And, In The Academic Paradise That Is Oberlin College

This is more common that one realizes, as I hear similar stories from former colleagues about incidents such as this occurring at many other schools and colleges, albeit on a less spectacular scale:

The progressive insistence that America remains a deeply racist nation occasionally takes on an air of desperation, transmuting itself in its more difficult moments into the perverse, almost infantile, asseveration that if America is not sinful, it should be. On rare occasions this instinct spills over into straight-up mendacity, which is exactly what happened this year at Oberlin College, whose long nightmare of “campus racism” — swastikas, profane attacks on Black History Month, and even a sighting of the KKK — culminated in the predictable revelation that the whole affair had been a nasty hoax perpetrated by an overzealous Organizing for Action volunteer. 

Worse, the website Legal Insurrection, which smelled a rat from the beginning, confirmed that “school officials and local police knew the identity of the culprits, who were responsible for most if not all of such incidents on campus, yet remained silent as the campus reacted as if the incidents were real.” 

Fake hate crimes, which occur primarily on college campuses, are a peculiar feature of American life. Hoaxers operate on a bizarre premise: If evidence to support their political claims isn’t available when they need it to be, well then, they’ll just have to “find” some. Deep down, the hoaxer knows that his fellow citizens are racist and terrible; he knows that the downtrodden are suffering at the hands of people unlike him; and he knows that there is “so much more work to do.” And so, if his campus isn’t beset by the disgraceful bigotry of which he knows everyone is secretly guilty, then he’ll have to invent some against which heroically to fight.