both sides adopt the strategy previously owned by the Left.

Some of Dr. Reilly's observations need to be quoted. Here is one:

"The Dolezal case is an almost perfect metaphor for the relationship between the activist Left and the Black community. For almost half a century now, activists on the Left have ginned up charges of racism. They use faked or at best atypical incidents to create a false impression about the level of racism in America. And many of the activists playing this game are not Black. A surprising number—not just Dolezal, but probably at least 60 percent of BLM and antifa stalwarts—are not African American.43 And those who are biologically Black—the Nation of Islam, “the Moors,” the “Back to Africa” brothers—are completely out of touch with mainstream Black America, which is culturally conservative, respects Christianity, and is imbued with a nuanced but real patriotism. (Anyone who doubts the patriotism of Black Americans should take a quick look at rates of military service by race. African Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, but 30.27 percent of active-duty enlisted men.)44 Tragically, fake hate crimes and the activists who exploit them are succeeding in convincing African Americans that our country is much more racist than it actually is. Removing this parasitic contingent of outsiders from positions of influence would do the Black community more good than almost anything else."

Finally, Dr. Reilly offers some solid suggestions about curbing HCH. Normally, I am averse to increasing criminal penalties or using the concept of "hate crime" as a component of criminal offense, but I am convinced that IF we accept the notion that hate crimes are particularly threatening to American social order, false reports that hold one side up to social obloguy are equally threatening. I'd like to see the concept of "hate crime" retired, but until it is, then Dr. Reilly's idea of holding hate crime hoaxers to higher penalties as a deterrence, and to take away the rewards that such hoaxers enjoy, is absolutely necessary if we are to avoid becoming the new Bosnia.

This is an easy, enjoyable, informative, important read.

[Stetson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title is a lot more inflammatory and partisan than the content of the book, though this is still a contentious subject of course. A lot of Reilly's analysis is focused on the high-level figures and first order stuff, which is of course enough to debunk trite "woke" narratives about race relations and black-white disparities in America. However, I would have loved a deep quantitative look at some of the disparities mentioned in the book (beyond just the hate crimes statistics, which Reilly shows are incredibly dubious because of the frequency of hoaxes).

The fake hoax phenomenon is certainly wild, but is completely understandable given the institutional and social incentives that have been assembled in the last three decades. I think the trend is already waning after probably hitting its peak with the Jussie Smollet case. At least let's hope that's the case. I would have appreciated a broader institutional analysis of what these incentives are to engage in fake hate crimes and why they exist. This is touched on in the book but only at a surface level.

Reilly writes clearly and engagingly, making this an easy and fast read. It probably could just have been a journal or magazine article with some figures, but the publishing rewards go to book writing.

[Brad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting, funny, and a nice antidote to woke bs.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

The subtitle, How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War, initially made me think that Reilly was an anti-leftist conservative. He initially focused on hate crime hoaxes in left-leaning, largely elite universities - in which there have been many such hoaxes. It was clear that this focus was not only due to the number of hoaxes but also their coverage in national and even international mainstream media - which he correctly characterizes as left leaning.

However, further into the book Reilly moves beyond universities and even beyond Black hate crime hoaxes. He moves on to hate crimes focused on gays, women, whites, Muslims, Jews - virtually every contemporary identity group. He also makes it clear that there are, in fact, many real hate crimes. What becomes clear in his recounting of many examples is the motives for such hoaxes. In universities, it is generally simply to generate more vigorous anti-racism-related organizations, demonstrations and campaigns. In other areas, there tend to be a wider variety of motives - to cover up a crime, to get out of a failing business, to generate support for a GoFundMe to make money, or simply because wants to cover up actions prompted their own mental illness.

By the end of the book I had already decided I wanted to read his next book, Taboo: 10 Facts You Can't Discuss. His use of statistics seemed so similar to what impressed me by other authors such as Heather Mac Donald, John McWhorter, Coleman Hughes and Glenn Loury. He makes it very clear that he rejects the ideological mindsets on the extremes on both sides of the political spectrum .- left and right.

When reading his acknowledgements, what confirmed my opinion of the quality of his work was the fact the John McWhorter was one of several senior figures who had analyzed his work and provided commentary.

Then, shortly before deciding to post this review, I saw McWhorter's own recent post, (Black Fragility as Black Strenth? Try these books instead

Hate Crime Hoax was one of the several new books McWhorter recommended. His own summary of Reilly's book: "Wilfred Reilly teaches us an invaluable lesson about that Victimization Mindset ... that bedevils black Americans unduly. Specifically, we must beware this "impact matters more than intent" thing, because sadly often, black people, gripped by this victimization mindset, exaggerate or lie about racist acts and even attacks. His book is called Hate Crime Hoax. Don't be misled by the fact that the subtitle and cover feel a touch "headline-y – cablenewsy" – publishers must sell their books. The issue is the content, and this book teaches lessons that are 1) sad, 2) understandable..., and 3) urgent."

[Isaac · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author invokes Thomas Sowell as an inspiration in the opening chapter and that influence is obvious early and often both in terms of his insufferably smug tone and his reasoned and forceful criticism of mainstream thought.

After an interesting, though slightly repetitive and disjointed, opening, the book settles into a long series of summary accounts of hate hoaxes over the years. After a while they definitely start running together and I started to lose interest.

Reilly's data is really interesting and worth a book length discussion, but here it's mostly presented in the form of joyful, schadenfreude laced anecdotes which do not do it justice.

[Shannyn Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Each chapter is essentially a collection of accounts of various [mostly proven] hate crime hoaxes so, after a while I started to think "I get it, I get it!!" but, nonetheless, it's quite fascinating. Interestingly, many of the hoaxes described in this book follow essentially the same pattern of the Jussie Smollett hoax- make absurd claim, absorb public sympathy, double down when the investigators inevitably call you on your nonsense.

[Timothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only thing preventing this book from getting a 5 star review is that the author, Wilfred Reilly, could have spent more time explaining HOW each hoax he examines was proven false. Although in a lot of the cases, the "victim/hoaxer" confessed to faking it. And before you go and say "Well, of course a white guy is gonna write a book exposing hate crimes as fake", you might want to Google Image search the author : )

[Christina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Worst book I've ever tried to read. The content would have been awesome if it had been assembled in any type of format. This "book" is just a bunch of repetitive and random thoughts that don't flow as a book should. There are innumerable run-on sentences, random thoughts that don't make sense, and random facts that aren't applicable to the sentence they're in. Terrible waste of good paper!

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A BLACK PROFESSOR LOOKS CRITICALLY AT REPORTED ‘HATE CRIMES’

Political Science professor Wilfred Reilly wrote in the Introduction of this 2019 book, “Authors of books that lean right are often accused of ‘hating’ someone, or everyone. To the contrary! I am a proud Black man, and this book is both a pro-American and a PROFOUNDLY pro-Black work of social science… One major issue poisoning relations between whites and people of color (POC) in America today… is an ongoing epidemic of patently false claims of oppression. Making outrageous claims of oppression… is arguably the main thing the modern activist Left does, and the backlash against such patently absurd contentions is largely responsible for the rise of the even more god-awful alt-right… Bigotry does exist. But that fact is no justification for false claims of oppressive violence, which are rife; complete hoaxes make up a sizable percentage of ALL widely reported hate crimes.” (Pg. xiii-xiv)

He continues, “when millions of people are terrified of threats that do not even exist, there is strong evidence that someone is deliberately trying to scare them. In the case of U.S. race relations… it is not hard to figure out why multiple entities might attempt to do this. An astonishing edifice of power and profit rests upon the assumption that the United States is a racist nation… The large non-governmental organizations that promote hate scares… owe their viability to this assumption. In many situations where a reasonable person might well conclude that there is no racism present---Hollywood’s Oscars ceremony, for example---it has proven quite profitable and rewarding to invent some.” (Pg. xviii)

He explains, “I would describe this book as a work of social science, although the technique employed in gathering data for it was snowball sampling of the qualitative written record dealing with hate crime allegations, rather than quantitative techniques of linear, logistic, and time series regression.” (Pg. xx)

He acknowledges, “As I became more aware of the prevalence of hate crime hoaxes, the focus of my research shifted from hate crimes … to the phenomenon of fake hate crimes… I spent roughly three weeks in 2017 searching specifically for ‘fake hate crimes’ and ‘hate crime hoaxes… By the conclusion of this research period, I had a data set of 409 confirmed cases of fake hate crimes… The second more specific data set provides the great majority of cases and statistics in this book. A final methodological note: I take no position on what exact percentage of all hate crimes are hoaxes. Such a conclusion would be nearly impossible to calculate…” (Pg. xxii)

He suggests, “So hate crime hoaxes are dangerous. Their perpetrators are laying with fire. While the current epidemic of hate-based violence in the United States is really an epidemic of hoaxes, and any ‘race war’ going on today exists only in the minds of a few radicals, there are disturbing signs that the fakes are fostering real hostility between the races, which could lead to real violence in the future. Consider, for example, the fact that hate crime hoaxes are increasingly being perpetrated by white members of the alt-right, with the explicit goal of making Black people and leftist causes look bad.” (Pg. 7)

He states, “In contrast to collegiate ‘hate incidents,’ the majority of anti-gay hate crimes reported to police or other authorities are almost certainly real… it cannot be ignored that the current climate of political orthodoxy makes false reporting of all varieties of hate crime extraordinarily common.” (Pg. 13) Later, he adds, “My research indicates that, although this has not always been the case, anti-white hate crimes reported by whites today are, like other hate crimes, very likely to be hoaxes.” (Pg. 16)

He continues, “my research has established that a very large number of widely reported modern hate crime allegations are simply false. They are hoaxes. This statement holds true for allegations of white-on-Black and white-on-Hispanic violence, for alleged political hate crimes, and for almost all ‘hate incidents’ reported to the media… This phenomenon is occurring within the context of the
Continuing Oppression’ Narrative, which promotes racial discord via the argument that minorities are at constant risk of violent attack by whites.” (Pg. 17)

He argues, “If phenomena such as white privilege and especially cultural appropriation are not real, they clearly cannot explain real-world problems in minority communities. The broadest claim of the Continuing Oppression Narrative---that contemporary racism of both new and old varieties causes essentially all minority problems---thus fails. While some actual traditional racism certainly does still exist… it cannot explain contemporary problems facing the Black community or el barrio, such as illegitimacy and the myriad dysfunction attendant on unwanted single parenthood. First, those problems did not exist in the past when racism was much worse. Second, they do not exist among Black immigrant minorities to this day…” (Pg. 36-37)

He states, “There is an astonishing level of consensus, at least among scholars, on the fact that almost all of the interracial crime that does occur in the United States is POC-on-white… The average Black American is five times as likely to attack an individual white American as vice versa.” (Pg. 46)

He notes, “The demoralization of police officers working in crime-plagued Black neighborhoods has been a significant effect of the Continuing Oppression Narrative. After the nationally televised riots that followed the death of Michael Brown, police in major cities such as Chicago cut back their rate of discriminatory drug-and-gun stops ty as much as 90 percent---with sadly predictable results… The focus on the fake problems of police genocide exacerbated the real problem of epidemic urban crime, especially urban Black crime, and real people died as a result.” (Pg. 47-48)

He suggests, “The Continuing Oppression Narrative’… serves to deflect attention from cultural issues within the Black community. Once this is realized, one obvious question is why the white Left is so desperate to avoid honestly looking at these problems. I sincerely suspect that many activist liberals are reluctant to do so because they are as racist, in the literal sense, as their opposite numbers on the alt-right. Both blocs seem to believe, deep down, that Blacks are intrinsically inferior to whites. What could possibly explain the Left’s near-taboo against even discussing IQ statistics, other than the belief that Black or Hispanic Americans have lower genetically-determined intelligence than whites and East Asians?” (Pg. 50)

He observes, “Another noteworthy category of hate crime hoaxes is made up of what I term ‘Klan Springs Eternal’ (KSE) hoaxes, which involve POC falsely claiming to have been attacked by one of more Caucasian racists in order to conceal their own criminal behavior or mental health issues.” (Pg. 99)

He adds, “An entirely new category of hate hoaxes has sprung up since the 2016 election of the tough-talking forty-fifth president. This is not really surprising. Probably the primary mainstream media talking point regarding President Trump is that he is a ‘racist’ or a ‘white supremacist,’ and a close second is that his campaign unleashed a ‘wave of hate.’… the much touted rise in anti-Semitic hate incidents, in particular the year after Trump’s election, is almost certainly explained by an increase in hate hoaxes rather than an increase in actual hate crimes.” (Pg. 131)

He says, “Today, a new wave of hate crime hoaxes is being perpetuated by white Americans. There have always been white hate hoaxers, such as student radicals and insurance fraudsters. But over the past seven to ten years an increasing number of Caucasians have falsely represented that they were attacked by one or more members of minority or activist groups simply for BEING white (or conservative).” (Pg. 217)

He summarizes, “there are four steps that law enforcement, campus judicial systems, and perhaps especially media organizations need to take in order to mitigate the current epidemic of fake hate accusations. First, stakeholders need to recognize that between 15 and 50 percent of hate crime accusations are flatly false… Second, colleges and police departments need to actually PUNISH individuals discovered to have falsified hate crime allegations… Third, the culture of making excuses for hate crime hoaxers should be dismantled, certainly among law enforcement professionals… Fourth, any benefits awarded by government entities or colleges because of a bias crime---or a ‘wave’ of them---should be revoked immediately if those crimes are shown to be fakes.” (Pg. 248-250)

He concludes, “this is what we need to do to fight the hate crime hoaxes that are dangerously undermining relations between Americans of different races: (1) understand that many hate crimes are hoaxes, (2) actively and aggressively punish individuals discovered to have faked bias crimes, (3) stop making excuses for these criminals, and (4) stop the flow of benefit with which we currently reward these crimes. Hate crime hoaxes only feed the cynical false narrative of ethnic conflict and oppression that is destabilizing our society… There is no race war in the USA in 2018. Let’s stop letting liars tell us there is… or we might actually get one.” (Pg. 254)

One of the best things about this book is the middle section, where he recounts the entire story of some of the more well-known hoaxes (e.g., Tawana Brawley). The biggest ‘drawback’ of this book is that his ‘data set’ of hoaxes was far from ‘scientifically’ selected---he just searched the Internet for a few weeks. Thus, his generalizations (e.g., ‘between 15 and 50 percent’) are not particularly reliable.

Nevertheless, this book is generally an excellent overview of this problem, and will be “must reading” for those studying the topic.

[Nathan Mohr · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhere in this book is the foundation for a really interesting and insightful look at the legion of high profile race crime hoaxes that have occurred in recent years. I’m just not sure this book is that insightful look.

I liked the basic structure. Reilly discusses his own research into how prevalent race crime hoaxes are, relying on reported cases and how many eventually turned out to be fraudulent. He then divides the book up into broad sections of hoaxes, such as hoaxes on college campuses, race hoaxes involving churches, etc. he then discusses hand picked cases from each category and discusses them, showing how there is usually a recurring pattern in which the racial narrative is picked up by media and amplified before proving to be false, or at best, unfounded and unproven. It’s definitely written from a right wing point of view, although later in the book he does point to a number of racial crime hoaxes perpetrated by right leaning accusers.

Ultimately, however, I think the book has several issues that derail it from being a serious, analytical look at the issue. One is the sources he liberally quotes. He often uses second hand statistics or facts quoted by other authors writing about the same topic, rather than quoting source material that deals with the same pertinent issues. For example, when discussing certain statistics dealing with race and family, Reilly quotes from a National Review columnist. I'm unclear why this would be necessary given that National Review is not a polling center or a statistical think tank, nor are they an unbiased source. I didn't read the column he quotes, but my guess is that author got his statistics from somewhere--why did Reilly not trace them to the source and use that as his quote? This same process is repeated elsewhere. In another for instance, he quotes Clay Travis regarding the background of a progressive student at the University of Missouri. The facts in question are not incorrect, it's just that they would be easily discoverable via Reilly's own footwork, rather than just lazily quoting from Travis, who not only is not an unbiased source but a self aggrandizing douchebag of the highest order.

This happens so frequently that I have come to the conclusion much of Reilly's research consisted of googling things, finding articles with a viewpoint he agreed with, and using that as a source for evidence rather than doing actual research of his own. This is further confused by the fact that when it comes to the hoaxes themselves, he seems to have done his own research there, so why he would take the shortcut of just quoting other columnists about a subject's background or about family and crime statistics doesn't really square. It's also, in my view, unnecessarily hurting his argument to quote people like Clay Travis and Milo Yiannopoulos because the quotes he uses aren't in any way necessary to support his primary argument but definitely will allow anyone skeptical to point to those figures as evidence of Reilly's own personal bias.

My other major bone is how he occasionally labels things as hoaxes that were not "hoaxes" persay but rather were either suspicious or unproven. One prominent example of this is the series of alleged racially motivated incidents at the University of Missouri back in 2015-2016. The first incident was a racial slur allegedly hollered at a student while not on the campus. The second incident was the appearance of an alleged swastika made out of fecal matter smeared on the walls of a restroom at the university (Reilly disputes whether this second incident even occurred at all, but given the University filed a police report and released photos, I'll assume he's wrong on this). Reilly points to the lack of evidence in both cases when no perpetrator was caught and no motive was ever given, and labels them hoaxes. I agree with Reilly that one cannot assume these were race crimes (in the case of the racial slurs yelled at the student, that's not even a crime, just despicable behavior). But you cannot also assume they are "hoaxes." It could be that both incidents occurred just as described and were motivated by hate. Calling it a hoax when no evidence exists one way or another is just as flawed a logic as calling something a race crime when no evidence exists for that either.

Ultimately, it's these flaws that make Reilly's book far less useful than it otherwise might have been. I still think the book has an interesting premise, and certainly Reilly identifies a pattern of both behavior and reward that occurs far too frequently to be ignored. And this book was written even before the Jussie Smollet verdict, so it certainly remains relevant. I just wish Reilly had applied more original research instead of relying on so many other pundits for easily obtainable facts.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Depressing.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

rtc

[Michael Philliber · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am pretty sure it happens more often than we think. We pick up an article or book because it potentially confirms what we think may be the case. And then as we’re reading, we feel more established in our perspective. The trick is to think through the pros and cons of what we are reading, and especially so if we agree with many of the conclusions. That tactic takes a bit of self-restraint and self-control. I had to exercise such self-discipline as I worked my way through the 256-page hardback “Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War”. The African American author, Wilfred Reilly, is assistant professor of Political Sciences at the historically black Kentucky State University, has compiled a compelling sample list of highly reported hate crimes, weeding through the stories and investigations, and bringing out the conclusions of courts, police, confessions, etc. that exposed these incidents as hoaxes. He also shows that undergirding much of the sensational reporting and coverage arises from a presupposition of what he calls the “Continuing Oppression Narrative”.

The author begins from his own experience as a black professor at an historically black college. He lays out his own study of hundreds of reported hate crimes, and how many of them were later exposed as frauds. The reason he does this is because “false claims only undermine belief in actual hate crimes” (xiv). He moves on to explain how there is a “Continuing Oppression Narrative” that undergirds these hate crime hoaxes, and affects large sections of African American young adults, their attitudes toward serving in the military, engagement with Law Enforcement, and other vocations. As he says, “America’s opportunities are closed to them – not because of widespread racism, but because of their own erroneous belief in widespread racism” (xix).

The author’s concern is over a “well-entrenched grievance industry” (1) that rewards or pays off victimization (2-3). Therefore, he limits his focus false hate crime allegations since these “have value because they provide support for the meta-narrative of majority group bigotry” (5). Thus, he launches into multiple chapters, rehearsing highly publicized hate crimes, showing how the ones he presents as sample cases were later exposed as bogus crimes. Interesting enough, Reilly makes the case that academic campuses are hotbeds for reported hate crimes. As I was reading through the chapters and stories, I found myself saying more and more, “Yes, I remember that episode. Oh, that’s how it ended. Now I understand why it didn’t stay on the front pages very long.” It’s a valuable volume.

As much as I found the book persuasive, I also noted some areas where the book was confusing, and places that could have made a stronger case to a larger audience. For example, by his own count, only 12-15 percent of reported hate crimes were hoaxes. And yet, throughout the work the author asserts that the “literal majority of these incidents” (xxii), and other characterizations along that line, were fake. Such as “between 15 and 50 percent of hate crime accusations are flatly false” (248). The only place where I saw ‘validation’ of the 50% valuation was when he quotes an assertion by Ann Coulter. He then writes, “I would not go that far myself, but my strong suspicion is that at least half of college campus hate incident reports are fake” (252). He could have given important muscle to the work if he had taken the time to draw in further studies that confirmed the higher percentages.

Further, since his stated claim is that “false claims only undermine belief in actual hate crimes,” and his goal seems to be to push against those false claims so that real hate crimes are not thought as phony. But it appears to me, that the author undermined his own intention. By the time one closes the book it feels like every reported hate crime is bogus. I’m guessing the author recounts some 40 incidents, and all are exposed as erroneous. Yet, if the author had recorded counter incidents of genuine hate crimes, describing the investigations, court decisions, etc., pointing out what valid hate crimes look like and how they can withstand examinations, it would have left a reader in a better place. As it is, all the examples only show themselves as counterfeits.

Even with my two stated concerns, I still recommend the work. “Hate Crime Hoax” is a helpful work, showing the importance of suspending judgment when a hate crime is reported, and patiently ensuring that the accusations are being validated. But also, recognizing that accusation does not automatically prove guilt. It’s an important book giving a different black voice to counter the “Continuing Oppression Narrative.”

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with other Wilfred Reilly books, it's well researched and the author does a terrific job of consistently siting his sources. So many authors today prefer to demonstrate an argument for their position with "it sure feels this way, so clearly it is, trust me." Shockingly, so many people are satisfied with that method, that those books often make it to the top of the best seller list, it's mindboggling. Meanwhile, books that take the time to site statistics and sources ready for debate, often don't get nearly the reach they should.
The cases of hate crimes that turn out to be hoaxes and the actual hate crimes that occur retaliating for those hoaxes is shocking and sickening. Clearly the punishment for perpetrating a hate crime hoax isn't serious enough. The author ends the book with several suggestions for reducing the number of hoaxes which I hope come to fruition.

[J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had read a story that supposedly happened in my hometown in Southwest Brooklyn where a person found a banner from a white supremacist group. The Brooklyn leadership was making a hero out of the person who found it and then I noticed that this person happened to be the head of the progressive activists in the area. So, I researched the Supremacist group and found that they were a rather obscure group of nutters from some secluded part of Texas. What the heck were they doing placing a banner in Brooklyn? Seemed odd at best and you would have to wonder if they even knew where Brooklyn was. Nevertheless, the activist who "found" the banner received some award and the story made all the local papers....but it led me to wonder if this sort of seeming farce was wide spread.

This is why I picked up this book from eminent scholar Dr Wilfred Reilly a very well regarded professor of political science at Kentucky State University and even though I do not regard ethnicity as being significant toward intelligence or research I have to admit that it did strike me as interesting that Dr Reilly is a POC.

I found the book to be highly informative and he uses straight facts about the outcome of so many stories that had made national news as "bias" crimes that turned out to be hoaxes. How the news media is quick to exploit such events, but disregard the story or minimize the story when the outcome proves that the event was a nefarious hoax. It is mind boggling that so many of these national outrages have not even been true.

He does address the ongoing victim narrative that the left side of our politic have been promoting to secure votes, but he seems to see the hoax players themselves as having varied reason for using this politically promoted narrative to their own benefit. Money, debt, fame, and just about anything else that can personally benefit a person have been motives. There are many instances where left activists have created hoaxes to push their ideology, but regardless of this and all the political and media hype that are the by product of these events, we should be careful not to buy into them too quickly, because in the long run, false charges just diminish the real ones.

In the end there really is not a lot of racism in the US. We have tried to even things out and we have tried to make it easier to succeed. Colleges give about 20 extra points to POC on their entrance applications and laws have been created to ease oppression to any person in the US. Of course, within any human population are people who will always be racists, always be hateful and violent, but let their actions not be hidden within the political agenda of the activist left or the selfish, ego-centric actions of people exploiting a politically motivated victim's narrative.

I think anyone who is not a part of the Activist Left or the Alt Right should read this book (I personally believe that both those groups are beyond hope.) Extreme politics and fringe ideologies are damaging the social contract of people in the world. We should shun them all and go back to avoiding these people as society has always done before the birth of social media (That's my two cents).

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author gives a good overview of hate crime hoaxes by using real examples. He gives reasonable solutions to end the hate crime hoaxes.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Turns out Jussie Smollett was a participant in a time-honored tradition of faking hate crimes for personal gain. Hate Crime Hoax details many of these hoaxes, including famous cases you've heard of--but don't yet realize were proven hoaxes.

"The fact that a quarter of Black people think their government is attempting to kill them is not a harmless error or an amusing quirk. If their belief were based in realty, I myself would be ready to take up arms against the United States of America. But it’s not true. Police officers shoot very few unarmed citizens; the highest SAT scores in the country belong to Asians and Nigerians rather than whites; HIV first took root as a disease in Caucasian gay communities . . . and so on down the line. For all its flaws, our great nation is not racked with hate crimes or run by Nazis, and the government is not putting deadly viruses or chemicals designed to sterilize brothers into the Snapple tea. When people in positions of power or visibility say such nonsense, they should be rebuked for it."
Wilfred Reilly
Hate Crime Hoax

[Christine Hernando · Rating 4 out of 5]

Critical read

Ironic that I finished reading this book shortly after the first presidential debate of 2020 and witnessed the left (read: Biden) try to sell a bunch of fake “wars.” Sadly, as this book illustrates, the left will not read this book or, if they do, they’ll dismiss the hoaxes as being perpetrated BECAUSE of race issues, not despite the lack of. And as the author warns in his final statements, if we as a nation do not recognize this truth and respond accordingly, we risk setting off a true race war.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, if repetitive, recitation of fake hate crimes from the last 30 odd years. There is doubt remaining bigotry and hate in our country. It is likely not as rampant as some would believe.

So, the next time I hear some horrible story about some awful something done, motivated by hate, I think I'll wait a few weeks to see what investigation turns up. Odds are 15-50% that the reported event was staged/falsified. I'll save my hysteria/fear/condemnation for when it's genuinely required.

[Paul Hunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Entertaining analysis of various hate crime hoaxes and hoaxers both from the right and the left. Written in an entertaining format. It is a good book to read whenever a hate crime is alleged and a reminder to wait until the facts are known before any rush to judgement. Even though there have been so many of them the media always jumps on the news of the latest 'hate crime' with the most sensational terms. It's good to keep this in mind when new 'hate crimes' are alleged.