Here’s the thing about the Jussie Smollett case: it feels both strange and familiar. Strange because, as observers have pointed out, Smollett has a successful music and acting career, most notably in the Fox hip-hop soap opera Empire, and yet here he is risking it all by inventing a mad tale about having been semi-lynched by a couple of MAGA racists. And yet it also feels familiar, creepily familiar. After all, we live in a society in which it is positively cool to suffer from ‘structural oppression’. In which campaigners actively covet hatred, constantly trawling for evidence that their group, their identity, their tribe is more loathed and wronged than any other. Hell, we live in a society in which young people cut themselves with knives and boastfully post photos of their wounds on social media. In such a climate, Smollett’s possible self-administering of a cut to his cheek and his phoney claim that he was violently insulted by modern-day white supremacists starts to make sense as a snapshot of our sick society.
Smollett’s story has gripped the US media. He claimed that in January he was subjected to a racist and homophobic attack by two men (he is gay). He said the men jumped him, bombarded him with racist and anti-gay insults, poured some kind of chemical substance on him, tied a rope around his neck, and said: ‘This is MAGA country.’ Not only was his story instantly believed by much of the media and by many ‘progressive’ politicians and celebs – it was also weaved into a broader narrative about how horrific life has become for minority groups in Trump’s America. This is what happens, observers claimed, when a prejudiced oaf ascends to the White House, courtesy of the thoughtless voting habits of the redneck throng. This assault proves our theory, they insisted, that white supremacy still stalks the American Republic. Actress Ellen Page blubbed on TV and basically held VP Mike Pence responsible for Smollett’s near lynching: prejudiced speech triggers violent behaviour, she said.
Against the State: An ...
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Some people started to raise doubts. Smollett’s story doesn’t add up, they said. They were shouted down as alt-right and uncaring. Yet now we know that these doubters, these sceptics, these people who refused to do what we are all expected to do in this witch-hunty era – instantly believe every accusation of racist or sexual violence – were right. Smollett’s story has fallen apart. The Chicago Police denied for weeks that they had any suspicions about his tale. Perhaps they didn’t want to be seen to be questioning the claims of a gay, black man, or casting doubt on an accusation of hate crime – such is the self-silencing induced by the censorious, racially charged, racially guarded culture of identitarianism. Yet now the cops have charged Smollett with filing a false report. It is now widely thought that he encouraged two Nigerian brothers, acquaintances of his, to carry out the ‘attack’. There is video evidence of the brothers buying things that were used in the attack. There is phone evidence that Smollett told them what to buy. This case tells us a broader story all right – not about Trump’s America but about the more pathological elements of political correctness.
What we have here is a man orchestrating an attack on himself. A self-hate crime, if you will. It sounds alarming yet, as the journalist Andy Ngo recently documented, there have been many cases in recent years where ‘hate attacks’ on property or people that were thought to have been carried out by white racists were in fact executed by members of minority groups and sometimes simply made up. And yet any questioning of alleged hate crimes, or of accusations of sexual harassment, or even of the claim that ‘Islamophobia’ and ‘transphobia’ are serious problems is instantly shouted down.
