Hate crime statistics are not to be trusted
Contrary to the claims of activists, the UK is one of the most tolerant countries in the world.
We all know by now that the Metro is an activist publication masquerading as a newspaper. And so we ought to approach with some caution its article this week claiming that the UK has seen a surge in hate crime against gay people. There’s even a handy rainbow-coloured map which pinpoints the most homophobic locations in the country. Thankfully St Ives isn’t on the list, so I won’t have to cancel my holiday.
What are we to make of the article’s claim that there has been a 462% increase in homophobic hate crime and a 1,426% increase in transphobic hate crime since 2012? The source for these remarkable figures is the House of Commons Hate Crime Statistics report. If true, it would seem to confirm activists’ claims that we are living in an anti-LGBTQIA+ hellhole.
The truth is not so melodramatic. The supposed escalation of hate crimes in the UK can be accounted for by the way in which they are now recorded. Police actively trawl for complaints, inviting citizens to report offensive comments or any action – criminal or otherwise – that the “victim” perceives to have been motivated by prejudice. No evidence of “hate” is required for it to be recorded as such, other than the assumption of the complainant. With such methodology in place, it is inevitable that the statistics will rise.
And perhaps that’s the whole point. The police in the UK are just one of the many major institutions that has been captured by intersectional ideology. Police are regularly seen dancing at Pride parades, driving rainbow-coloured cars, and harassing gender-critical women for wrongthink. In February 2021 in Merseyside – a county that tops the Metro’s list of homophobic hate spots – police were photographed next to a digital advertisement which read “Being offensive is an offence”. This belief-system can only be sustained by the narrative of widespread hate, and so we should not be surprised to see that police practice has been modified to ensure this outcome.
In fact, the College of Policing had made it clear that a fall in hate crime statistics would not be acceptable. Its operational guidance says that “targets that see success as reducing hate crime are not appropriate”. And by the Home Office’s own admission, “increases in police-recorded hate crime in recent years have been driven by improvements in crime recording and a better identification of what constitutes a hate crime”. In other words, there is no hate crime epidemic at all. It’s simply that the definitions have expanded.
Rather than rely on the Home Office statistics, we would be better turning to a source that hasn’t been corrupted by ideology. The Crime Survey for England and Wales hasn’t adopted the new police methods of recording, and shows that hate crime has been consistently dropping. Between 2008 and 2020, the number of hate crimes fell by 38%, and all the while records of hate crime kept by the police kept on rising. The disparity between the reality and the narrative couldn’t be more stark.
I am reminded of the time that Boris Johnson made a joke about Muslim women in burkas resembling letterboxes. The Guardian ran an article whose headline included the claim that Johnson’s joke had caused a “surge in anti-Muslim attacks”. Many media outlets followed suit, repeating the claim that there had been a 375% increase in abuse and attacks on Muslim people, statistics that were comprehensively debunked by Tom Chivers in a piece for UnHerd.
Activists so desperately wanted it to be true that they hadn’t looked closely at the flawed methodology. The need to sustain the idea that words – and even jokes – can lead directly to violence is necessary for them to justify censorship. No wonder the Guardian published an editorial piece lambasting Johnson for his “tasteless newspaper column joke”, in spite of the fact that one of its own columnists had made the exact same joke five years before.
Johnson’s joke had simply provided an opportunity for his political opponents to score points. One Twitter user wrote: “I’ve just seen a Burka wearing Muslim lady with her kids being abused outside the medical centre, youths were shoving envelopes in her face, and her kids were crying. Police had to be called. This is your doing Boris Johnson.” Far be it from me to suggest that this never happened (I’ll leave you to work that out for yourselves), but the alarmist responses didn’t end there. The Conservative Party received complaints that Johnson had breached its code of conduct. Reports were made to the police. The head of the Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick, even spoke to specialist officers to determine whether or not Johnson had broken the law.
The Metro’s latest article about the exponential increase in anti-gay hate crimes should be understood in the same way. This is pure opportunism, untethered to reality, similar to the continual claims that the “trans community” is the most abused and marginalised. As Madison Smith has shown in an article for The Critic, those who identify as trans are among the safest demographic in Europe. But this hasn’t stopped bogus surveys being continually cited by lobbyists and activist groups seeking an advantage.
The high priests of Critical Social Justice root their beliefs in the notion of victimhood and oppression, and so these statistics are essential to maintain their stranglehold on society. This is why activists reacted so badly to the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities which demonstrated that the UK’s legal and educational institutions are not rigged against minorities. That the commission’s chairman, Tony Sewell, was black, didn’t prevent his detractors from inundating him with online abuse. He was even compared to Joseph Goebbels and the Ku Klux Klan. Never underestimate the ferocity and cruelty of those who are on The Right Side of History™.
We’re all familiar with that phrase about the three kinds of falsehoods – “lies, damned lies and statistics” – and it would certainly seem to apply to hate crime. Contrary to the bleak fantasies of identitarian campaigners, the UK is one of the most tolerant countries in the world. If minorities are at risk, it is from those activists who are willing to use them as pawns in their elaborate game.
We're expecting similar results from a survey that's being conducted in The Netherlands at the moment.
First there was this active call to participate and report discrimination and racism. Of course it's on the basis of "self ID" (feelings) and not on police reports. Of course those with extremely thin skins will overload the website with reports of hate crimes and discrimination.
Secondly, when choosing in the drop down menu on what basis you were discriminated it shows "gender" as an option. "Sex" is left out. This means misogyne will be lumped together with "misgendering" and "being smirked at for being non-binary".
I predict a > 1,000% rise in hate crime reports. This rise will be attributed to right wingers, conservatives, etc. and will be framed as "homophobia on the rise".
Why do otherwise smart people fall for this obvious bull crap?
Well said ,Andrew. Nothing these people say can be trusted ,as they constantly lie about everything and ,sadly , most of the media fall into that category now. Where did journalistic integrity go ,or was that always as mythological as critical social justice( ie Woke )? Keep fighting. x