Hateful Dispatch
How to know when words are ops
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, there was a public conversation about the definition of the word “terrorism.” The debate centered around whether or not the term had any substantive meaning, or if it’s actual function was to create a new and distinct category of criminality that would be denied access to the normal justice system. At the time, I was partial to the definition that terrorism was “violence more focused on achieving negative psychological and social outcomes than material or strategic ones.” The problem with this definition is that it applies to the majority of state warfare, including the “shock and awe” phase of our invasion of Iraq and most of our campaign against ISIS. War is principally concerned with demoralizing the enemy as armies surrender when they run out of hope, always well before they run out of soldiers. Now that the word has been applied to hundreds of American citizens who committed trespassing crimes and did not in fact kill anyone, I think we can say that this word is just an op.
When I say “op” I mean that a particular word or phrase is meant to imply a lot of content that is not actually stated. For example, if you call someone a “terrorist,” your audience will assume this means they are violently seditious. If you are challenged to substantiate those implications, you can retreat to a narrower version of the broad concept, for instance that these people wanted to “terrorize” their political opponents. This is basic motte and bailey stuff. I don’t always know the source of these manipulations, or who they benefit, but the public certainly has an interest in resisting them. Ultimately, had terrorism been treated as a normal criminal problem and tackled with law enforcement tools we’d have more money, less dead troops and probably a greatly enhanced position in the world. This is a speculative position, but if you’re interested I can defend it.
I think the phrase “hate crime” is also an op. It has no comprehensible purpose beyond sewing the type of fear that sells newspapers and funds the sort of fake NGO work that employs failsons and white women. Speaking of useless NGOs, all the statistics we are currently debating about hate crimes against Asian Americans come from an organization called Stop AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) Hate. With two clicks on their website, you can report your own hate crime incident. There does not need to be a police report or a confirmation that you’re Asian, just fill out the form. I’ve submitted several reports implicating my roommates and some of you readers already this morning.
Stop AAPI Hate itself is a joint project of three other groups: the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON), Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA), and the Asian American Studies Department (AAS) at the San Francisco State University. Do you think a group called “Chinese for Affirmative Action” might have an interest in pushing back against the narrative that Asians are basically white? Call me cynical, but I think they probably do. Well what would you do if Asians were doing pretty well in America and the grievance gravy train was rolling out of Chinatown at alarming speed? I live in Washington DC, so I can answer this question: you take whatever normative level of violent crime is affecting your community and you begin to create a paper trail that seems to substantiate a targeted phenomenon. In other words, you launder chaotic and meaningless reality into advantageous narrative. This is what Stop AAPI Hate appears to be doing.
It is true that there were more violent crimes targeting Asians in 2020 than 2019, but this is likely due to the general and alarming explosion in violent crime. We could talk about why that spike occurred, but as the kids say yall aint ready for that conversation. I’m sure this seems dickish to write in the wake of a deadly attack, but we really need to think about this. Why must hate crimes exist as a category? Are we better off because we know Dylan Roof wanted to start a race war? Why tell the world about his psychotic world view in the first place. If you kill ten people in a church, I will assume you hated them and whatever the motive you should go to jail for the rest of your life or perhaps be killed by the state (I am against the death penalty so this isn’t my jam but I’ll concede that if anyone should get it, it’s Roof.)
No one can satisfactorily explain why it is important to categorize certain crimes as motivated by bigotry or why such a subjective and psychological determination should ever intersect with formal legal proceedings. What people will say is that categorizing these crimes as such helps us identify and address distinct kinds of crime. This is circular and unsubstantiated. It boils down to something like: this NGO will start characterizing 1/10 violent interactions as based on racial hatred so that racial hatred metrics will go up and the NGO that fights that hatred obviously needs more funding. And around and around we go.
And this is why this shit matters and why I risk being a dickhead in writing about it this way: the people that tell us they are going to solve our problems are tearing us apart. The “hate crime” concept is a part of a broader psychological war on the public by institutions that benefit materially from the spread of paranoia and hostility. This shit will kill us.
And if you still feel like this concept has merit because it reflects a real phenomenon, whatever the implications, let’s look at some of the most canonical hate crimes. The Shepard/Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act, signed into law by Barack Obama in 2008, was partially named after Matthew Shepard, a young man tortured and murdered in Laramie, supposedly because he was gay. As was later revealed by intrepid gay journalist Stephen Jimenez, Matthew Shepard was killed in a drug deal gone awry. This dramatic correction to the original interpretation of events is almost never mentioned in the media, and there is still an LGBT organization in Shepard’s name that receives public funds (they may do good work and I don’t want to take their money, I just want the name to be changed).
The amount of hate crimes that operate like this is well…a lot of them. There are new revelations about the Omar Mateen killings in Orlando. Did NPR tell you that a bouncer testified that Mateen was confused as to why there weren’t any women at the Pulse Night Club? I didn’t think so. This matters because the idea that Mateen was a self-hating gay colored the media treatment of Mateen’s wife, who was viewed as a potential co-conspirator instead of herself a victim of Mateen’s violent sexual abuse. As the Intercept put it, “The view that Mateen deliberately targeted the LGBT community is almost certainly false. Yet it may play a large role in sending a potentially innocent woman to prison.”
And we can also consider this sort of thing in reverse. It is irrefutably the case that Orthodox Jews are the targets of violence in New York City, and that most of the perpetrators are young Latino or black men. Nevertheless, the media does not regularly mention the race of the perpetrators when discussing such crimes. I am not outraged by this, I think it’s the correct decision. I think the race of the perpetrators and the victims in these cases may almost totally be a function of class relations and the demographics of New York. In other words, I don’t think noting that the assailants are usually black or brown helps us protect Jewish New Yorkers. Reader, you probably agree that anyone who insists it is extremely important to focus on race in this instance has bad motives. I wish you would apply this logic far more broadly.
I am not saying that bigotry is not a motive in any violent crime, I am saying that our existing laws can handle this, and motive should only matter so much in sentencing. Murderers should go to jail for a long time, thieves less so. Does this change much if either criminal is racist? I don’t think it should and what’s more I think our betters know that “hate crimes” aren’t a useful concept for fighting crime or preventing violence. It’s a useful concept for dividing people, for making Americans more mutually suspicious, more solicitous of authority to protect them and more confused about the world around them. In other words, hate crimes are an op and if you buy it, you’re a mark. Now there’s something to hate.