Clinton's Nonexistent Church Burnings And Special Forces Racists--1996

One of the more prominent hoax hate crimes was invented by Bill Clinton when he was president.  In a 1996 radio address, Clinton said, "I have vivid and painful memories of black churches being burned in my own state when I was a child."  No one else in Arkansas remembered a single church burning in Arkansas, ever.  Definitely not when Clinton was a child.

The Arizona Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock) checked with the state historian, current and past presidents of the Arkansas NAACP, the former president of the Regular Arkansas Baptist Convention, the chairman of the Arkansas Black History Advisory Committee--and all confirmed that there had been no church burnings in Clinton's own state.

There was no apology from the White House, much less from Clinton himself, for this despicable slander on the state of Arkansas.  The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post didn't mention Clinton's tall tale--though all newspapers ran stories on the fraudulent claim that there had been an upsurge in arson at black churches.

In fact, the burnings of churches, black and white, had been declining in recent years.  The hysteria about a new epidemic of black church burnings was completely counterfactual nonsense being put out by a liberal group in order to accuse right-wing rhetoric of inciting neo-Klanners.  Again, the lie part got a lot of coverage; the facts exposing the claim as a lie did not.

Then, during his 1996 reelection campaign, Clinton repeatedly trotted out a hoax hate crime against blacks allegedly committed by white Special Forces members.

At the 1996 Democratic National Convention, he said:

We still have too many Americans who give in to their fears of those who are different from them.  Not long ago, swastikas were painted on the doors of some African American members of our Special Forces at Fort Bragg.  Folks, for those of you who don't know what they do, the Special Forces are just what the name says; they are special forces.  If I walk off this stage tonight and call them on the telephone and tell them to go halfway around the world and risk their lives for you and be there by tomorrow at noon, they will do it.  They do not deserve to have swastikas on their doors.

He told the same yarn at a White House with the Boys and Girls Nation, in a speech to northern California Democrats, in remarks at a magnet school in Arkansas, and while chatting up a cocktail waitress in Des Moines.

As was already well known, the prime suspect was the black "victim" himself.  This had been widely reported in the press.  The soldier, not a member of Special Forces, by the way, was later discharged.

Clinton thus became the first president in history to knowingly make a false statement while giving a keynote address at a major party convention.  He did so to accuse the military of racism.   Just to cite one example of racism in America, here's a fraudulent one.

If I were claiming America has a long way to come on race relations, I think I'd showcase the hate crimes that weren't complete fabrications.  Someone should tell liberals that their argument about continuing racial problems would be more effective if they cited true cases of racism.

--Ann Coulter.  Mugged: Racial Demagoguery From the Seventies to Obama. New York: Sentinel, 2012, pp. 69-70 [footnotes omitted]