Double-Standard Whiplash on Campus
It started as a liberal fairy tale: At George Washington University, fliers were distributed around campus declaring “Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week” under the headline: “Hate Muslims? So do we!!!” The flier purported to come from the local chapter of the Young America’s Foundation.
The university’s response was swift and merciless. University president Steven Knapp said, “[W]e will not tolerate the dissemination of fliers or other documents that vilify any religious, racial, or ethnic group.” A student association vice president said that the fliers were heinous and supported expulsion. Campus liberals’ long-hoped-for manifestation of pure evil had finally appeared, and they savored the chance to demonstrate their moral purity.
But then the story began to fall apart. While it’s true that the Young America’s Foundation was sponsoring an Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week, they weren’t involved with the flier. A group calling itself Students for Conservito-Fascism Awareness confessed to the hoax, pretending that they expected the flier to be understood as satire. Their non-apology apology declared that “Campuses allied in their commitment to a hate-free environment and critical thinking should not allow Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week to take place.”
Then the strangest thing happened when the liberal fairy tale about hate on the right turned into a conservative cliche about fraud and slander from the left. Nobody seemed to care. The university’s spokesman has no comment.
Now the Young America’s Foundation has formally asked the university’s president to keep his word and punish hatred on campus—the hatred incited by the perpetrators of the fraud. So far, there are no news reports of the university punishing or even denouncing the hoax. It seems that all hatreds are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Update: Ann Coulter’s column today tells this story and other hate-crime hoaxes over the past few years. Her closing paragraph:
Liberals love nothing more than these constant self-righteous-athons — as if they would ever have the courage to stand up for any cause not universally supported by everyone around them.