A striking difference between right and left conspiracy theories in the 2020s is in the degree of specificity.
For example, an entrepreneurial rightwing influencer like Candace Owens might hint that (if I have this straight) Charlie Kirk was assassinated by Egyptians perhaps working with the French Foreign Legion (presumably on orders from Monsieur Macron, who is suing Candace for saying Madame Macron is a man).
Well, that sounds awfully improbable. But it is colorful in all its random details. Egyptians! French Legion!
In contrast, on Friday almost five dozen leftwing Congresspersons publicly implied that there is a wave of whites lynching blacks in the South.
From The Grio:
EXCLUSIVE: In letter, Democrats demand DOJ investigate Black Americans found hanging from trees
Led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, nearly 60 lawmakers cite the nation’s history of lynching and call the growing number of deaths a “national crisis.”
By Gerren Keith Gaynor
Sep 10, 2026
A group of Congressional Democrats is demanding that the U.S. Department of Justice investigate the alarming number of Black Americans found hanging from trees in recent years across mostly the U.S. South, theGrio exclusively reports.
In a letter led by U.S. Rep.Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), the group of Democrats, largely from the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Progressive Caucus, call on U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel to conduct thorough, transparent, and comprehensive federal investigations into the numerous incidents of Black people found hanging.
“The series of deaths raises significant suspicion of foul play, given the role of lynching in our nation’s history,” reads the letter signed by nearly 60 Democrats, including U.S. Reps. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), Yvette D. Clarke (D-N.Y.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Summer Lee (D-Pa.), LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), and Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.). “Each of their deaths should be treated with the utmost seriousness and investigated without bias by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).”
The letter continued, “We know there is a long history of neglecting to prevent or investigate deaths of Black individuals. For decades, the DOJ and FBI ignored widespread lynchings, which motivated more killings. Inaction by the federal government is tantamount to complicity. This is part of the legacy of racial terror in the United States, and this neglect has long-term consequences.”
Congresswoman Pressley, who has introduced bills to restore President Joe Biden’s orders on diversity, equity, inclusion, and H.R. 40, which would create a commission to study U.S. slavery and create reparation proposals, told theGrio of the letter, “In this moment of anti-Blackness and emboldened white supremacy, we cannot stand idly by while the strange fruit of Black bodies hang from trees across the country.”
She added, “The federal government must conduct thorough and transparent investigations and get these families the answers and healing they deserve.”
In 2026 alone, there have been at least 10 reported hangings of Black people, several of which have been reported by theGrio. Those individuals include: Demetrius Eugene Fleming, 38, in North Carolina; Juliana Nzita, 16, in North Carolina; Tasia Fortune, 29, in Mississippi; Kyle Bassinga, 21, in Georgia; and Jerard “Jay” Jackson, 28, in Michigan.
In 2025, other high-profile cases included Delta State University freshman Demartravion “Trey” Reed, 21, found hanging from a tree near campus; Earl Smith, 58, found hanging from a tree at a downtown intersection in Albany, N.Y.; and Torrance “Tory” Medley, 39, found hanging from a tree in the affluent suburb of Brookfield, Wisconsin.
As the letter from Democrats notes, “The growing number of Black people found hanging in public is a national crisis.” It cites the Crimson Report, published by JULIAN, which found that there have been more than 70 modern-day lynchings in the United States between 2000 and 2025.
The letter notes that in 2022, Congress passed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which President Biden signed into law. Named after 14-year-old Emmett Till, who was kidnapped and lynched in 1955 by a white mob in Mississippi, the law clearly defines a lynching beyond someone being hanged from a tree, but as a conspiracy to commit a hate crime that results in death or serious bodily injury. Democrats say it is “incumbent upon” the DOJ and FBI to use the law that has empowered them to “fully investigate suspicious deaths and hold individuals accountable.”
“At a minimum, each federal investigation, with permission of the decedents’ families, should include an independent autopsy, an audit of local and state law enforcement investigations, review of physical and testimonial evidence, and a final report submitted to Congress explaining the agency’s findings,” reads the letter. “Additionally, there must be robust data collection that tracks the hanging deaths of Black people in a transparent and systematic manner.”
The group of Democrats encouraged the DOJ and FBI to connect with their teams at “regular, scheduled intervals” to share updates, feedback, and “concerns from the broader community, as appropriate.”
But there’s no specificity about the motives or mechanisms. It’s all just handwaved as being due to “the legacy of racial terror.”
Clearly, it’s the fault of systemic racism. You don’t need to explain how structural racism works, it just does. Haven’t you been to college? If you can’t trust personal injury lawyer Ben Crump, who can you trust? We know it’s due to history since 1619 (but not a minute before 1619 — that would be scientific racism!) Maybe it’s ghosts or hoodoo haunting the South? In any case, nobody knows anything other than we can be sure it’s the fault of white people, who must pay.
Seriously, keep in mind that in 2026, the big liberal media institutions aren’t yet promoting this Congressional letter. Looking in Google News, I see mostly black media promoting it and rightist media scoffing at it. The New York Times and Washington Post haven’t touched it yet.
The Establishment press got burned so many times by believing Black Twitter going back to Trayvon Martin in 2012 that they appear to have learned a few things.
On the other hand, I suspect the editors and reporters who have learned are terrified to put their lessons learned in writing. I doubt if anybody dares put out a newsroom-wide memo saying:
In my painful experience, any time Black Twitter is up in arms about how white racists murdered a black man and then Ben Crump gets involved, it’s going to turn out to be a big POS involving lowlifes acting lowlifey. Rightwing Twitter will eventually end up having a field day when all the facts finally come out. So let’s not tee up easy meat for them.
Of course not. So nobody gets the memo because nobody writes it.
So the old-time journalists can keep the latest nonsense out for awhile, but one day they are off duty and some true believer runs the story.
Even CNN, which has been serving all summer as lawyer Ben Crump’s PR service, hasn’t run this Congressional letter story yet.
In fact, they just ran a story this afternoon about the one hanging case that might have been a murder:
Mississippi police make arrest in Tasia Fortune case after medical examiner rules death a homicide
By Dalia Faheid
Police in Jackson, Mississippi, have arrested a man in the case of Tasia Fortune, the 29-year-old Black woman found hanging from a tree outside an abandoned house last month, following the state medical examiner ruling her death a homicide.
Jarques Ratliff, 51, has been charged with murder in connection with Fortune’s death, police said Friday. CNN is working to determine if he has legal representation.
“Last night, the medical examiner’s office officially classified Miss Fortune’s death as a homicide. With that determination, our investigators moved quickly,” Chief RaShall Brackney said at a Friday news conference.
CNN even runs a mug shot of Jarques Ratliff:
If there really have been a lot of blacks found hanging from trees, it is vastly more likely related to the rise in the black suicide rate over the last decade.
As I’ve been pointing out for over a year, the black suicide rate, which has traditionally been well below the white suicide rate, started climbing in the middle 2010s:
Why?
The increase in the white suicide rate from 2000 to 2018 is one of the three Deaths of Despair along with drug overdose and cirrhosis.
Much of the marketing of prescription opioids and Mexican black tar heroin in the early 2000s was aimed at working class whites. The Mexican cartels had a policy of avoiding shooty black inner cities as likely to draw attention and instead focusing on selling heroin in places like Kentucky that nobody who is anybody cares about.
So, after crack, blacks got a much-needed respite from the drug plagues of the early 21st Century.
But then around 2015, fentanyl and a different kind of meth started to show up in inner cities, which seemed to lead to a big increase in homelessness. I can recall how optimistic everybody was around 2014 about how, finally, Downtown Los Angeles was going to take off. But then the homeless population exploded.
So, that might be one cause of the big rise in black suicides.
When I try to look up Establishment explanations for the increasing black suicide rates, however, I tend to see theories like …
Paywall here.
