Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/09/19/under-our-civil-rights-regime-fake-murders-are-punished-and-real-murders-arent-worth-mentioning/
SAMUEL MANGOLD-LENETT
VISIT ON TWITTER@SMLENETT
MORE ARTICLES
“Yeah, hit his -ss,” a black teenager giddily said before his friend mowed down a cyclist in a recently circulated viral video.
“Ready?” the teenager driving what was reported to be a stolen car asked as he geared up to hit the cyclist, Andreas Probst, a 64-year-old retired police chief. A retired police chief, out on a morning bike ride, is apparently murdered by a nonwhite teenager, and the corporate media are silent. There are no protesters outside the killer’s house. There are no social media campaigns for accountability. Fortune 500 companies will not honor the legacy of Andreas Probst, despite his contributions to society.
As anyone with a functioning brain could tell you after watching the video, the hit-and-run was intentional. Thankfully, local police agree. The 17-year-old driver of the car whose name remains unreleased is expected to have his charges “updated to include open murder,” according to The Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Maybe this unnamed teenager will face justice and be locked away for the rest of his natural life, but what are the odds of an anti-social homicidal maniac actually being held accountable for his actions these days? I’m not optimistic, and that’s only part of the issue at hand.
On May 25, 2020, video surfaced of a white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, with his knee on the back of a large black man, George Floyd, after the latter reportedly attempted to use a counterfeit bill in a convenience store. Floyd’s increasingly erratic behavior after being approached by the police led to Chauvin using a standard practice restraint to keep him from causing harm to himself and others. While restrained, Floyd would expire. It would later be revealed that he had a “fatal level” of fentanyl in his system during these events, but this didn’t matter. Nor did his aggressive and erratic behavior prior to being restrained on the ground.
The footage with which nearly everyone is familiar was void of context necessary to develop a proper understanding of the incident. It only shows a white man in uniform using his authority to push a yelling black man into the street. All the world saw was a black man repeatedly calling for his “mama” while saying he couldn’t breathe before he died. Chaos subsequently erupted in the streets, likely compounded by pent-up Covid-era frustrations, and the narrative makers ran with it.
Institutional media, corporate America, academia, and the political class enthusiastically insisted Floyd’s death was caused by white supremacy and systemic racism while race rioters and anarchists wreaked havoc on the general populace for several consecutive months. Dozens were killed, more than a billion dollars in property damage occurred, and virtually every major institution from Silicon Valley to Sesame Street pledged fealty to Black Lives Matter.
Because one man died in a highly publicized and drastically mischaracterized event, the country’s civic pantheon was cast aside: Eternal truth and natural law gave way to racial grievance and intersectional hierarchy. The “1619 Project” became our foundational myth, anti-racism our national religion.
Floyd’s death fundamentally changed the nature of our republic. Probst’s death will soon be forgotten.
The Civil Rights Regime
The deafening silence from institutional media and the overwhelming majority of the American government following the killing of Probst is a consequence of the civil rights regime. It’s the creation and dehumanizing of outgroups and the overlooking of in-group members’ maliciousness. It is an integral part of American government and culture.
Fulfilling the promises of the Declaration of Independence and ensuring equality for all American citizens before the law was a noble and righteous goal. This may have been where these intentions began, but it is certainly not where the exercise has ended.
The legal system has been generationally warped through decades of affirmative action and disparate impact laws creating new social hierarchies. Every identitarian denomination seeks representation within this coalition, hoping to partake in the spoils and gain social capital. Odds are they will be able to. The only ones not allowed within the gate are those who benefited from the old hierarchies or those whose worldviews challenge the premise of the new ones.
This is why any time trans activists, race grifters, anarchists, or any other leftist ideological group stages an “insurrection,” by left-wing standards, the media whitewash it. The chaos engulfing the nation during the summer of 2020 reinforced a hierarchy the civil rights regime has a vested interest in maintaining, so it was allowed to continue. Jan. 6, however, challenged the new hierarchy so its participants must never again be allowed to see the light of day.
Where Americans initially saw an opportunity to correct historical wrongs, cynical activists saw a spoils system and new cultural ethos to exploit edging out anyone else who couldn’t sufficiently claim the legal or cultural status of “victim.”
Recall this past May when Daniel Penny (white) restrained Jordan Neely (black), a dangerous schizophrenic and violent, repeat criminal, on the New York City subway system after the latter repeatedly menaced passengers. Neely would later be pronounced dead at a New York hospital after the incident.
Whereas Neely allegedly shouted about how he would “hurt anyone on this train,” and Penny likely prevented him from doing just that (as any able-bodied man ought to do in a healthy society), this didn’t stop leftists in legacy media and the government from lavishing praise upon the former while condemning the latter as an evil racist murderer. After all, Neely sometimes dressed up as Michael Jackson, and Penny is a white guy who said, “Hey, stop that.”
[READ: The Lesson Of Jordan Neely: Your Courage And Sacrifice Will Be Punished]
Following this, America dusted off the 2020 playbook, corporations bent the knee, politicians raised their fists, protesters flooded the streets — you get the picture.
Penny’s whiteness was placed at the very center of what we were assured was a violent attack motivated by racial animus. He was a white man killing a black man because that’s what white men do, so the narrative goes, and is currently facing second-degree manslaughter charges for the crime of saying, “Hey, stop that.”
The only person credited with agency in the situation is Penny because his skin color denotes him as a victimizer. Sort of like how an “SUV” plowed through marchers in Waukesha, Wisconsin, two years ago because the driver — Darrell E. Brooks Jr., a black racist — is a victim per the powers that be.
This logic was further on display this past spring after Democrats and other leftist jackals in the media ran cover for the increasingly violent LGBT agenda following a trans radical’s targeting of Christians at a private day school. Instead of taking the opportunity to stand in solidarity with the people who were actually targeted, they opted to blame conservative lawmakers, media companies, and Christians for standing in the way of social engineering genital mutilation progress.
[READ: Here Are Leftists’ Disgusting Reactions To The Horrific Nashville Christian School Shooting]
The “trans community,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said shortly after the murders, is “under attack.” The shooter’s victims did not receive the same empathetic support.
The six Christians who were apparently targeted for their faith, the people mowed down by Brooks, the high likelihood of Daniel Penny facing jail time for protecting other people, and Andreas Probst being murdered for sport do not matter to the civil rights regime. Their innocence does not matter, only their sacrifice does, because it reiterates to the rest of us that there is a tangible cultural hierarchy, fully backed by the U.S. government, against which we are powerless.
Specific groups are insulated and emboldened to the detriment of others.
As one of the left’s leading midwits luminaries, Ibram X. Kendi, says, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
And so the cycle continues with what writer Auron MacIntyre calls an “aristocracy of favored groups” — one not of merit, but of victimhood.
Samuel Mangold-Lenett is a staff editor at The Federalist. His writing has been featured in the Daily Wire, Townhall, The American Spectator, and other outlets. He is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @smlenett.
What Did You Say? 
You must be logged in to post a comment.