Daniel Penny: The accidental hero who exposed the end of BLM

In May 2023, Daniel Penny, a former U.S. Marine, was on the New York City subway when Jordan Neely, a homeless man with an extensive criminal record who had been arrested more than 40 times in recent years, most recently for beating a 67-year-old woman, began threatening passengers and shouting that he was "ready to die." Passengers were terrified and described his behavior as "incredibly threatening." Amidst Neely's screams and threats against bystanders, Penny defended himself by applying a choke hold to immobilize him and protect the other passengers. After this maneuver, Neely was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead.

Against the backdrop of the crime and mental health crisis that plagued New York and made the city a living hell, the unfortunate incident became politically relevant and controversial. If logic is anything to go by, the controversy should not have existed. Neely, a serial, violent and drug-addicted criminal enters the subway and threatens to kill the passengers. One of them, a guy with no criminal record and who has also served his country, has the courage to stop him in defense of himself and others. But what raised alarm about the case is that Neely was black and Penny is white, then the left tried to turn this case into “George Floyd 2.0” to revive the woke narrative of the oppressors vs. the oppressed.

They wanted to generate sympathy for a convicted criminal who threatens people, while inciting hatred for a man who put his life on the line to protect the rest. This inversion of values that progressivism has been exploiting so successfully, this time, most people found indigestible. To sympathize more with a criminal who wants to kill other people than with a man who defends them requires an ideologically deranged vision.

However, the machinery of the institutional left did not waste a minute. Penny was then subjected to a legal process replete with political motivations. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg wanted to make Penny the scapegoat that would sustain his career and attempted to manipulate the system to secure a conviction worthy of his ideology-ridden management.

This is not surprising; Bragg's tenure has been marked by indifference to criminal behavior that has resulted in an increase in crime in New York. His office has, for example, allowed immigrants arrested for a Times Square attack on police to be released without bail. He also dropped charges against most of those arrested for taking over Hamilton Hall at Columbia University. He is further characterized by reducing felonies to lesser charges under the twisted concept of restorative justice. While ignoring the actual crime, Bragg charged Penny with second-degree murder and negligent homicide.

When Bragg ran for district attorney, he promised he would focus on "racial equity" over property crimes which he defined as "crimes of poverty." Nearly 17% more felonies are reported today than before Bragg took office. Most of the victims of New York's rising crime are the poorest people. Where is his sensitivity to the poor?

Bragg was not the only one trying to weaponize the incident by using “the poor” to his advantage. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez assured in the media and on the RRSS that Jordan Neely had been murdered because of the demonization of the poor. According to the left's perverse view of the poor, this would be a mental condition that leads people to threaten passengers and rob them. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists, of course, joined in the demonization of Penny as an example of "white supremacy." They forgot that most of those threatened by Neely were poor people riding the dangerous New York subway, and many were black. It was Penny who was exposing his life to save poor and black people, not the progressive elite.

The woke progressives still don't understand the ever-widening gap between their comfortable lives of privileged social vigilantes and the everyday lives of Americans. The same progressives that made George Floyd a martyr a few years ago wanted to condemn Penny because, from their glass palace, the case seemed identical to them. But constant efforts to portray Penny as a racist killer were falling on deaf ears. Penny's acquittal exposed a change of eras.

What changed in American society

In 2020, the BLM movement became world famous. But the group began to gain momentum between 2013 and 2014 after a series of cases in which those accused of killing black citizens in various violent events were acquitted. A protest hashtag on Twitter began to be used more and more, the organization was gaining visibility and funding. Every case that occurred was judged and sentenced by the left-wing media and politicians, ignoring evidence and judicial processes.

BLM's main motivation, according to its leaders, was to denounce the "extrajudicial killings of black people by police and vigilantes." These were times when the woke narrative prevailed very easily in society. But the drive toward rioting and violence in the movement grew year by year, with each police incident. BLM leaders did not seek to change the situation they were condemning but rather to propose a complete transformation of the current system. They wanted (as extemporaneous as it sounds) a revolution. Black Lives Matter entered fully into political activity at the hands of woke causes.

Like many expressions of the identitarian left, BLM gained iconic milestones that made them believe they had touched the sky with their hands. How to forget the desecration and even removal of statues in Europe and the United States by Antifa mobs? How to forget the self-blaming marches by the woke mobs of the united world? How can we forget the role-playing that will go down in the historical encyclopedia of infamy as when Nancy Pelosi knelt, with her “kente” garment, conceding BLM leaders were right about their historical revisionism? How can we forget the solemn face of the current British Prime Minister Keir Starmer kneeling for photos? How can we forget those who kissed the feet of black citizens in the streets?

The bonfire of vanity burned like never before, the movement spread around the world and resulted in violent protests, widespread rioting, looting, and destruction in cities like Minneapolis, Portland, and Seattle. By the summer of 2020, BLM was already behaving like a terrorist organization. Dozens of people died as a result of its actions and the poisonous narrative that no one seemed to be able to stop. In Minneapolis, a man was shot dead in a pawn shop that was being looted. In Detroit, a man was killed when his car was shot at during a demonstration. In Oakland, a Department of Homeland Security officer was shot and killed in front of a courthouse. In Indianapolis, two people were killed in a shooting while demonstrating and three others were injured. In Chicago, a man was shot and killed. In Omaha, a protester was killed in front of a bar. In Kansas City, a man was killed while picking up one of his children at a protest. In Chicago, a young man was fatally shot inside a store while paying for his goods during a looting. We could go on like this for hours, the death spread by BLM went unchecked.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans were able to put a stop to the bloodlust and vengeance of this criminal tribe. The media added fuel to the fire. The world joined in. To oppose this insane ritual was a death sentence. In universities, BLM pushed insane "affirmative action" programs demanding academic privileges and facilities for black students. Students, professors and authorities who would not humble themselves in the face of their arrogant demands were cancelled, expelled and humiliated. Curricula prioritized racial identity over merit.

Everyone, everywhere, wanted to appear diverse and inclusive. The U.S. adopted the rhetoric of Black Lives Matter, entering into conflict with its history, with its founding fathers, with its culture and with its essence. It was beginning the reign of DEI tyranny that broke businesses, careers and the soul of the country.

The Black Lives Matter movement, founded on lies and fudged statistics, also betrayed the teachings of civil rights leader Martin Luther King. It was purely and exclusively an anti-American, anti-Western, anti-capitalist, anti-white action movement. In October 2023, after Hamas’ invasion of Israel, it proved to be, in addition, a group of virulent antisemites who celebrated torture, rape and death.

Trampling on the legacy of the civil rights movement was not free, they traded a just claim for the aspiration of a transformation of the social order. It was pure racial fascism.

That is why, when the jury returned its verdict in Penny's favor, the response did not take the form of protests like those that four years ago brought millions into the streets. Although Black Lives Matter supporters expressed their anger, that rhetoric found zero social support. Times have changed, and the contrast with previous cases is striking. Penny's defense understood the changing times far better than Bragg or AOC, and ignored the racial narrative and stated the obvious: Who does the American citizen prefer to ride the subway with, Neely or Penny? This question, so simple and so clear, just a couple of years ago was controversial. Today, it is a simple appeal to common sense.

This time, Americans did not give in to manipulation, psychopathy, intimidation. The jurors refused to bow to the threats of activists, the pressures of the media and the shenanigans of a judicial system whose priorities urgently need to be overhauled. But the jury taught the system a key lesson: It showed that Americans had had enough of Black Lives Matter. The verdict had nothing to do with punishing poverty or white supremacy, it had to do with the right of citizens to live in peace.

Society is rejecting this poisonous ideology that presupposes white guilt for structural oppression that was not been able to proven but which BLM wielded when it came to gaining all sorts of advantages. In 2020, the Penny case would have generated riots and media outrage for weeks. Today, Penny can walk down the street without anyone daring to point it out. The power of racialized hysteria has passed, even if its militants still persist within institutions, universities and the media. But people no longer buy their rotten rhetoric.

What the Penny case has exposed is not just one man's innocence, but the rejection of the confrontational race-based narratives that were pushed by Black Lives Matter and used by so many politicians, including the recent Democratic presidential campaign. Americans realized that this is not a defense of the poor or minorities. The U.S. has realized that they never cared about black lives, they only wanted to promote a racist and violent agenda. People simply don't believe them anymore.

The era of Black Lives Matter has come to an end.