The death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man, is being spun as the next George Floyd.
Neely died after he was allegedly put into a choke hold by an ex-US Marine assisted by at least two others in the New York Subway, following Neely apparently displaying unpredictable and threatening behaviour towards passengers.
According to witnesses, Neely was erratic and violent, shouting on the F-train, ‘I’ll hurt anyone on this train!’ and expressing that he was ‘ready to die’. He is also said to have thrown garbage at passengers.
A 24-year-old ex-Marine, who was a commuter on the train, tackled Neely and put him in a choke-hold. Others also aided in restraining Neely, who struggled against them. Footage taken by a passenger show that Neely became unconscious before being freed. He later died in hospital.
Neely did not deserve to die in this horrible way, but the response to the untimely death of this troubled young man exposes so much of the rot that is Leftism. Ideologically-driven commentary since the tragedy clearly demonstrates that leftist acolytes care more about the narrative than the people involved.
The American media machine went into overdrive, largely because Neely is black and the ex-Marine is white. Obsessed with race politics, those who have drunk deep from the Woke spring began to manufacture a narrative that the US is as racist as ever and this incident served as proof.
In order to do this, they trimmed away inconvenient facts.
Ignored or downplayed was Neely’s aggressive behaviour on the train. The crucial detail that one of the other commuters restraining Neely was also a black man was largely disregarded. They overlooked that at the time of the incident, Neely, who is almost inevitably described as a jovial Michael Jackson impersonator, had a warrant out for his arrest after allegedly hitting a 67-year-old woman in the face as she exited a subway station in late 2021. She suffered a broken nose and fractured orbital bone.
Many on social media and in the press also ignored that Neely had been arrested around 42 times, four of those being for assault, and once for attempted kidnapping. Filemon Castillo Baltazar, a 68-year-old man and Mexican immigrant, was assaulted by Neely in 2019, again in a subway station, said that Neely ‘should have been in some rehab centre’ and that ‘the Marine shouldn’t be punished. Who knows what that guy might have done to other people’.
As reported by the Daily News:
‘I was waiting for the train, looking at the monitor to see how long it would take to come. Out of nowhere, he punched me in the face. I felt a punch to my head. He didn’t say anything, he just hit me. He hit me above my right eye. I thought a piece of the subway ceiling had fallen and hit me in the head, but then I saw this guy coming at me.’
Journalist Andy Ngo uncovered a post on Reddit from 9 years ago from a commuter warning the public about the alleged behaviour of Neely. This was a man who had a history of being a menace to the public.
Nevertheless, headlines such as ‘Homeless New Yorker is murdered on the subway, and some see his attacker as a hero’ appeared before the police had time to investigate. Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that ‘Jordan Neely was murdered’. Fellow ‘Squad’ member, Representative Jamaal Bowman one-upped AOC by saying that Neely was ‘publicly executed’. Two New York State Senators said that Neely was lynched.
These, and other prejudgements, were so over the top and akin to throwing a lit match into a tinder box that even the leftist New York Mayor Eric Adams was forced to push back on CNN. Around the same time, protests erupted in New York that inevitably descended into chaos and violence.
The possibility of a fair hearing for the ex-Marine is at risk of being undermined by the casual and unserious cliches thrown around by social media race-hustlers. This is disgraceful, especially for politicians who travel through New York with an armed entourage. These are the people who actually have the influence and power to do something about the increasing lawlessness in New York and ensure medical care for those, like Neely, who fell through the cracks.
New York, and many other Democratic-run cities, are descending into anarchy. Before Neely’s death, under the governance of progressive Democrats, 27 people had been violently killed on the subway since only March 2020. This is a massive escalation, as more people have been killed in the past three years than in the previous 10 years. Many of those deaths were due to fights between commuters. Where were all those self-righteous politicians when these deaths took place? Why weren’t they calling for better policing or tougher penalties for violent criminals? They weren’t there because these deaths did not fit the intense racial narrative doing the rounds in the US. As callous as it sounds, those 27 lives matter little to them as they were not useful politically.
Neely had a tragic history. His mother was murdered when he was a young teen, and he was reported to suffer from serious mental issues ever since. But leftist policies, from the so-called compassionate aisle of politics, have failed not just Neely, but all New Yorkers.
Crime has been soaring, innocent people are being hurt, and rather than doing a bit of navel-gazing and having the good grace to blush at their own ineptitude, the progressive politicians are leaping at a chance to cry racism and blame vigilantism. It is no good for any city when citizens feel the need to physically protect each other. This is why New York is leading the nation in losing population numbers, as people get out of the once great metropolis, made decrepit by incompetent ideologues.
I predict that even in liberal New York, it would be hard to find an impartial jury. Meanwhile, the public transport system has become a dangerous underground jungle, thanks to leftism.
