{"id":396789,"date":"2019-02-22T06:54:56","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T05:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-its-cool-to-be-hated\/"},"modified":"2019-02-22T06:54:56","modified_gmt":"2019-02-22T05:54:56","slug":"why-its-cool-to-be-hated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-its-cool-to-be-hated\/","title":{"rendered":"Why It\u2019s Cool To Be Hated"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t                            \t<!-- S3 Cache --><!-- S3:S3:Non-Original -->\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the thing about the Jussie Smollett case: it feels both strange and familiar. Strange because, as observers have pointed out, Smollett has a successful music and acting career, most notably in the Fox hip-hop soap opera\u00a0<em>Empire<\/em>, and yet here he is risking it all by inventing a mad tale about having been semi-lynched by a couple of MAGA racists. And yet it also feels familiar, creepily familiar. After all, we live in a society in which it is positively cool to suffer from \u2018structural oppression\u2019. In which campaigners actively covet hatred, constantly trawling for evidence that their group, their identity, their tribe is more loathed and wronged than any other. Hell, we live in a society in which young people cut themselves with knives and boastfully post photos of their wounds on social media. In such a climate, Smollett\u2019s possible self-administering of a cut to his cheek and his phoney claim that he was violently insulted by modern-day white supremacists starts to make sense as a snapshot of our sick society.<\/p>\n<p>Smollett\u2019s story has gripped the US media. He claimed that in January he was subjected to a racist and homophobic attack by two men (he is gay). He said the men jumped him, bombarded him with racist and anti-gay insults, poured some kind of chemical substance on him, tied a rope around his neck, and said: \u2018This is MAGA country.\u2019 Not only was his story instantly believed by much of the media and by many \u2018progressive\u2019 politicians and celebs \u2013 it was also weaved into a broader narrative about how horrific life has become for minority groups in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spiked-online.com\/tag\/donald-trump\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Trump\u2019s America<\/a>. This is what happens, observers claimed, when a prejudiced oaf ascends to the White House, courtesy of the thoughtless voting habits of the&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/2019\/02\/no_author\/why-its-cool-to-be-hated\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s the thing about the Jussie Smollett case: it feels both strange and familiar. Strange because, as observers have pointed out, Smollett has a successful music and acting career, most notably in the Fox hip-hop soap opera\u00a0Empire, and yet here he is risking it all by inventing a mad tale about having been semi-lynched by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-396789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}