Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) slammed the right-wing narrative seeking to excuse or at least potentially excuse the killing of a man in New York City named Jordan Neely in a recent incident on a subway train.
“Despite what Fox News wants you to believe, being afraid of an unarmed person is not a reason to kill them,” she said. “We should never accept a society where such rationale becomes normal. Especially when powerful incentives exist in politics + media to keep people afraid of each other.”
In the incident involving Neely, an assailant placed him into a chokehold, and he died. In their responses, some have tried to divert attention from the basic facts of what happened: that someone was killed. Instead, the idea has been that the killing was perhaps somehow justifiable, whether because of imagined threats from Neely or broader social conditions placing those involved in the position where the false idea is that what happened was almost or nearly unavoidable.
In general, many on the Right have stuck to trying to characterize certain areas, particularly those with Democratic leadership and including New York City, as dangerous or overrun with crime. When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) visited New York City recently to participate in demonstrations on Trump’s behalf around his arraignment in a Manhattan criminal case, she subsequently blasted the city in an interview on Fox News with Tucker Carlson, who has since been fired. “The streets are filthy,” Greene claimed of New York. “They’re covered with people basically dying on drugs. They can’t even stand up. They’re falling over. There’s so much crime in the city, I can’t comprehend how people live there. It was repulsive. It smells bad. I think it’s a terrible place.”
Obviously, her description is ludicrous, but in general, this is the line of rhetoric to which Republicans are sticking. They’re also encouraging of violent reactions to perceived threats with their obsession with allowing for the proliferation of firearms despite polling indicating that a majority of Americans supports measures like bans on assault weapons and universal background checks. Under Democratic leadership, some individual states have imposed such measures.
Despite what Fox News wants you to believe, being afraid of an unarmed person is not a reason to kill them.
We should never accept a society where such rationale becomes normal.
Especially when powerful incentives exist in politics + media to keep people afraid of each other.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 6, 2023
