Crying Wolf - Hate Crime Hoaxes

Crying Wolf - Hate Crime Hoaxes in America

by Laird Wilcox

Published by Laird Wilcox Editorial Research Service, PO Box 2047,

Olathe,

KS 66061

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Any police officer will tell you that extra caution in jumping to

conclusions is the normal practice when investigating unusual

crimes, or those which suggest too obvious a solution without direct

evidence.

The history of crime is replete with examples of murder, arson, and

many other crimes, in which a false trail is laid by the perpetrator

to confuse the police, often with some financial motive - for

example a fraudulent insurance claim. It is a very easy matter for a

property owner to set a building on fire after carefully painting a

picture suggesting that the crime has been committed by others -

perhaps a forged threatening letter. There are many other motives

too which can provoke the staging of crimes in a manner which is

deliberately misleading.

The recent history of 'hate crimes' in the United States is no

exception, as Laird Wilcox's recent publication shows only too well.

Wilcox's interest in the subject was aroused in 1988 when he learnt

that a 'cross burning' during the 1960s. had been carried out by

civil rights workers. There was no available systematic study of

racist and anti-semitic hoaxes.

In 1989 Wilcox decided to start the 'Hoaxer Project', to draw

together information. A short published report followed, which soon

generated 300 cases of hoaxes documented from newspapers and

personal accounts - not all in the United States. The cases in

Crying Wolf are drawn from this resource. The same sort of thing

happens regularly in Britain - witness the 1993 march held by a

Trotskyite group in Brighton, England, in protest against a daubing

of swastikas in the local Jewish cemetery which, in fact, never took

place. Perhaps we need our own 'Hoaxer Project'!

Wilcox views hoaxes as a market process - the frequency increases

with the pay off. If the potential rewards are high then there is a

great temptation to create bogus victimisation. There has been more

than one case in Germany of individuals, who craved attention,

scarring themselves with swastikas. The initial publicity, needless

to say, far exceeded the coverage after the hoaxes were exposed!

None of this, of course, in any way suggests that genuine and very

serious hate crimes do not occur, or disrespect for the victims,

merely that a good deal of caution should be exercised in jumping to

conclusions, and particularly when a knee-jerk hue and cry is raised

by the media.

The range of hoaxes in Wilcox's book is a testament to both man's

ingenuity, and also the range of motives which can underpin such

events.

In 1991, the Home of Peace Jewish cemetery in Los Angeles was daubed

with swastikas and tombstones overturned. Within a few days police

identified the culprits - the owners of a security firm which wanted

to discredit the existing contractor and get the job of guarding the

cemetery!

In 1994 three Tacoma homosexuals smashed up their own apartment and

painted swastikas in it. They claimed on insurance, and bagged a

large sum in donations from sympathisers after a press campaign

about 'hate crimes'. The three were arrested.

In 1988, WWII vet David Rubitsky claimed to be a victim of anti-

semitism. He said he had single-handedly killed 600 Japanese in New

Guinea in 1942, but had been told he could not have the

Congressional Medal of Honour. He said a colonel told him: "We don't

give the medal to Jews". Rubitsky also said crosses had been burned

in his lawn. The press went wild about 'anti-semitism', after 92

congressmen signed a resolution on Rubitsky's behalf sponsored by

the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.

Members of Rubitsky's unit said that his claims were "fairy tales",

as did the army after a two year investigation.

The Anti-Defamation League was found in 1993 to have illegally

penetrated and stolen police files in San Francisco, as part of its

disinformation and destabilisation operations against opponents. The

ADL, an organisation with a budget of $34 million, was, curiously,

far more interested in leftist organisations than the right. The

reason was fear that the US civil rights establishment would back

the Palestinian cause.

The supposed abduction and rape of a young black girl, Tawana

Brawley, by whites, became a cause celebre in the US some years ago.

Brawley claimed she had been raped by six white men, one wearing a

badge, and then released covered in excrement. The supposed crime

transpired to have been an elaborate invention, whose exploitation

was orchestrated by the New York Reverend Al Sharpton and the girl's

mother - the former believed by many to provide the model for one of

the characters in Tom Wolfe's novel The Bonfire of the Vanities.

Those who have attended a Sharpton meeting, as has the writer of

this review, will appreciate the point.

The faking of black history is an interesting area covered by

Wilcox.

In 1992, the Public Broadcasting System film The Liberators

purported to show how an all-black unit, the 761st. Tank Battalion,

had liberated Dachau in 1945. In fact the unit was nowhere near the

camp. The hoax was part of a scam by journalists to ease black-

Jewish relations - "common history of oppression" and so on.

The late Alex Haley's spurious book about slavery, Roots, is now well

known to have been a fraud intended to inflame white guilt. Haley

fabricated many of the characters supposed to have been his

ancestors.

The campus at Slippery Rock University near Pitsburgh convulsed in

1993 after anti-black epithets were found painted in a dormitory.

Black Lewis Williams, who initially reported the incidents, later

confessed to doing it himself. He painted abusive racial slogans on

other black students' bedroom doors.

In a rather similar case at Emory University in Atlanta in 1990

Sabrina Collins claimed she was a victim of anti-black graffiti and

death threats. There was a march and the usual 'crackdown on racism'

demands. Police later revealed that the event was hoax.

On the other hand, a feminist activist from George Washington

University, Mariam Kashani, claimed in 1990 that a white student had

been raped at knifepoint by two black men. Admitting the hoax,

Kashani used a common excuse. She said she hoped "the story would

highlight the problems of safety for women". Ronnie Thaxton, a black

student activist, said he was outraged by "attempts by white people

to discredit black males".

An interesting hoax occurred at Richard Montgomery High School in

Maryland in 1990. The school was broken into twice, and swastikas as

well as messages signed by 'Nazi youth' were scrawled on walls.

$650,000 in damage was caused. Police arrested two students, one

black and one Jewish.

There are too many hoaxes in Wilcox's book to document fully here .

The list goes on and on. You'll just have to buy it! Next time you

read one of those 'wave of Nazi terror attacks' stories in your

newspaper, consider a little. It might be true, but then again it

might not.

Not covered in Wilcox's publication is the arena of fake eye witness

accounts of events in concentration camps, which were such a feature

of the trials in Canada of Ernst Zundel during the 1980s.. Several

'eye witnesses' to the operation of mass murder had their

testimonies demolished. None could identify the colour of bodies

poisoned with cyanide correctly - despite claims to have seen them.

One witness, Rudolf Vrba, author of a celebrated 'eye witness

account' of gas chambers entitled I Cannot Forgive, lamely admitted

that he had converted rumours he had heard into an 'eye witness

account' in order to warn people - something of the same reasoning

as in the Kashani case above. As Vrba put it, his book containing

written and pictorial descriptions of gas chambers was "only an

artistic picture of what I heard it might look like". Incredible?

See the Toronto Sun for January 24 1985.