By Matthew Delaney
There’s a reason Jussie Smollett is an actor. The final draft of his Hate Crime Special would’ve never made it out of the writer’s room.
The incident occurred on Jan. 2019, in the dead of night during a polar vortex. Two men called the Empire star a “f****t n****r” out in the street and reminded him that deep blue Chicago “is MAGA country.” Then, they assaulted him, poured bleach on him, and threw a noose around his neck.
Eyebrows raised all over America when this came out (foaming-at-the-mouth racist conservatives live in Chicago, and they’re fans of Empire…?). That is, unless you were a host on Good Morning America or the future Vice President, or even Donald Trump.
Chicago police took this crime very seriously. So seriously that, after reviewing hours of surveillance footage, they became skeptical of Smollett’s story less than a month later.
Things unraveled quickly from there. Police alleged that the two people who carried out the attack not only did it at the behest of Smollett, but they were Nigerian brothers — a far cry from the “white” description of the assailants the actor originally gave police. Evidence produced by the police showed that Smollett even wrote them a check for their troubles.
In a short amount of time, Smollett went from the latest and greatest victim in Trump’s America to being the butt of jokes of Dave Chappelle and Charles Barkley.
The prosecution made him look even more like a joke when it successfully argued that:
- Smollett and the brothers were caught on camera doing “dry runs” of the attack by circling the block where it would eventually take place
- Smollett gave the brothers $100 to buy materials for the attack
- Smollett changed his description of the attackers from “white” to “pale”
- The rope around Smollett’s neck had been tampered with to appear more like a noose by the time police arrived
Despite all this, the actor insisted on playing to the social justice jury rather than the actual jury by regurgitating his Twitter drafts on the witness stand.
For instance, he said, “he would’ve never called the police” the night of the attack because as a “black man in America, I don’t trust police.” And when prosecutor Daniel Webb read the word “n***a” from an Instagram message, Smollett asked him to refrain from using that word “out of respect for every African-American in the courtroom.”
His legal team even tried to get a mistrial declared and one defense attorney said that the judge “lunged” at her. Basically, they were flailing, and the (real) jury knew it when they delivered a guilty verdict on five of the six charges brought against him.
But the social justice jury didn’t want anything to do with Smollett either. That’s because his case lacked any of the ambiguity the movement uses as cover for its manipulative and divisive preaching.
Maybe you’ve noticed, but one theme every social issue has in common is that it assumes peoples’ intentions, particularly when it comes to race. We all know what happens thanks to investigations and videos in cases like George Floyd and Michael Brown. But as Americans with a shared desire to constantly improve ourselves, we also want to know why it happened so we can fix it.
Enter social justice warriors with the answers. They tell you racism motivated Derek Chauvin to put his knee on Floyd’s neck, or it was racism that caused Darren Wilson to shoot Brown. It’s not just the racism of one individual, though — silly of you to think that! — it’s in every white person (and every non-white person who doesn’t agree that it’s in every white person).
To get rid of this virus, people must take diversity workshops at their jobs, have their kids be reminded of their privilege at school, be lectured by the media about white supremacy, and watch rioters burn down their city.
Their brand of “justice” thrives when activists get to prescribe an intent that serves their self-aggrandizing vision of the country. But when the intent is obvious, that opportunity vanishes.
That’s why the social justice clique doesn’t care if you speak their language like Smollett did on the witness stand. Just like they don’t care if you’re actually murdered by someone out of racist hatred as was shown in the Ahmaud Arbury case.
All they care about is if there’s room to infuse enough fear and shame into the conversation that you’ll submit to becoming a better, woke-r version of yourself. In the process, you’ll spread their authority as anti-racist clairvoyants…and help boost their status and pad their bank account, too.
Smollett can’t be acknowledged any longer than is necessary because he is such a vivid reflection of what social justice stands for. The actor behaved in the same morally hollow, inflammatory way that the movement does — with both using the pain of racism as a means of self-promotion. Only worse, Smollett lived out the SJW character with a simplicity that embarrasses the high-minded opinions its thought leaders hold of themselves.
It’s why they all look away, unless they want to look directly at the sham that is their own “movement.”
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