Hate Crimes

Watching the local news this morning, I see that there was an incident in Harvard, MA where someone painted a swastika and other slurs on a large rock there. This is called a hate crime. There, in Harvard, neighbors were out in force repainting the rock white. And in my local community there also have been a rash of these incidents ever since Donald Trump was elected president. The question I have is why? Are people who identify with Trump so deplorable that they want to rub in their victory? Or are the losers feeling so aggrieved that they use such fakery as a way of fighting back? Like most things in life, it is a bit of both. There have been enough fake hate crimes discovered over the years that my antenna unfortunately automatically goes up whenever I hear of a new such affront.

I wish I knew what percentage of hate crimes were hoaxes ... but I do know that there are common enough that there is a sub-reddit site devoted to detailing them ... see: reddit Hate Crime Hoaxes. So what to do when one encounters the newest hate crime? My advice is to keep an open mind and pursue the resolution of such an incident with vigor until it can be definitely determine the validity of the accusation. If true, then suitably punish the offender with legal and/or social-ostracism means. If false, then try communicating to the aggrieved party how destructive such false claims can be. They damage the believability of the valid ones ... and, in extreme cases, use the criminal or civil legal system to discourage further such hoaxes. These guidelines, of course, need be adjusted for degrees of friendship and past veracity.

If the resolution is not to be determined, then one must accept the accuser's word ... but, doing so without an investigation is, IMHO, a sign of bleeding-heart liberalism.

Afterthought: The more I mull on things, the more I believe that the punishment for hoax hate crimes should be equivalent to that for actual ones.