In the 1960s, radical activist groups faced a desperate money problem – which they solved by the simple expedient of stealing it. Black power groups pioneered the strategy, robbing pimps and drug dealers, then turning to black-owned nightclubs: all soft targets. White radicals soon cottoned on and bank robberies became the major funding source of militant activism in the 1970s.
In the 1970s and 80s, though, black activist groups perfected another, legal and above all far more profitable strategy for making serious coin out of mostly imaginary grievances.
In Intellectuals and Race, Thomas Sowell described how, thanks to “fairness” provisions imposed by lawmakers, race-baiting activists embarked on a career of spurious, indeed vexatious litigation against wealthy targets. The strategy was absurdly simple: make accusations of discrimination which imposed sometimes years of litigation at virtually no cost to the accusers. Fighting the charges, though, could be ruinously expensive. Most banks and corporations chose the simple expedient of paying “go away money”.
One economist called it “How to Rob a Bank Legally”. By the estimation of activists themselves, more than a trillion dollars was extorted from banks and other businesses in a decade.
Other activists have been quick to cotton on. Not all are succeeding: against all odds, a residuum of common sense occasionally percolates from the depths of the “anti-discrimination” bureaucracy.
A discrimination complaint lodged by a gay rights activist against code-hopping rugby star Israel Folau has been declined by the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board on the grounds it was “vexatious”.
Campaigner Garry Burns wrote to the board’s president in December complaining about Folau’s infamous Instagram post in which he warned hell awaits homosexuals.
The Anti-Discrimination Board concluded that the activist is just a chancer out for a buck.
But ADB president Annabelle Bennett this week wrote to Mr Burns “declining” the complaint because she was satisfied it was vexatious and “a flagrant abuse of process such that no further actions should be taken”.
She found Mr Burns had not pursued the complaint under the state’s Anti-Discrimination Act “in order to avail himself of the processes afforded under the ADA but for a collateral purpose, as a means to pressure the respondent to settle with him“.
The president wrote that the inference was that the settlement sought by Mr Burns was “directed to the payment of money”.
Like most would-be bank robbers, this guy doesn’t seem to be the sharpest tool in the shed.
She noted the activist had disregarded the confidential nature of the process by issuing a media release which stated, in part: “[…]One way or another, I will get that remedy from Mr Folau.”
Dr Bennett also wrote that Mr Burns had sent numerous “inappropriate” emails to Mr Folau’s lawyers.
You know, my wife once managed a clothes shop. One teenage shoplifter tried the old gambit of simply walking out wearing his pilfered apparel. Unfortunately for him, his old jeans that he left behind in the change-room had his school ID card in the pocket.
They’re not exactly “criminal geniuses”, this lot.
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