TEHRAN (Iran News) –Racism and nationalism in the Western countries have led to the rise in the number of hate crimes and the U.S. is the leading country in the terms of hate crimes.
What is a hate crime? A hate crime (also known as a bias-motivated crime or bias crime) is a prejudice-motivated crime which occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of their membership (or perceived membership) of a certain social group or racial demographic.
Examples of such groups can include, and are almost exclusively limited to ethnicity, disability, language, nationality, physical appearance, political views and/or affiliation, age, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Non-criminal actions that are motivated by these reasons are often called “bias incidents”.
“Hate crime” generally refers to criminal acts which are seen to have been motivated by bias against one or more of the social groups listed above, or by bias against their derivatives. Incidents may involve physical assault, homicide, damage to property, bullying, harassment, verbal abuse (which includes slurs) or insults, mate crime, or offensive graffiti or letters (hate mail).
This type of crime is mostly common in the Western countries and of course one can see it in other countries but not in the level of the U.S. and West European countries because of the number of immigrants.
According to a new report by a civil rights organization, hate crimes in the United States are likely to spike ahead of the 2024 election.
The Leadership Conference Education Fund said on Thursday that FBI data shows an unmistakable pattern of a rise in hate crimes during general elections, Yahoo News reported.
“From the mainstreaming of hate and the failure of social media platforms to adequately address disinformation, the current climate is rife with opportunities for the trend of increased hate to continue into the 2024 election — unless action is taken,” stated the report by the Leadership Conference Education Fund, the research arm of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
The report charts “an unmistakable pattern that has emerged during the last four presidential campaign cycles” showing “reported hate crimes increase during elections.”
The data, which draws on findings from 230 national human rights organizations, suggests that from 2008, when Barack Obama, the first Black American president in US history, took office, hate crimes have been on the rise.
“Research has shown that the 2008 election cycle served as a ‘rebirth’ of the anti-government militia movement from the 1990s. The final weeks of the 2008 election saw an increase in hate crimes targeting racial and ethnic minorities as the United States elected its first Black president,” the report stated.
The report says hate crimes have nearly doubled since 2015. It says a staggering spike came during and after Donald Trump’s election campaign and it has not returned to the levels before the Trump period.
The civil rights group suggests that Black people and Muslims are the main targets of hate crimes.
The Muslim population of the United States has increasingly been the target of Islamophobia and hate crimes in the years following the September 11, 2001 attacks, which unleashed a new era of racism and discrimination against Muslims.
“I think that’s a responsibility for anybody in a leadership role, anybody who’s running for president or office or anybody who’s currently in government, to use their pulpit to speak out against hate,” Steven Freeman, vice president of civil rights at the Anti-Defamation League, told Yahoo News.
Anti-hate groups have urged the US government to make sure that tech giants like Meta, YouTube and Twitter increase transparency and “invest in de-platforming hate for the upcoming local, state, and national elections” to address hate incidents.
Last year the UK announced the number of hate crimes recorded by police in England and Wales had risen by 26% – to 155,841 in the year to March 2022.
More than two-thirds – 109,843 – were racist hate crimes.
But crimes against transgender people saw the biggest rise, with 4,355 reports, up 56% from the previous year.
The Home Office said the overall rise could be due to better recording by police – and fewer had been recorded under Covid restrictions in 2020-21.
The rise in crimes against transgender people could also be because “transgender issues have been heavily discussed on social media over the last year”, it said.
Hate crimes targeting people’s sexual orientation also increased – by 42%, to 26,152.
France and even Germany are other countries which are suffering from the hate crimes and every now and then we see some murders or shooting sprees which are considered as hate crime.
Of course, one should blame the West itself for the rise in the number of hate crimes, and also extremism no matter religious or racial should also be blamed for it.
As long as the world does not move towards equality and social justice and coexistence, we will never see drop in the number of hate crimes and Western statesmen should correct their policies for eradication of hate crimes especially against the minorities either racial or religious.
The U.S. with the current policies should not expect a drop in the number of hate crimes and as it is expected, elections in this country create more rift and hatred than unity and coexistence in the country which considers itself land of freedom but one can see only the Liberty Statue in this country instead of liberty itself.
