In the internet age, it doesn’t appear to matter if you’re right or left because some people will do anything for attention.
There was a story yesterday about a conservative student at Princeton who claimed he was harassed and beaten up ostensibly by liberals for promoting a conservative values agenda on campus:
After receiving multiple death threats, a Princeton student was beat unconscious last Friday in what appears to be a politically-motivated assault. The attack came after emails saying, “WE WILL KILL YOU,” were sent to the officers of a student group that promotes traditional views of marriage and sexual ethics.Francisco Nava ‘09, suffered serious abrasions, bleeding, and a light concussion after being beat until he lost consciousness this Friday. The attack, which occurred within blocks of Princeton’s campus, appears to be connected to multiple death threats received by Nava and other officers in the Anscombe Society. Nava was assaulted on Witherspoon Street near the Princeton campus while walking to the home of a local youth he mentors through a student volunteer organization.The attackers did not take any of Nava’s belongings.
One of two assailants, identified as a white, college-aged male, stopped Nava and asked him if he would “help someone who’s been hurt.” The assailant then pulled Nava into a dark area where another male joined in holding Nava’s jaw shut. The two assailants thrust Nava’s face against a brick wall causing abrasions, according to an email sent to administrators. Nava was then punched until he lost consciousness. When he awoke the assailants were beating him with a glass bottle. Nava’s two attackers said, “shut the f* up,” apparently echoing words that had appeared in messages received by Nava and four others affiliated with the conservative Anscombe Society. After the assault, Nava was taken to Princeton Medical Center for treatment. He was released late Friday evening.
There were also some threatening emails sent to a couple of conservative professors.
However, there were a few weird items in Nava’s description of the attack. First and foremost were the “black clad” attackers. Ski masks I can see. But getting into a costume to rough up a classmate doesn’t sound very credible to me.
Also, the description of the beating given by Nava would have left anyone absorbing that kind of punishment in the hospital if not the morgue. While he went to the medical center, he was released after treatment.
Both of these parts of the story had my BS antenna on full when I read about it yesterday which is why I didn’t blog about it although some conservatives did. And sure enough, today we get the truth of the matter:
Francisco Nava ‘09 has admitted to fabricating an alleged assault on him that he said occurred Friday evening and also to sending threatening emails to himself, other members of the Anscombe Society and prominent conservative politics professor Robert George, Princeton Township Police said today.“He fabricated the story,” Det. Sgt. Ernie Silagyi said.
Nava was released to Public Safety and charges “have not been filed pending further investigation,” according to a statement from Township Police.
I suppose this is what happens when you criminalize thought. That is, hate crimes receive an inordinate amount of attention compared to a run of the mill assault. We have already seen numerous “victims” of hate crimes – most recently a fireman from Baltimore who faked a threatening note that was accompanied by a hangman’s noose – who filed false police reports because of the national attention drawn to racially motivated or religious bias attacks.
Most of the perps are young like Nava although a few teachers have also been caught faking on campus hate crimes. It raises an interesting question about the efficacy of criminalizing incorrect thinking.
Nobody is saying that hate crimes don’t occur. The question should be why make it a more serious crime as a result of how someone views the victim? At bottom, we are asking prosecutors to read the minds of criminals in order to determine whether a true hate crime was committed or not rather than words exchanged “in the heat of the moment” as so often occurs in scuffles and fights.
Then there are the racially motivated assaults and killings where it was somehow determined that sentencing under the old criminal statute was inadequate to address the nature of a hate crime. I find this an unconvincing argument if only because circumstances always play a roll in the sentencing decision by a judge who can throw the book at a perpetrator of a violent crime for his motivations just as hard if the criminal act was deemed a hate crime.
The national attention given many of these name calling attacks and threatening letters will almost certainly mean that we will continue to see these incidents staged so that some attention starved kid gets his name in the paper. In the case of young Mr. Nava and his fantasy of suffering for his political beliefs, let us hope the police come down hard on him as a warning to others what happens when you send the police on a wild goose chase.
4:37 pm
[...] Others: Sadly, No!, The Volokh Conspiracy, Daily Pundit, The Strata-Sphere, Fausta’s blog, Instapundit.com, TigerHawk, The Princeton Tory and Gateway Pundit, : Right Wing Nut House, The Princeton Tory, SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Nava ‘09 admits to fabricating assault”, url: “http://thepopulistblog.com/wordpress/2007/12/17/nava-09-admits-to-fabricating-assault/” }); This entry was written by Chuck Adkins, posted on December 17, 2007 at 4:36 pm, filed under Commentary, Conservative, Headlines, Humor, Neo-Conservatives, Opinion, Politics, Republicans, Stupidity, crazy stuff, idiots, news, right wing. Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. [...]
5:20 pm
Wait a minute: a conservative activist perpetuates an elaborate fraud to demonize liberals and the fault lies with… people who want to pass hate crime bills!? I thought conservatives were all for personal responsibility.
I’m going home to punch my mother in the mouth. Which would never have happened if the conservatives stopped pushing family values on everyone!
5:36 pm
Yeah if he filed a false police report, I say throw the book at him. What a maroon!
6:48 pm
Generally when someone gets charged with a hate crime, the person admits they did it because a victim was different,and/ or the crime is totally savage and disgusting as well as unprovoked.
People can think whatever they want. The hate crime comes when they terrorize, injure, or kill others as a way of sharing that thought.
I don’t see what a lying, attention craving crackpot, that imagines he is politically persecuted, has to do with insuring longer sentences for the lowest of scum.
Here is a perfect example of a justified charge for hate crimes, helping to make darn sure the perp never sees the light of day….
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,260289,00.html
9:50 pm
Ok….
So a wingnut poly sci student fakes an attack by non existant liberal black clad avengers.
And that’s why we should eliminate hate crime legislation?
I could get behind a movement to do away with “thought crimes”. So assuming you agree, let’s hope no one of any import uses this line of reasoning to do so.
OK?
10:07 pm
Are you brain dead?
This is at least the 5th time since I’ve been blogging that we’ve had these staged “hate crimes.” My point stands; people are more apt to fake a hate crime in order to get publicity than they are eager to fake a run of the mill assault.
You can’t really be stupid enough to dispute that, are you?
11:48 pm
Crackpots were faking assaults to get attention long before hate crimes legislation was even thought of.
This guy just saw a way of getting attention because of all the right wing blather about colleges and universities being “liberal bastions”. He’s just trying to please his brethren, show them they are right.
Brit Hume was “outraged” over this! Guess the student got what he wanted.
12:51 am
@ Rick:
The reason you see hate crimes being faked is because the people doing it are trying to get a message out—that usually gets it dropped into “hate crime” categorization. It’s not that the mythical attackers beat me up because of who I am, but what I stand for and represent. Faked assaults are designed to be pinned on a particular person—that makes it harder to call it a hate crime. By trying to make the assault about ideals, the whackjob is getting their free PR.
People faking this kind of attack is nothing new—it’s just being called “Hate Crime” now. This nimrod still would ahve faked it, and it still would have got the right people in wingnuttia all up in arms, regardless of what the classification.
Are you really trying to say that the paranoids on the Right would not have run with a story about a good, wholesome Rightie being assaulted by those free-love Leftie Bastards without the Hate Crime designation? That if it were just an assault (if there were no hate crime designation) the Rightie wackos wouldn’t have cared? Or are you suggesting that the wackos would never had heard of it without the HG designation, since the story wouldn’t have made it into the media? If it’s the latter, since the kid staged it to gather sympathy for his cause, don’t you think he’d have called every wacko personally to spread the word? Doesn’t do any good to beat yourself up for sympathy unless you let people know how sympathetic you are?
And you calling other people brain-dead? For somebody who often is pretty rational that’s pretty moronic thinking.
2:40 pm
“Are you brain dead?”
Of course not. If I were you’d have your entire party trying to keep my feeding tube in.
But nice argument you’ve got there. When totally discredited what other reply could you use?