More than a month ago, Â Althea Bernstein claimed that a car full of white supremacists pulled up next to her in traffic at a major intersection in a major American city in Wisconsin. She further claimed that these dastardly members of the imaginary “boogaloo movement“ proceeded to spray her with lighter fluid and toss a magically disappearing cigarette lighter. The lighter, whose magical properties also kept it lighted as it sailed through the air from car to car, then set Althea\’s face on fire. A week after the incident, Althea\’s family issued a statement pleading for privacy and asking for your well-wishes for Althea\’s healing.
And that was that.
Not a single word about Althea Bernstein has been spoken since. There have been no news articles. There has been no public follow-up from local or federal law enforcement. There has been no word spoken, no alarm raised, given that cars full of white supremacists are roving public streets, setting innocent women on fire based on the color of their skin.  No similar incidents have occurred. No copycat acts of violence have been carried out. No surveillance footage of the imaginary boogaloos has surfaced. Not a single video, still image, witness statement, or other piece of even second-hand and circumstantial evidence has been discovered.
It\’s almost as if the incident in question never happened.
If you\’d like to get a reputation among your friends for the keen insight with which you analyze politics — if you\’d like to be known in your circle as almost prescient, in fact — there\’s only one thing you must do. Every single time one of these hate crime accusations is made, announce that it is a hoax.
Almost every single time, you will be vindicated. When the inevitable reveal occurs, when the “victim“ finally admits to fabricating the incident, you will look like you knew all along. Friends and family will marvel at your clairvoyance. They won\’t know that all you\’re doing is playing the odds. They won\’t know that you\’re simply acknowledging the reality that there is a severe shortage of hate crime in the United States.
The United States is the least racist country in the world. In no other country is the label “racist“ so universally feared. In no other nation do so many citizens bend over backwards to prove they are tolerant and accepting of other demographic groups. In America, to be labeled a racist is to see your public life — and perhaps your livelihood — destroyed. Far from being a systemically racist nation, we are a vehemently anti-racist nation. We hate racism so much that we are constantly jumping at shadows, perceiving as racism even innocent and benign events, words, and actions.
Given this, what is the leftist activist seeking to foment racial hatred against white people to do? Well, he or she has only two choices. The would-be hate-crime victim can either wait around for an unremarkable and unimpressive “micro-aggression“ to misconstrue as racist hatred… or our budding victim can manufacture a hate crime that is much more conveniently performative. You have to admit, being sprayed with lighter fluid and set ablaze is much more cinematic than wondering aloud if your Uber Eats driver didn\’t put your bag closer to the door because he hates black people.
The real problem of these fake hate crimes, though, is that they create very real danger for people who have done nothing wrong. When our news media repeat these fabricated stories ad nauseam, we create an atmosphere in which black people harass, attack, and assault white people out of a desire for payback. We saw it during the riots when black looters beat white shop owners and left them for dead simply for trying to protect their property. We see it every day, in fact, in that the overwhelming majority of interracial violence is black on white (and not the opposite).
When popular culture, news, and entertainment tell black Americans every day that white people are trying to “hunt“ them, hurt them, and even murder them, is a surprise when they fight back against these largely fictitious crimes? Hate crime hoaxes throw gasoline onto those flames. They feed a narrative that, even today, is expressed as Black Lives Matter chanting, “Hands Up, Don\’t Shoot“ to commemorate an act of police brutality that never actually happened.
Everything about today\’s racial activism is based on fabrication. America is not systemically racist — and no system, no law, no regulation, is in place to advantage whites over blacks. Everywhere we turn, however, we are told that America is uniquely evil in the world… and as support for this assertion, the accusers offer hoaxes. Made-up hate crimes thus do us all a disservice. They also have a very real body count in victims — innocent people who take the brunt of the racial hostility elicited by these fictions.
There is no doubt in my mind that Althea Bernstein contributed to this. The “white supremacists in floral shirts“ never existed. They are, in my opinion, figments of Althea Bernstein\’s imagination… just as is the racism that supposedly pervades our nation.
