The main exhibit in the House Judiciary Committee’s recent hearing on “Hate-Crimes and the Rise of White Nationalism” (9 April 2019) had nothing to do with either hate-crimes (so-called) or White Nationalism.
The supposed hate-crime was in fact committed by a hotheaded anti-racist enraged about his Muslim neighbors’ repeatedly and incorrigibly violating his parking space over a long period.
The perpetrator, Craig Stephen Hicks, was not charged by Obama’s justice department with “hate-crimes” and also escaped the death-penalty for his three execution-style first-degree murders.
Dr. Abu-Salha says that he and his family are firmly convinced that Craig Stephen Hicks murdered his two daughters and son-in-law “because of bigotry and hate.”
On that basis, his moving testimony about this crime from four years ago might have a place in this hearing about “Hate Crimes and the Rise of White Nationalism.” But the evidence for the murderer’s motive that Dr. Abu-Salha offers is extremely thin. It is unverifiable hearsay from one of his daughters that Mr. Hicks had said that he hated the way she looked and dressed.
It was a reasonable hypothesis that this triple murder might have been caused by anti-Muslim bias.
However, in an article for The Occidental Observer that I wrote shortly after this crime occurred, I noted some strong indications that murderer’s motive was NOT RACIAL.
Yahoo News reported that Craig Stephen Hicks’ Facebook page indicated that he was a fan of the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was a proponent of RACIAL EQUALITY.
Craig Stephen Hicks’ motive for this crime was clearly not racial.
I accepted the possibility, however, that Hicks might have been stoked to violence by Zionist War on Terror propaganda. There was widespread speculation that this crime was meant as revenge for the killing of some Americans by ISIS, or for the Charlie Hebdo massacre that happened in the month before this triple murder. There was a lot of anti-Muslim rhetoric in Republican talk-radio at the time.
That was a credible hypothesis, but it does not seem that Hicks had any particular dislike of Muslims. He was a militant atheist who despised all religion, but he despised Christianity more.
The finding of the investigations by the local police and the FBI was that these killings were the result of a running dispute over parking-spaces. It was Obama’s FBI and Obama’s Justice Department that made that finding. If there had been evidence to support making hate-crime charges, you know that they would have done it.
That is why Craig Stephen Hicks was charged only with first-degree murder and unlawful discharge of a firearm in a dwelling. No hate-crime charges were brought because there was not sufficient evidence to support such charges. This was Barack Obama’s FBI and Justice Department. If there had been evidence to justify filing hate-crime charges, you know that they would have done it.
So, why was Mohammad Abu-Salha invited to give testimony in a hearing about “Hate Crimes and the Rise of White Nationalism” when his family’s misfortune had nothing to do with any kind of anti-Muslim bias, much less with White Nationalism?
Why this spurious example like this chosen to represent hate-crimes? Obviously because of the superficial points of resemblance to the Christchurch incident a few weeks earlier, which served as the excuse for this inquisition.
