America’s Becoming the Society the Fascists Want
What the Death of Jordan Neely Says About a Country Where Hate and Violence Are Exploding off the Charts
by umair haque
I barely know how to begin. Let me try to start here. America is becoming the society the fascists want.
By now, maybe you’ve seen the pictures. If you haven’t heard the story, it goes like this.
Where do you even begin? Let me try again. A man was choked to death on the F train in Manhattan. The chokehold lasted fifteen minutes. None of the other riders intervened. Because someone wanted to kill him. But this wasn’t any ordinary crime. It wasn’t a robbery, or a hit, or anything of the sort. It was something entirely different, in another realm entirely. It’s already been compared to a public lynching.
What just happened here? This is what it means to become a fascist society.
Whether or not this was a murder has already become, sadly, foolishly, gruesomely, a matter of “debate.” Let’s dispense, first, the the canard that this was anything near the realm of “self-defense.”
That’s from someone who was there. It’s not in dispute. Nobody is saying that Jordan Neely — the man who was killed — harmed anyone. And yet you can see that certain sorts of people are slavering over his death. Celebrating it. Lauding the killer as a hero. Is that…decent? Or obscene?
Let us be very, very clear. Jordan Neely was innocent. Of any sort of crime whatsoever in that subway car. So what was he guilty of?
Existing.
Who was he? He was a Michael Jordan impersonator. He was a man. He was a black man. He was poor, mentally ill, homeless. He was a lot of things.
Was this just “vigilante justice?” No. Neely was innocent. This wasn’t justice of any kind whatsoever. It was injustice. Of the highest kind there is. Taking an innocent person’s life…just because…
Just because.
What really happened here? A man — in this case, a former Marine — may have decided that he was going to take Neely’s life. That he was going to torture him to death — which is what being strangled for fifteen minutes is — on a subway car. He may have decided that he had the power to do that.
Just because.
Because…what? In moments like these, we look for answers. Obvious ones. Have you ever lived in Manhattan? I have, for a long time. Ever lived in a city? People begging for money, food, clothing, shelter — they’re, sadly, commonplace. They always have been, in cities, and I’m not saying that’s right, I’m just saying it is. If you or I were to take upon ourselves to start killing them…well, then we’d have death squads, wouldn’t we?
There’s a guy who lives in my neighborhood. There he is, on the street, every day, when I take Snowy to the cafe. Begging, aggressively. Change! Change! Sometimes, he even seems a little big angry, always sort of hostile. Is it OK for me to take it upon myself to…kill him? To torture him to death? Of course not. That wouldn’t even be vigilante justice, because as annoying as the guy is, he’s not doing anything remotely illegal, harmful, or even wrong. He’s innocent.
None of us have the right to take anyone’s right to exist.
I’m going to say that again, because, well, America’s already forgetting about Jordan Neely’s death. Who cares about a poor, mentally ill, homeless, Black man? LOL, dude, let’s talk about AI. Forgetting. Should we forget things like this? Or do they demand a moment of reflection from us, if we’re going to even make some sort of half-hearted attempt to honor the life lost, and give it the purpose in death it was denied in life?
None of us have the right to take away anyone’s right to exist.
So. What happened here? Every time I ask you this, we’re peeling back layers of an onion. Of human ugliness, stupidity, and folly. But now we can finally begin to arrive at a real answer.
The alleged killer, a white man, didn’t think that Jordan Neely, a Black man, had the right to exist. And he took it from him.
In a grotesque, obscenely violent way.
And yet we’re to think — if the authorities are anything to go by, who released Neely’s identity, but not his killers, who seem to want to portray all this as justified, not as a sudden eruption of extreme violence, motivated by hate — that this isn’t really what happened. We’re to forget. To think of Neely as some kind of violent criminal. But he wasn’t.
It isn’t a crime to exist. It isn’t a crime to sit on a subway car, and reach breaking point, and say that your life isn’t worth living. It isn’t a crime to say any of that out loud. What’s it called when you do that? It’s called freedom of movement. Of expression. Of speech.
What really happened here?
Jordan Neely’s right to exist was taken away, because he was exercising his basic freedoms. By a man who thought that he didn’t have the right to exist, which is to say, by a man who thought he didn’t deserve to exercise those basic freedoms.
Do you see how accurate an answer we’re beginning to arrive at? I want you to think it through, so you really grasp it.
Do I have the right to take your life…just because…there you are…on a street…on a bus…in a public space…talking? To yourself, even yelling, feeling angry at the world? Or Maybe because you’re in the space at all? That you moved towards me? Or maybe you even took off your coat in a frustrated, angry way?
Do you deserve to die for that? The only way — the only way — that I can justify that to myself, as the killer, is if I think you do not deserve, have, should be able to exercise those basic freedoms at all. You exercising those basic freedoms is interpreted as an existential threat to me.
Tell me there aren’t shades of lynching in that. Because that is what lynching was for. It was a way to punish Black people, for daring to cross the line into personhood — and send a message to the rest: you’re not really people, and don’t you forget it. This is what we do to those of you think they have the rights that people do. We annihilate you, with extreme violence.
The Nazis admired America. For this. They studied it intently. To learn how to subjugate and repress the Jews. The deviants in their Reich. The mentally ill, the indigent, the artists, the performers. You can imagine Jordan Neely doing his moonwalk. There is a line here as clear as day.