Return of a Race Hustler

The recent assassination of Charlie Kirk has been a lightning rod for new controversies and provided fresh opportunities for limelight seekers to grab headlines. Race hustler Ta-Nehisi Coates did not disappoint his fanbase.

First, in a Vanity Fair piece, Coates classed Kirk’s political views as nothing more than “a loathing of those whose mere existence provoked his ire.” “He held disagreeable views,” Coates shrieked. For example, he was pro-life and supported the death penalty for pedophiles. He “reveled in open bigotry.” The evidence? Kirk referred to heterosexual marriage and home ownership as “the American way of life,” pointed out that Kamala Harris and other high-profile Democrats are in favor of school policies that would keep parents from knowing if their children are being misled by radical trans culture to the point of changing genders at school, and noted that large amounts of Muslim migration to Western countries will almost certainly disrupt the traditional cultures of those countries. Later, in an appearance on a podcast, he called Kirk a “hate-monger” and Turning Point USA a “haven of hate.”

Intervening in matters of public importance with no accurate information is, more or less, a summary of Coates’ professional activity. Last year, he published a book on the conflict between Israel and its Muslim antagonists that somehow avoided mentioning any of the deep historical context of Muslim-initiated violence, war, and terrorism against the Jewish state. When he was called out on the fact that his book reads like an apology for Palestinian terrorism, he had nothing coherent to say in response. He did not need to respond, it turned out. The entire left did that work for him by melting down in outrage that anyone should dare ask the great man such a question. The offending journalist was, of course, spanked.

Coates’ star began to rise among progressives about a decade ago with his book Between the World and Me. He became one of the early go-to writers in the antiracist/Black Lives Matter portion of the American far left due to the simpleminded moral blackmail of this book. Couched as a letter to his son, it gives a view of black life in 2015 America as one of unrelenting oppression and victimization. (And sympathetic readers have had to overlook the fact that the book made its author a rich celebrity—which rather disproves the central claim of the book that no blacks can succeed in racist America.)