A jury has convicted actor Jussie Smollett on five of six charges of disorderly conduct for lying to police about staging a “hate crime” hoax against himself. He could get prison time or probation. Judge James Linn has scheduled a post-trial hearing for January 27, and sentencing will come later. Mr. Smollett’s black lawyer Tamara Walker has asked for a mistrial, which Judge Linn denied. The defense has already vowed to appeal.

It is surprising that Mr. Smollett is being held accountable at all. District Attorney Kim Foxx dropped charges against him last year. She also tried to get the FBI to take the case, presumably believing that the feds would treat him more leniently than local cops.

However, it could be argued Miss Foxx did not give Mr. Smollett special treatment. She has dropped all charges against almost 30 percent of defendants who come before her. Even liberal mayor Lori Lightfoot has publicly criticized her for leniency. Homicides are surging in Cook County.

Still, Kim Foxx has little reason to change her approach. She overwhelmingly won re-election in 2020, well after the Jussie Smollett case. If elections mean anything, “the community” approves of her approach.

Politicians including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Cory Booker initially denounced what they thought was a terrible crime. Actress Ellen Page (now actor Elliot Page) unbosomed a passionate denunciation on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert that got a standing ovation from the audience. She partly blamed then-President Donald Trump for what had happened, even though Mr. Trump had also believed Mr. Smollett. “That [the alleged crime] I can tell you is horrible,” he said. “It doesn’t get worse.”

Many things are worse. No one was killed. Even so, the Smollett fable got far more media coverage than the recent Waukesha parade attack, which has already been forgotten by most of the national media or blamed on an “SUV.” That massacre was far, far worse.

In any case, the Great and the Good apparently didn’t doubt the Smollett story.

One Black Lives Matter group isstill backing Mr. Smollett.

The fake attack had consequences. The Senate passed a law making “lynching” a federal hate crime, with Senators Booker and Harris both saying Jussie Smollett’s case justified it.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki now says, “There are lessons learned perhaps for everybody who commented at the time, including former President Trump.” What lessons? The press secretary said that lying to the police, “especially about something as heinous as a hate crime,” can take away police resources, but it also makes it “harder for real victims to come forward.”

That last point has become a media chorus.

• Jussie Smollett being found guilty of hoax will hurt LGBTQ folks reporting hate crimes: Jussie Smollett guilty verdict will be used by Trump supporters to prove Democrats wrongly label them villains, MSNBC, December 9, 2021
• Michael Crawford: Jussie Smollett guilty verdict doesn’t mean anti-gay violence isn’t real, NBC, December 10, 2021
• Analysis: How Sean Hannity and right-wing media personalities are using the Smollett verdict to attack the media, CNN, December 9, 2021

The message continues to be that “Trump supporters” and the “right-wing” are somehow the real problem. (President Trump’s credulity earned him no points.) “Hate hoaxes” are not rare. They often get enthusiastic media coverage until the truth comes out. If Mr. Smollett’s claims hadn’t been so ridiculous, and if he had simply claimed that he had been attacked by whites screaming “this is MAGA country!” he might have gotten away with it and become a hero.

When there are particularly heinous crimes against whites, including the Knoxville Horror, the execution of five-year-old Cannon Hinnant in front of his family, or the slaughter in Waukesha, the national media and federal officials do not denounce them as crimes of deep social significance. Jason Riley, a black columnist for the Wall Street Journal, wrote:

The same press outlets that portrayed Mr. [Kyle] Rittenhouse as a white supremacist have had remarkably little to say about the racial identity of Darrell Brooks, the black suspect in Wisconsin who is accused of plowing his car through an annual Christmas parade last month and killing six people, including an 8-year-old boy, all of whom were white. Given the suspect’s history of posting messages on social media that called for violence against white people and praised Hitler for killing Jews, you’d think that his race and the race of his victims would be relevant to reporters. Race is all anyone would be talking about if a white man had slammed his vehicle into a parade full of black people. Yet suddenly the left has gone colorblind.

The inventions of “hate crimes” has forced the government into mind-reading about criminal motive, but it’s hard not to see the hypocrisy when hate crime charges aren’t even being considered for Darrell Brooks despite his long-history of anti-white speech. The problem is not just hypocrisy. In Mr. Smollett’s case, there was a hate crime – against whites. Claims about white men attacking minorities fuel hatred against us. Blacks disproportionately commit crime against whites. If merely talking about the “Great Replacement” is “vile,” according to Media Matters, and a firing offense according to the ADL, what do we call telling millions of blacks that they are oppressed and under attack?

Waukesha suspect Darrell Brooks should be charged with a hate crime because of his previous statements about whites. So should Jussie Smollett. All those who stage hoaxes should face hate crime charges because they are inciting hatred against whites. Liberals and journalists may sneer at this, but if they believe their own claims about Mr. Smollett making things harder for real hate crime victims, they should understand the seriousness of faking “hate.”

A far less lenient standard is being applied against 23-year-old Miya Ponsetto, dubbed the “Soho Karen.” She falsely accused and allegedly attacked a black teenager for stealing her cell phone. He hadn’t; she had left it in an Uber. She was in the wrong, but she had hardly plotted an elaborate hoax that would intensify racial and political tensions. She is charged with a hate crime.

Whites are disproportionately victims of crime in this country at the hands of non-whites. Blacks are also about twice as likely as whites to commit hate crimes. Mr. Smollett may have made it harder for non-whites to report real hate crimes, but he got away with his own hate crime.