It was announced a week ago that the bizarre hate crime of which actor Jussie Smollett alleges he was a victim and the subsequent clean-up of his mess by incompetent fixer State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is going to be investigated by a special prosecutor. This turn of events reminded me of yard signs. On your leisurely summer walks, have you seen those yard signs that cropped up all over Illinois and other states over the past three years—you know, the ones with the banal expression “HATE HAS NO HOME HERE”? Who could disagree with such a statement, and, therefore, why a yard sign? Well, there’s text and then there’s subtext and history. The text expresses an important idea commonly held. So, why make a yard sign to announce a commonplace verity to every passerby every day for three years? Ah, now we come to the subtext, but first the fascinating history that the mainstream press did a very poor job illuminating.

On November 15, 2016, exactly one week after the election of President Donald Trump, NBC News Chicago reported that bisexual student Taylor Volk, then a senior at the purportedly Christian North Park University, said she had received two anonymous emails and a note taped to her door that contained “homophobic slurs,” “harassing, threatening language” and references to Trump. Volk further claimed that such occurrences were a “nationwide epidemic.”

Just three days later, on November 18, it was breathlessly reported that six social justice warriors (actually seven) from the North Park neighborhood had already created the yard signs. Kurt Peterson, Barbara Nordlund, Steven Velez Luce, Megan Trinter, Carmen Rodriguez, Jeanne Marie Olson, and Catherine Korda were the eager, hate-hating beavers who had yard signs ready to go just three days after the traumatized Volk was interviewed by the press.

But then things took an unexpected turn, though why it was unexpected is surprising.

A week after Volk’s story made the news, an investigation revealed her entire story was—wait for it—a hoax. But “progressives” can’t let either a crisis or a hoax go to waste. Gotta mine even hoaxes for propaganda gold. So, with very little press on the hoax, the gang of seven were able to disseminate their banal, virtue-signaling yard signs around the country and even the world, although oddly the website doesn’t mention the hoax in the group’s background myth.

Now for the subtext or subtexts. While the text suggests that community members reject hatred—which most community members in most communities do—the subtext coming on the heels of Volk’s Hoax is that Trump is a hater, that those who voted for him (you know, the “deplorables”) are haters, and that those who disagree with the arguable assumptions of  “progressives” on immigration or the “LGBTQ” ideology are haters.

These yard signs are the neighborhood equivalent of “safe space” stickers that regressive public school teachers/activists affix to their desks and regressive corporate employees affix to their desks and cubicle dividers. These yard signs and stickers are cunning strategic devices. First, they are political announcements masquerading as noble humanitarian gestures. Second, their absence implies that community members, teachers, or corporate employees with naked yards, desks, cubicles, or offices are insufficiently “woke,” unsafe, intolerant, bigoted haters. And so, “progressive” mission accomplished.

Safety and hatred, like tolerance, ignorance, bigotry, and equality, have been redefined. Now safety refers to and requires the affirmation of “progressive” assumptions about immigration and about the nature and morality of homosexual acts and cross-sex impersonation. And hatred refers to the affirmation of conservative assumptions about immigration and the nature and morality of homosexual acts and cross-sex impersonation.

The next time a “progressive” starts caterwauling that conservatives are divisive, remember what “progressives” do. They actually threaten and attack conservatives. They continually spread the poisonous lie to immigrants and members of the “LGBTQ” community—including children and teens—that those who hold conservative moral and political beliefs hate them. And they concoct hateful, divisive hoaxes to foment more “progressive” hatred.

Here’s a list of hoaxes alleging anti-“gay” and/or racist incidents. I’m sure government schoolteachers will be covering these in their unit on political hoaxes. Taylor Volk was right. There is an epidemic—an epidemic of Leftist hoaxes designed to spread hatred of conservatives:

Jussie Smollett can’t block special prosecutor in alleged hate hoax case, judge rules (New York Daily News)

Jackson gay rights leader accused of burning down own home (The Detroit News)

Student Charged with Making Anti-Gay Threats against Herself (National Review)

Christian college student lied about harassment from Trump supporters (Gay Star News)

A black student wrote those racist messages that shook the Air Force Academy, school says (The Washington Post)

Lesbian couple accused of faking hate crime (KDVR.com)

Whole Foods: ‘Anti-Gay Cake’ a Hoax (Daily Beast)

Racist, anti-LGBT flier found outside Dallas nightclub appears to be hoax (DallasNews.com)

Woman sentenced to 90 days for hate-crime hoax (Wisconsin Gazette)

Was ‘Relentlessly Gay’ Homeowner’s Fundraiser Just A Hoax? (HuffPost)

‘I don’t want to die!’: Leading gay ‘marriage’ activist in Ohio faked his own abduction (LifeSiteNews)

Anti-gay hate crime at University of North Dakota fraternity deemed a hoax (The Washington Times)

Tennessee lesbian couple faked hate crime and destroyed own home with arson for insurance claim, jury rules (Daily News)

Man faked homophobic threats and firebombing, Utah police say (CNN)

Owner admits setting fire to gay nightclub in Oak Park (ABC7Chicago.com)

Transgender teen girl admits lying about sexual assault ‘hate crime’ in high school bathroom (LifeSiteNews.com)

Man who claimed he was beaten for being gay admits he made it all up after police receive video of him hitting HIS OWN head after back-flipping off a curb (Daily Mail)

Lesbian Waitress Exits Job After Anti-Gay Tipping Hoax (ABCNews)

A Branded Man (Townhall.com)

Why Would A Gay Teenager Commit Hate Crimes Against Herself? (BuzzFeed)

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Hate-Hoaxes-have-a-home…..mp3

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-and, please-

 

This cannot be good for free speech and the open exchange of ideas. Not for Christians and conservatives anyway.

Twitter announced on Wednesday that it has assembled a new “Twitter Trust & Safety Council” to “ensure that people feel safe expressing themselves on Twitter.”

Who’s for safety?

Yay safety!

Still, we need only look to the so-called “safe space” craze on America’s college campuses to gain a glimpse into what Twitter undoubtedly means here. Understand that, for the left, the word “safe” has nothing to do with, well, safety, and everything to do with censorship.

Let’s define the terms:

Safe Space: noun, 1. progressive circle of self-entitled, everyone-gets-a-trophy basement-dwellers sheltered from critical thinking, differing opinions, reality and oxygen.

With its new initiative, Twitter says it seeks to “strike the right balance between fighting abuse and speaking truth to power.”

What, exactly, constitutes “abuse,” “truth” and “power” remains to be seen, but, based on Twitter’s long history of blacklisting and “unverifying” conservatives from its rolls, I think we all know who gets shafted on this.

“To ensure people can continue to express themselves freely and safely on Twitter, we must provide more tools and policies,” the company claims. “Twitter does not tolerate behavior intended to harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence another user’s voice.”

Color me über-skeptical, but as Daniel Payne observes over at The Federalist, “Twitter already allows its users to either mute or block anyone who is being bothersome or threatening. There is no practical necessity for a ‘council’ to make people feel ‘safe’ on Twitter. Blocking is an effective tool for anyone who needs it. You can always report to the Twitter staff the rare troll who just won’t give up.

“The seemingly superfluous formation of a ‘Trust and Safety Council,’ then, suggests a kind of procedural overhaul of Twitter’s internal speech policy,” concludes Payne.

I agree.

Indeed, to the fragile liberal mind, any disagreement with its rigid, and decidedly one-sided, brand of “tolerance” and “diversity” constitutes “behavior intended to harass” or “intimidate.” To those who cannot win an argument on the merits, the path of least resistance is to silence all dissent.

Yet, if there was any question as to whether Twitter will be adopting the above-referenced definition of “safe space” in its effort to make tweeters “feel safe,” that question is immediately resolved by virtue of whom it has deputized. While there are a handful of legitimate, left-of-center anti-bullying organizations on the “council,” the list is likewise comprised up a rag-tag gaggle of fringe “progressive” groups like Feminist Frequency and GLAAD (formerly the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation).

Conspicuously absent is even one conservative or Christian organization.

So, what will GLAAD and the rest of the “Tweet Police” be doing? It’s hard to say for sure since Twitter won’t, but, considering what GLAAD already does, we can venture a fair guess.

GLAAD is an extremist homosexual censorship group that, for its defamatory antics, was certified last year by the well-respected American Family Association as an “openly bigoted anti-Christian organization.” GLAAD’s primary purpose is to strong-arm the entertainment industry and news media into presenting unrealistically favorable portrayals of the homosexual and gender-confused lifestyles, while at once censoring positive portrayals of natural marriage and the natural family, and silencing those who hold biblical values relative to marriage and human sexuality.

One of GLAAD’s most troubling censorship efforts was its Orwellian “Commentator Accountability Project.” This was a desperate effort to “suppress the biblical worldview from media.” Various homosexual activists were conscripted to contact, badger and otherwise intimidate media outlets, such as CNN, Fox News, the New York Times, et al., into blacklisting leading Christian cultural analysts (yours truly included) from providing commentary and political analysis over the airwaves and in print.

While the smear campaign ultimately failed, it did betray, for all the world to see, GLAAD’s overt designs on anti-conservative, anti-Christian censorship. And now it has its grubby little rainbow-hued fingerprints all over one of the world’s largest and most popular social networking sites.

Enjoy your Twitter free speech while you can, conservative Christians. Your tweets are birds on a wire, and GLAAD’s got the pellet gun.