A Hoax Exposed at
Princeton
by MAX BLUMENTHAL,
thenation.com from the Web December 20, 2007
Princeton, NJ Dec.18 -- With
President George W. Bush only a year away from departing the White House and the
Republican succession in turmoil, some of the most prominent conservative
intellectuals and activists have gathered together for one last great crusade.
Movement icons from Robby George of Princeton to Harvey Mansfield of Harvard,
from David Horowitz to Brit Hume, raised howls of persecution when they heard
reports that two masked men allegedly attacked a conservative Princeton
University student. They insisted that the right-wing acolyte was beaten
up "for his conservative views," as Horowitz put it. And they accused
Princeton of failing to protect conservatives and upholding a hypocritical
liberal double standard. Unfortunately, the trumpeted cause collapsed when
the victim turned out to be a hoaxer.
The embarrassing episode for the conservative leaders began last week when
Francisco Nava, a junior at Princeton, appeared at a hospital with cuts and
bruises covering his face. He claimed that two unidentified men repeatedly
bashed his head against a brick wall, shouting to "shut the fuck up."
Nava is a member of a student group called the Anscombe Society. Named for
G.E.M. Anscombe, a British philosopher who opposed her country's involvement in
World War II, the group was founded to promote "a chaste lifestyle which
respects and appreciates human sexuality, relationships, and dignity." The
Anscombe Society explained its abstinence advocacy on its website: "The
nature of this sexual act is itself unitive -- two become one flesh. Sex
is thus the actualization of the marital union, concretizing the mutual gift of
self between the partners."
Nava, a Mormon, claimed his troubles began when he wrote a column for the
student newspaper, the Princetonian, titled "Princeton's Latex Lies." He
warned that "the infectious threat posed by Princeton's hookup culture" would
spread if the school continued its policy of free condom distribution.
"What Princeton's condom campaign amounts to is a tacit sponsorship of hookup
sex," Nava declared.
Nava claimed in the wake of his column that he and other Anscombe members were
bombarded by death threats from liberal students enraged by their brave stand
against promiscuity on campus. Princeton jurisprudence professor Robert
George, a former Supreme Court judicial fellow, conservative star and occasional
White House adviser, also reported receiving death threats as the faculty
adviser to his student, Francisco Nava.
On December 13 the Princetonian published a column by an Anscombe member
demanding justice for Nava's persecution. "There is an intolerable double
standard here -- one that the University must erase if it is to be true to its
own core values," Princeton sophomore Brandon McGinley insisted.
Nava earnestly described his plight. "For several days I lived in fear of
saying, writing or even thinking anything controversial in class or informally
among my friends," he told the Princetonian December 14.
The following day, Nava placed an emergency call to the campus police, claiming
he had just been brutally attacked by two men wearing black stocking caps.
They slammed him into a wall, he said, and beat him with a bottle of Orangina.
While being escorted to the campus health center by the police, Nava reportedly
spotted a student wearing a black stocking cap. "Get that guy's name,"
Nava shouted to a security guard, pointing at the student. He began
hyperventilating and was administered a large dose of sedatives. Almost at
once, as soon as Robby George heard about the alleged attack, he rushed to
Nava's side and launched the campaign to defend him.
Who is Robby George? As the leading light at Princeton for the
conservative movement, George founded the James Madison Program, an academic
center within the university that serves as a testing ground for the right's
effort to politicize college campuses. As I reported for The Nation in
2006, George's program is funded by a stable of right-wing foundations and a
shadowy web of front groups for the Catholic cult known as Opus Dei. An
article in Crisis, a conservative Catholic magazine then published by George's
ally Deal W. Hudson, highlighted George's machinations, stating, "If there
really is a vast, right-wing conspiracy, its leaders probably meet in George's
basement."
For years, George has complained that Princeton actively discriminated against
conservative students. "If they find out he's prolife or against same-sex
marriage, he might be cut off, or not be able to get through graduate school,"
he told me, describing the school's purported unfairness.
But before George pointed to Nava's beating as proof of anticonservative bias on
campus, he had been presented with evidence that Nava, while at the Groton
boarding school, had fabricated a threat against himself and his roommate, head
of the Gay-Straight Alliance, in the form of a letter containing the phrase "die
fags." The letter may have raised doubts in George's mind, but not
strongly enough to deter him from attacking Princeton's administration.
In the wake of Nava's latest story about being assaulted, George immediately
went to the neoconservative daily the New York Sun, and exclaimed, "Are there
double standards and reforms that need to be made? Absolutely."
George insisted that Nava, in all likelihood, was telling the truth.
"Those of us who saw him at the emergency room find it difficult to believe he
could have done this himself. The physical manifestations were too
evident, too severe," he told the Sun.
George was promptly joined by a chorus of conservative culture warriors
infuriated by the lack of outrage. Harvey Mansfield, the most important
conservative figure at Harvard and mentor to leading neoconservatives, who has
written a book-length ode to machismo called Manliness, called for a manly
response to Nava's supposed beating. "I hope Princeton comes down on them
like a ton of bricks, and by Princeton I mean either the university or the
township or both," he proclaimed. "It should be easy for liberals to
identify a case of intolerance; they're good at that."
David Horowitz, a neoconservative activist who has devoted much of his career to
combating the supposed scourge of anticonservative bias on campus, instantly
weighed in on the Nava affair. "It's a terrible incident but it doesn't
surprise me," Horowitz told the Sun. "The left has now become the hate
group."
On December 17 Horowitz reposted the Sun's account of Nava's alleged beating on
the website of his magazine, Frontpagemag.com. Beneath a link to the
prominently displayed article, a caption read, "Student beaten unconscious for
conservative views."
Fox News anchor Brit Hume also leapt into the fracas. The headline of his
report on the Nava affair on Fox's website read, "Little Outrage Over Student
Beating at Princeton University."
A host of right-wing bloggers joined the outcry. "I wonder if this will
get the attention that politically-reversed assaults would get?" mused Glenn
Reynolds, the author of the blog Instapundit. A blogger at Redstate.com
mocked author and expert on hate crimes David Neiwert over the Nava incident,
challenging him to report on what could be a "fairly serious hate crime."
For several hours on December 17, conservatives announced that their darkest
fears of persecution had been realized. A pious student had been beaten by
liberal brownshirts simply for speaking out in favor of traditional morality.
If the student were gay or black, conservatives reasoned, the entire student
body would have erupted in massive protests. Instead, the administration
stood silently to the side. Princeton graduate and conservative writer
Michael Fragoso told the Sun, "There would rightly be outrage had the student
been part of some other minority on campus."
At last, an incident surfaced that proved what movement figures had long
maintained: campus conservatives are a minority that suffers far harsher
oppression than the blacks, Latinos and gays who form the "politically correct"
vanguard of liberal identity politics.
But on the night of December 17, as the conservative firestorm was being whipped
to a frenzy, there was another development. Nava confessed to Princeton
Township Police that he had invented the entire incident. They had
suspected the veracity of his tale all along. Signs of an elaborate hoax
had been present from the beginning, from Nava's history of fabricating death
threats to his cinematic description of his latest victimization.
Nava's hoax fit neatly into an epidemic of faked hate crimes on college campuses
across America. But in their eagerness to stage-manage the unfolding
political drama, leaders of the conservative movement grazed over these
inconvenient details.
When Nava was exposed as a fabricator, his defenders disappeared almost as
quickly as they had mobilized. Rather than issue a correction or update,
Horowitz scrubbed all accounts of the bogus attack from his website. The
report by Fox's Brit Hume, was amended after a full day.
Robby George, who had been quick to condemn the university, now praised
Princeton for its measured response to the Nava affair. "Princeton, all
the way from the administrators down, had the good sense to hold their fire, get
the facts first, before drawing conclusions," he told the Princetonian.
George also congratulated himself for his own calmness in the crisis and
sharp-wittedness in uncovering the fraud. "Within seventy-two hours," he
said, "we were able to expose this as a hoax."
But of course, Nava's claims were never "exposed" by George or his conservative
campus allies. Nava had reportedly confessed to his lying under police
questioning. Only hours before George celebrated the "good sense" he and
university administrators displayed, he had accused Princeton of upholding a
liberal double standard. And while Princeton police investigated dubious
details of the alleged assault, George broadcast his confidence in Nava's
melodramatic account.
Nava, a sad young person with a history of self-injuring behavior, now faces
expulsion and possible criminal charges. George and the rest of Nava's
erstwhile defenders have fallen silent. The mentor has left his protégé to
law enforcement. The conservatives have forgotten their would-be martyr.
This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071231/blumenthal
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