The discovery of a “noose” at the construction site of the future Obama Presidential Center in Chicago brought work on the massive $830 million project to a halt last week.
A wave of moral outrage ensued, with Lakeside Alliance, the consortium of construction companies undertaking the project, issuing a statement saying: “We are horrified that this would occur on our site and are offering a $100,000 reward to help find the individual or individuals responsible for this shameful act. Lakeside Alliance remains committed to providing a work environment where everyone can feel safe, be their best self, and is treated with dignity and respect.”
“We are suspending all operations onsite,” the statement added, “in order to provide another series of these trainings and conversations for all staff and workers.”
The Obama Foundation likewise released a statement decrying the appearance of the “noose,” saying: “This shameless act of cowardice and hate is designed to get attention and divide us. Our priority is protecting the health and safety of our workforce.”
Also weighing in was Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who tweeted, “Hate has no place in Illinois. The noose is more than a symbol of racism, it is a heart-stopping reminder of the violence and terror inflicted on Black Americans for centuries.”
The event is reportedly under investigation by the Chicago Police Department.
Although no perpetrator has yet been identified, and Democratic politicians and major media voices continue to express outrage, many conservatives are voicing skepticism:
“Have you heard a story like this before?” asked Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. “Well, it wasn’t that long ago in the middle of a national crime wave, which it has done very little to solve, the FBI rushed a team of agents to a NASCAR garage after a character called Bubba Wallace suggested that a noose had been left in that garage. Turns out the noose was a garage door pull,” he said.
“I’m guessing this is #FakeNoose,” tweeted Dinesh D’Souza, bestselling author and documentary filmmaker.
“I’ll take ‘hate crime hoaxes’ for $3,500, Alex,” tweeted Scott Morefield at Townhall.
And Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire tweeted, “Definitely a hate crime. I can’t imagine any other reason why a rope would be on a construction site. Also, this is Chicago. It’s not a place known for hate crime hoaxes.”
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Walsh’s Chicago reference was an allusion to the high-profile hate crime hoax perpetrated by actor Jussie Smollet, who still insists he was attacked by two racist and homophobic Trump supporters in sub-zero temperatures on the streets of Chicago during a 2019 snowstorm. Smollett told police the two attackers wore “Make America Great Again” hats, beat him up, doused him with bleach and tied a noose around his neck.
Except Smollet had made the whole thing up, and in December 2021 was finally found guilty in court of having staged a fake hate crime to boost his acting career.
Smollet’s fake hate crime was not an exception. In fact, virtually every reported instance of supposed white supremacist “hate crimes” featuring nooses in modern times has turned out to be a hoax. As columnist and author Michelle Malkin noted in “Malkin’s handy history of fake noose,” “Fake Noose is a sick phenomenon that has run rampant across the country unchecked.” Here are a few examples of this “self-victimization pathology” Malkin cites:
* University of Delaware, 2015. Black Lives Matter agitators and campus activists triggered a full alert when a student spotted a “racist display” of three “noose-like objects” hanging from trees. The UD president called it “deplorable”; protesters wept that they were not being taken seriously. After investigating, police discovered the “nooses” were metal “remnants of paper lanterns” hung as decorations during an alumni weekend celebration.
* Salisbury State University, 2016. Students, faculty and administrators were horrified when a stick figure hanging from a noose on a whiteboard was discovered at the school’s library. The N-word and hashtag #WhitePower also appeared in the menacing graffiti. Campus authorities immediately launched an investigation, which exposed two black students as the perpetrators. Prosecutors declined to file criminal charges against the Fake Noosers.
* Kansas State University, 2017. A paroxysm of protest struck K-State after someone reported a noose hanging from a tree on campus. Black students lambasted authorities for not acting quickly enough. They stoked anger online with the hashtag #DontLeaveUsHanging and demanded increased security. But the “noose” was made of cut pieces of nylon parachute cord, which police believed had been discarded by someone who “may have simply been practicing tying different kinds of knots.”
* Michigan State University, 2017. When a student reported a noose hanging outside her dorm room, MSU administrators went into full freakout mode over the racial incident. Cops and the Office of Institutional Equity were immediately notified. “A noose is a symbol of intimidation and threat that has a horrendous history in America,” the university president bemoaned. But it turned out the “noose” was a “packaged leather shoelace” that someone had dropped accidentally.
* Smithsonian museums, 2017. NPR called the discovery of “nooses” lying on the grounds of two Smithsonian Institute museums the “latest in a string of hate incidents” after Trump’s election. The African-American museum director called them a “reminder of America’s dark history.” But the museums refused to release surveillance video and my public records request filed last November yielded zero corroboration of any hate crime.
* Mississippi State Capitol, 2018. ABC, CBS, CNN and Yahoo were among the media outlets that blared headlines about seven nooses and “hate signs” found hanging in trees by the capitol building before a special runoff election for U.S. Senate. The stories created an unmistakable impression that the nooses were left by GOP racists intending to intimidate black voters. In truth, the nooses were a publicity stunt perpetrated by Democrats.
In truth, a huge number of the highest-profile “hate crimes” of all sorts have turned out to be hoaxes, with the website FakeHateCrimes.org, which links to mainstream media reports, documenting close to 500 such fake hate crimes.
The syndrome – in Smollett’s case, finally exposed by a court of law for all to see – is seen by many as an attempt on the perpetrator’s part to enhance his own wealth, fame, opportunity, power and influence by clothing himself in the moral superiority and public adulation that, in today’s America, attach to anyone regarded as a victim of bigotry.
Or as Tucker Carlson put it, “Accusations of hate crimes, and bias more generally, are tools that the people in power use, not the powerless – the powerful – to award themselves greater and totally unearned moral authority over everybody else.”
Another likely reason many conservatives are skeptical of the latest Obama “noose” hate crime also has to do with the eerie parallel to the way today’s Democratic Party itself, historically the party of slavery, segregation and racism, also plays the “fake hate crime” game by defaming virtually everyone else to advance its power agenda while feigning moral superiority over Republicans, conservatives and America itself.
The party of slavery, segregation and the Klan
To illustrate this, Carol Swain, a professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University and herself a black woman, summarizes in a devastating, six-minute PragerUniversity.com video the Democratic Party’s true history of overt racial discrimination and opposition to every major civil rights initiative since its founding in 1829:
The Democratic Party defended slavery, started the Civil War, opposed Reconstruction, founded the Ku Klux Klan, imposed segregation, perpetrated lynchings, and fought against the civil rights acts of the 1950s and 1960s. In contrast, the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an anti-slavery party. Its mission was to stop the spread of slavery into the new western territories, with the aim of abolishing it entirely. This effort, however, was dealt a major blow by the Supreme Court in the 1857 case, Dred Scott v. Sandford. The court ruled that slaves aren’t citizens; they’re property. The seven justices who voted in favor of slavery – all Democrats. The two justices who dissented – both Republicans.
Ending slavery in America, of course, ultimately came at the expense of a bloody Civil War. “The commander in chief during that war,” notes Swain, “was the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed the slaves. Six days after the Confederate Army surrendered, John Wilkes Booth, a Democrat, assassinated President Lincoln.”
While the slaves were legally freed, explains Swain, as soon as Reconstruction had ended and the federal troops had gone home, “Democrats roared back into power in the south”:
They quickly re-established white supremacy across the region, with measures like “black codes” – laws that restricted the ability of blacks to own property and run businesses – and they imposed poll taxes and literacy tests used to subvert black citizens’ right to vote. And how was all of this enforced? By terror – much of it instigated by the Ku Klux Klan, founded by a Democrat, Nathan Bedford Forrest. As historian Eric Foner, himself a Democrat, notes: “In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party.”
But what about Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Weren’t Democrats the champions of the rights of blacks then?
As Swain recounts, “the only serious congressional opposition to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 came from Democrats.” In fact, she says, “Democratic senators filibustered the bill for 75 days until Republicans mustered the few extra votes needed to break the logjam.”
What about today, when Pew Research confirms that 90 percent of American blacks faithfully vote Democrat? Explains Swain:
When all of their efforts to enslave blacks, keep them enslaved, and then keep them from voting had failed, the Democrats came up with a new strategy: If black people are going to vote, they might as well vote for Democrats. As President Lyndon Johnson was reported to have said about the Civil Rights Act, “I’ll have them n*ggers voting Democrat for 200 years.”
So now, the Democratic Party prospers on the votes of the very people it has spent much of its history oppressing. Democrats falsely claim that the Republican Party is the villain, when in reality, it’s the failed policies of the Democratic Party that have kept blacks down: Massive government welfare has decimated the black family; opposition to school choice has kept them trapped in failing schools; politically correct policing has left black neighborhoods defenseless against violent crime.
This is the essential dynamic of today’s hate-crime hoaxes: Pretend you are a victim when, in reality, you are the victimizer. It is also the core essential nature of the left, which forever feigns victimhood as a way of advancing its own interests.
An email inquiry to the Chicago Police Department regarding the status of its investigation into the Obama Center noose case has gone unanswered as of publication time.
Via Wnd