Week Seven in Trump’s America: Eighteen Hate Hoaxes and Counting

In the weeks surrounding Donald Trump’s election to the office of President of the United States, the public was confronted with a horrifying deluge of viral stories regarding the rise of hate incidents in America.

These stories, and the analysis they provoked, were viewed and shared millions of times over the last seven weeks, helping to cement the popular narrative that “the cost of Donald Trump’s rise is a nation ever more divided by pro-Trump racism, misogyny, religious bigotry, and violence.”

This narrative has been largely maintained by its proponents, despite the long list of hate crime hoaxes* that have been revealed in the weeks following the election.

Here is a selection of some of the confirmed cases:

• the Texas family whose car and motorcycle were burned, and whose garage was spray-painted with “n****r lover”, only to have his wife later reveal that her husband had hoaxed the community by doing it himself.
• the black, “white supremacist” arrested for the infamous burned-down black church which had “Vote Trump” written on it:
• the South Philly graffiti — “Black Bitch”, “Trump Rules” — arrest made, turns out to be black “white supremacist”.
• the young lady who was arrested for fabricating a story about an attack by racists on a NYC subway while yelling “Donald Trump”.
• the young lady from Ann Arbor who fabricated a terrifying tale of a Trump supporter threatening that he’d burn the hijab off of her if she didn’t take it off.
• the University of Louisiana at Lafayette student who now admits she fabricated her claim that men wearing Trump hats attacked her, knocked her down, and stole her headscarf.
• the brown, “white supremacist” arrested for writing KKK and swastikas at Nassau community college.
• the Bowling Green student who was arrested after falsely claiming she was attacked and taunted with racial slurs by MAGA-gear wearing Trump supporters.
• another student at BGSU who fabricated a story about a robbery and derogatory slur.
• a black man in Malden (Boston area) who claimed he was forced to run for his life after being threatened with lynching, chased, and told that “It’s Trump country now”, but then admitted he fabricated the story.
• the man who hung a nazi flag in SF (incidentally, across the street from his neighbors whose family members were Holocaust victims), only to later explain he was making an anti-Trump political statement.
• the “throat-punching” woman who claimed to have bashed the fash only to be inexplicably handcuffed for her trouble, but who police say fabricated the incident.
• Williams College students who admitted they wrote KKK graffiti and dumped fake blood in a church to “bring attention to the effects of the presidential election.”
• bisexual North Park University student whose school says fabricated hateful pro-Trump messages.
• an Elon University hate message that received national attention, “Bye bye latinos hasta la vista”, but was later revealed to be written by a Latino student who was upset about the results of the election and wrote the message as a “satirical commentary”.
• these Wellesley college kids, accused of screaming racist and homophobic slurs, were cleared of charges when it was determined they were only yelling “Make America Great Again”.
• the black, “white supremacist” whose sign reading “You can hang a n****r from a tree, equal rights he’ll never see” went viral as an example of post-election bigotry, but who was protesting mistreatment in probate court.
• the woman who was supposedly threatened at a gas station with a gun by Trump supporters, but who never contacted police and has now deleted her accusation.

*I am using the word “hoax” as a catch-all for hoaxes, incidents that never happened, “false flags”, misunderstood satire/protest that went viral, etc.