NYPD Cracks Down on ‘Neo-Nazis’ . . .

Some victims are useful to politicians and journalists. These victims are martyrs, and their stories can be told again and again. Other lives don’t matter.

Aside from grieving friends and family, few know names such as Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. If you mention them, journalists might mock you or call you racist.

When a non-white kills a white, there is no political significance. The killing was “senseless.” Politicians say the murderers had “unfathomable” motives or that victims were in “the wrong place at the wrong time.” The political class doesn’t want to discuss who disproportionately commits crime.

However, sometimes journalists and politicians can’t decide whether or how to publicize a story. The recent shooting in Jersey City is an example. Earlier this week, two blacks, Francine Graham and David Anderson, attacked a kosher grocery store. They killed four people. Authorities are still investigating, but the attackers were probably motivated by anti-Semitism, and deliberately targeted Jews.

The Jewish victims are in a civil-rights protected class. Unfortunately for journalists and politicians, so were the killers. Yet journalists can shape perceptions so effectively that a United States congresswoman evidently believed “white supremacists” were the killers, days after their identities were revealed.

Congresswoman Tlaib deleted her tweet and instead posted an article about an “anti-Semitic” attack by “armed gunmen.” That article did not mention the killers’ race. In a follow-up tweet, the congresswoman smoothly switched the blame from “white supremacy” to “gun violence.”

We must do so much more to fight it and stem the tide of gun violence. My love goes out to the victims, the first responders, their families, and the community of #JerseyCity.

— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) December 11, 2019

Where might she have got the idea that “white supremacy” was on the march, slaughtering Jews? The day before her tweet, the New York Times published a story called, “With Rise of Far-Right Extremists, N.Y.P.D. Creates Special Unit.” The “Racially and Ethnically Motivated Extremism” (R.E.M.E.) unit “will be primarily dedicated to investigating terror threats from far-right and neo-Nazi organizations, including groups like the Atomwaffen Division and The Proud Boys.”

The article mentioned the Jersey City killings but did not identify the murderers’ race. It did note the late Mr. Anderson’s “history of posting anti-Semitic and anti-police rhetoric online,” but nothing more. The New York Times never actually said that Anderson was one of those dangerous white fanatics, but it would be easy for the reader to think he was.

The Proud Boys are not a “neo-Nazi” organization, and they are not white advocates. Nevertheless, New York law enforcement recently sentenced two members to four years in jail after a brawl with antifa. They did this even though the masked antifa did not cooperate with police, did not testify, and did not report a crime. Conservatism Inc. figures such as National Review’s Rich Lowry cheered the prosecution. The FBI reportedly said to a Sheriff’s Office that the Proud Boys is an “extremist” organization that “openly advocates the overthrow of the federal government” — a ludicrous charge. The FBI later withdrew this, but the initial smear had already done its work.

In contrast, David Anderson was reportedly a “one-time follower” of the Black Hebrew Israelites, which is a real extremist group. Anyone who has spent time in New York City, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, or other major cities has probably seen Black Hebrews ranting on the sidewalks about being the “real” chosen people. You can also find them at various protests. The Black Hebrew Israelites were the ones who started the confrontation at the March for Life, when they screamed obscenities and racial slurs at the schoolboys from Covington Catholic. (For what it’s worth, they also insulted American Indians.)

The Black Hebrew Israelites and other pseudo-religious movements such as various varieties of “Moor” often criticize police in violent terms. A few people associated with these groups have murdered police. The Jersey City shootout was just the latest example. Yet American Renaissance reported in April that the Anti-Defamation League’s reports on “Murder and Extremism” lumps in crimes by “Moors” with “far-right extremism.” If history is any guide, the 2020 ADL report will blame the “far right” for the Jersey City murder victims, and this claim will be dutifully repeated by the media.

The late Mr. Anderson was reportedly a military veteran. Any future statistics about the terrorist threat posed by “far right” military veterans may also include his case.

In 2017, the FBI issued a report on Black Identity Extremism. However, the same New York Times that bemoaned the “rise of far-right extremists” in a straight news piece published an op-ed calling that report “dangerous.” It’s a sharp contrast to the paper’s cheerleading tone about the new “R.E.M.E.” unit. Needless to say, I’ve seen no self-examination from journalists or entertainers about whether anti-police movies such as Queen & Slim are radicalizing blacks.

The Intercept said Black Identity Extremism was “fictional” in March 2019 and reported just two months ago that the FBI “spends a lot of time spying on black Americans” because of the “unfounded domestic terrorism category it called ‘black identity extremism.’” In contrast, The Intercept wrote worryingly about “far-right violence” in August 2019, including from the “violence-prone” Proud Boys.

The Washington Post reports that many Jews are “afraid” after the Jersey City attack. ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt said it was “another incident in a long line of violent incidents targeting the Jewish community,” and that there was an “epidemic.”

He may be right. In October, the Jewish Telegraph Agency reported that the NYPD recorded 311 hate crimes through September 2019, compared to 250 in the same period in 2018. Most victims were Jews. A month ago, Mr. Greenblatt and Brooklyn Borough president “announced a new initiative” to fight anti-Semitic hate crimes, including a reported “93 incidents of anti-Semitic violence, harassment, and vandalism in 2018” in Brooklyn alone.

Yet who are the criminals? Almost never are they white.

In a speech to a Jewish group, NYPD Deputy Inspector Mark Molinari dismissed the “national narrative” and said “there aren’t roving bands of white supremacists, from khakis to tiki torches to hood-wearing people.”

Jews know who their attackers are. “Violent assaults have mostly taken place in the Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn,” reports Forward, “and many have been perpetrated by young black men, according to video surveillance footage.”

“The fact that the victims are most outwardly identifiable, i.e., religious rather than secularized Jews, and the perpetrators who have been recorded on CCTV cameras are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic,” said Tablet, “inverts the perpetrator-victim dynamics with which most national Jewish organizations and their supporters are comfortable.” The piece, called, “Everybody Knows,” said “a close look” showed “no apparent connections to neo-Nazis, the alt-right, Donald Trump, jihadism, the BDS movement, or any other traditional cause of anti-Jewish behavior.”

The same author, Robert Cherry, has written extensively on Jewish history and culture. “There is little pressure on the NYPD from activists who are normally quick to denounce hate crimes and bigotry,” he recently wrote in The New York Post. “What explains this silence? The perpetrators have been disproportionately black.”

Yet the coming crackdown will be disproportionately directed against whites. Liberal politicians want gun control, which will disproportionately affect whites. The Jersey City shooting will be another data point for the ADL and others to decry “anti-Semitism” and urge censorship of white advocates who had nothing to do with the crime.

Unfortunately for us, the story the political class wants to hear has nothing to do with the facts. The exciting myth about “domestic terrorism” is more useful to them than more boring facts about black crime.