Journalist Debunks Newsom’s ‘Hate Incident’ Claims

CV NEWS FEED // The administration of Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-CA, has introduced a so-called “hate hotline,” allowing Californians to report incidents of purported “hate” toward their “actual or perceived” identities.

The initiative, dubbed “CA vs. Hate,” is being run by the State of California Civil Rights Department (CRD). The project’s official website says its purpose is

to identify options and next steps for individuals and communities targeted for hate and connect them with resources that respect their unique needs. CA vs. Hate will study the information gathered to improve response to hate incidents and hate crimes. The goal is to prevent acts of hate and to provide more resources to persons in impacted communities.

The website clarifies that “reporting can be done via the CA vs. Hate online portal or via telephone with a care coordinator.”

It defines the term “hate incident,” which is explicitly separate from the legally-defined “hate crime,” as a “hostile expression or action that may be motivated by bias against another person’s actual or perceived identity(ies).”

The CRD will “use the information captured through the portal and network to improve services for people targeted for hate,” the site adds.

The CRD will also use the data to generate “regular reports, sharing data about hate incidents and crimes across the state that will not identify individuals targeted for hate or people who report acts of hate.” The site does not indicate whether it will also protect the identities of those accused of hate. 

Journalist Michael Shellenberger noted in a Tuesday Twitter thread that similar language to the Newsom administration’s has been used by other Democratic leaders, including Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, as well as international left-wing leaders such as former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. 

However, Shellenberger stated that the data simply does not bear out the alarm expressed by such politicians.

“Hate incidents” are not rising, he tweeted. “Tolerance of racial, sexual, and religious minorities has never been higher.” He went on to state that “elites are manufacturing a fake ‘hate’ crisis as a pretext for mass spying, blacklists, and censorship.”

Shellenberger dove into Newsom’s claim that “reported hate crimes in California … reached their highest levels since 2001,” and jumped “almost 33% from 2020 to 2021” alone.

“Indeed, criminal complaints of hate crimes rose significantly, by 80% from 2012 to 2021,” Shellenberger acknowledged, citing official California state data. However, Shellenberger also showed that “convictions of hate crimes” in California “have been flat” in that same nine-year period. There were 107 in 2012 and 109, just two more, in 2021.

While entertaining the possibility that this could be because California juries have been less likely to convict in recent years, Shellenberger suggested that the likeliest explanation is simply that “there was no increase in prosecutable hate crimes.”

“And it may be that Californian prosecutors simply labeled more crimes as ‘hate’ crimes because they were primed to do so by the media’s 700% – 1,000% increased focus on racism between 2011 and 2020,” Shellenberger added.

“Whatever the case,” he concluded, “California’s total number of hate crime complaints is trivial. There were just 285 hate crime complaints in California, a state with 39 million people, in 2021. There was an order of magnitude more homicides in California, 2,361, in 2021.”