David Neiwert: Missed motives, hoaxes, and hate

Monday, May 02, 2005
As we've all been discovering lately, sometimes appearances are misleading when it comes to criminal motivations -- especially when it comes to high-profile acts like hate crimes and their related acts of domestic terrorism.

The problem is that in the resulting confusion, it's not uncommon for acts of genuine racial hatred to get glossed over or ignored.

The most prominent national case in which we saw such confusion involved the killings of Judge Lefkow's husband and mother in Chicago. White supremacists, rather logically -- in light of the threats they had directed Lefkow's way -- were considered the chief suspects, and I and many others spent quite a bit of time contemplating the consequences of that.

However, it turned out to have been committed by a mentally ill man with a beef against the judge. The story went away. What went little noticed, as a result, was the deeply disturbing threats that emanated from other white supremacists over the course of the affair.