June 16, 2009 Cal State’s Brian Levin And The Case Of The “Hate Crime” That Wasn’t. (Guess Why Not)Last week's
shooting at the Holocaust
Museum has made
“hate crimes” a
front page issue once again. It
may give the stalled federal hate crimes bill the
added boost it needs to become law. In James von Brunn,
the media seems to have discovered its carefully
created stereotype of a hate criminal: an old, bitter
white man with a history of violence, who denies the
Holocaust, despises non-whites and holds bizarre
conspiracy theories. The usual suspects have
hustled to take advantage of their good fortune.
Brian Levin
(email
him), a Cal State San Bernardino criminal justice
professor and a
"civil-rights attorney"
who used to work with the Southern Poverty Law Center
($PLC), declared in a CNN.com article,
Hate groups threatened by diversity:
"Yesterday, less than a mile from the White
House, an old bigoted white man was suspected of firing
back his response at the place where America
tries to draw lessons
from ... hatred. Yesterday's shooting is the latest in a
series of murderous attacks by erratic far-right-wing
extremist ‘lone wolves’ over the
past three months. When shocking violence like this
arises, commentators point to various factors including
mental illness, political debates and the availability
of
guns.
“We, however, must first
acknowledge the hand of a small but expanding hate
movement as a potent, yet invisible, accomplice that
incites and inspires society's disaffected to serve as
its most violent warriors." Levin mentions the pending
hate crimes bill as
"good news" near the
end of his column. Leftist blogs such as
TPMCafe are exploiting the incident to push for
censorship and/or punishment of views they don't like:
"Hate speech and hate crimes are sociological,
not just psychological. It's ridiculous to look at one
of these crimes from the shortened perspective of the
point of the gun to the victim. It's much bigger than
that. That's why I think it's a misconception to
conclude any racist who takes someone's life 'acted
alone' or is 'a lone wolf'
“Instigation is critical
here. We need to make a serious assessment of those who
disguise their hate speech as free speech."
[When it comes to hate crimes, there's no such thing as "acting alone".
June 10, 2009, 8:47PM]
But two weeks before the von
Brunn shootings, The San Jose Mercury News ran a
short article about a similar crime that was just as
deadly as the Holocaust Museum incident.
The killers were motivated
by the same type of hatred and extremism. Yet, for some strange
reason, the murder has attracted
almost no attention or outrage. In July 2007, Michael Wills,
a white man, was shot and killed by two members of Your
Black Muslim Bakery. As the name suggests, the
bakery was a racial-nationalist outfit with ties to
the Nation of Islam (the store even displayed a
prominent picture of NOI founder
Elijah Muhammed). Yusuf Bey IV, the leader of the now-defunct
bakery, and Antoine Mackey, one of Bey's followers, were
charged with shooting Wills in the head with an assault
rifle. The Mercury News
article leaves no doubt as to the racial motive of the
murder:
"Devaughndre Broussard, another Bey IV follower
who has admitted to killing
journalist Chauncey Bailey, told a prosecutor in March
that Bey IV and Mackey bragged they killed Wills because
of his race. The two saw him walking in North Oakland as
they were discussing a string of racially motivated
murders in the 1970s known as the Zebra killings.
“'They was laughing about
and joking about,' Broussard said of Bey IV and Mackey.
“Mackey 'said he seen the
white dude walking down the path ... then he shot him,'
Broussard added.
“Bey IV later said,
‘We got a
devil. White people are devils,’ according to
Broussard's statement.
“Then Broussard said Bey IV
talked about ‘a devil mentality. A black man can be a
devil if he's against his people.’ Bey IV and his late
father, bakery founder Yusuf Bey, have often, while
preaching, referred to white people as ‘devils.’ And in
telephone calls recorded from the Santa Rita Jail in
Dublin and obtained by the Chauncey Bailey Project, Bey
IV often made similar statements, referring to ‘white
and Jew devils’ and ‘media devils’ whom he claims are
trying to destroy him."[Former bakery leader accused
of saying 'white people are devils' after 2007 killing, By Josh Richman and Thomas, May 26, 2009] An open and shut case of a
racially-motivated hate crime? Think again. Prosecutors
are not
seeking a hate crime charge against Bey IV and Mackey. And that decision meets with
the approval of those who direct race policy in America.
The Mercury News article continues:
"Prosecutors tend to be very hesitant to charge
hate crime cases "...
because they're really, really hard to prove: You have
to prove the offender's motive beyond a reasonable
doubt,"
explained Associate Professor Phyllis Gerstenfeld, [Email her]
a ‘hate-crime expert’ who
chairs the criminal justice
program at Cal State, Stanislaus.
‘Hate crimes are the only
criminal acts that require you to prove motive beyond a
reasonable doubt... and we can't read people's minds.’" We can’t? Prosecutors had no
problems reading the minds of the
James Byrd and
Matthew Shepherd killers. Nor are they likely to have much
problem peering into von Brunn's thought process. According to the Mercury
News, a certain
"civil rights attorney"
agrees that hate crime charges do not make sense
in this particular case. He said:
"Why go through having to interject something
that now has to be proven to a particular standard?
It can be highly appropriate for (prosecutors)
tactically to avoid overburdening the jury with
additional items. Sometimes the cleanest, simplest case
is the best." The person making these
remarks: none other than Cal State San Bernadino’s Brian
Levin—who had no problem lecturing us about the threat
posed by "an old bigoted white man"
only weeks later. Unlike
"civil rights"
attorneys, the distraught Wills family wants to pursue a
hate crime charge. According to Patrick Wills, younger
brother of the victim:
"Everybody knows the only
reason (Michael Wills) was shot was because he was
white. So I don't see any reason why that (hate crime
enhancement) should not be part of the charges. For it
to not to be there is horrible."
Horrible or not, the
decision not to pursue hate crime charges against the
killers of Wills is not surprising given the race of the
victim and the shooters. But Your Black Muslim Bakery
has a long history of racial violence that leaves von
Brunn in the shade. Though held up as a model of black
self sufficiency, the bakery was linked to widespread
physical and sexual abuse, intimidation, welfare fraud,
and murder. Bey IV and Mackey also had good reason to
joke about the
Zebra Killings as some of the killers—all black Muslims—were
connected to the bakery
according to Clark Howard, author of Zebra The
Zebra Killings occurred
in the San Francisco bay
area between 1972 and 1974. Though seldom discussed, they are the worst case of racially-motivated
serial murder in U.S. history. Carried out by black
Muslims who went looking to kill
"white devils",
the attacks left up to
71 people dead and many
injured. Bey IV and Mackey were
apparently looking to add to this legacy. The
late Sam Francis used to note that
some hate crimes
are more equal than others. The different
reactions to the von Brunn and Your Black Muslim Bakery
shootings prove that nothing has changed. When the hate crimes bill is
debated in the Senate
you can be sure the names
Matthew Shepard, James Byrd, James von Brunn and Stephen
Johns, the black guard killed in the Holocaust Museum
shooting, will be highlighted. You can also be sure that
the names Michael Wills, Yusuf Bey IV and Antoine Mackey
will never be mentioned. The hate crimes bill, if
passed, will certainly stifle free speech and strengthen
the thought police. It will also be yet another exercise
in unequal and selective justice. Peter Bradley [Send him email] writes from Washington, D.C. |
,
the definitive book on the murders.[Read
the first chapter (