It is worth pausing over every murder that goes on in this city. But a brutal killing this week deserves special attention.
Not least because it tells us something it appears we don’t want to know.
O’Shae Sibley was a talented 28-year-old dancer and choreographer.
He was stabbed to death last Saturday night at a gas station in Brooklyn.
Video surveillance footage obtained by The Post shows that Sibley and three of his friends stopped at the local Mobil station to refill.
While they were there Sibley and one of his friends started dancing (“voguing”) to Beyonce.
This drew the attention of another group of men at the station.
Words were exchanged and Sibley was stabbed. His friends and some bystanders called 911 and tried to help him.
But he bled to death on the sidewalk.
But lives are cruelly disposed of every week in this city. Why do I say that we should linger on this one?
Firstly, because it is strange that O’Shae Sibley’s killing has not had more attention.
Every life matters. But Sibley happened to be black and gay.
Normally either of these things — let alone both — would attract serious attention from the media and campaign groups.
Yet while the killing has widely been reported as a “hate crime,” it is the wrong sort of “hate crime.” One that doesn’t fit the dominant, enforced narrative of our time.
Had the group who confronted Sibley and his friends been white and shouted that they didn’t like gay people, or black people, this country would be in meltdown right now.
Every Presidential candidate would be condemning it.
All the “community groups” who make a profession out of campaigning against “hate” would be in full fund-raising mode.
The New York Times would have cleared the pages for days of reflections on what this said about America.
But that is not what happened.
Here’s what happened according to the people who were there.
One of the friends who was with Sibley when he was murdered posted a photo on social media of the bloodied sidewalk and wrote: “They hated us cause we are gay! Screaming we Muslim and we don’t like gays!!!!! As we are innocently pumping gas and y’all decided to stab one of us!!! #justice.”
Perhaps the media were simply cautious about reporting this, given that it was only one eye-witness?
Yet there is a second witness who has spoken to a local website.
An employee at the gas station said that the “flamboyant” behavior of Sibley and his friends offended the other group because the other group were Muslims.
Here’s what the gas station employee said: “These people were like ‘We’re Muslim, I don’t want you dancing.’ The gay people, they were not trying to fight.”
Yet these facts don’t fit the narrative. The victim was gay and black. The perpetrator was Muslim.
Our era is obsessed with “hate-crimes.” So much so that it sees them in places where they don’t even happen.
Yet last Saturday in Brooklyn was a hate crime. And the media are actually covering it up.
All because Sibley’s assailants were not hood-wearing members of the KKK or “MAGA” hat-wearing Republicans.
Instead they come from another group that our media identifies as a victim class.
The fact that the men were Muslim is why the media has been actively dishonest in its reporting. Despite the story going around the world.
The New York Times has written about the case. But it has not bothered to inform its readers of why Sibley bled out on a Brooklyn sidewalk.
Had the Times had even a whiff of this being a white-on-gay hate crime they wouldn’t have waited for one eye-witness, let alone two.
They would have told all, speculated about everything and asked what this said about this country and everyone in it.
But because the identity and motive of the perpetrators are an awkward glitch in that paper’s big narrative the Times simply covered over the facts.
The Guardian went one worse. That paper quoted Sibley’s friend who I quoted above, but they actually edited out the detail about the attackers being Muslim and the words they said.
Because again, it doesn’t fit The Guardian’s narrative.
The most that newspaper could bring itself to say was that an eyewitness said that the perpetrators mentioned “defending their religious beliefs” during the confrontation.”
Apparently dancing to Beyonce can be an assault on some peoples’ religious beliefs.
But whose? The Guardian wouldn’t tell you. It is happy to leave its readers with the impression that white Christian rednecks or Orthodox Jews might have carried out the killing.
Shamefully the gay press has done the same. In their usual betrayal of the people they claim to speak for, gay rights groups have reacted to the story by helping to cover it up.
Some gay groups have even tried to link the killing to recent debates about transgender issues.
Ignoring the fact that the men at the Brooklyn gas station seem to have been more influenced by the views of the founder of Islam than the Governor of California.
Obviously such false reporting is another reason why so many people don’t trust the media these days.
But this cover-up also displays an appalling cowardice.
Because we should be able to look facts in the face.
We should be able to face the complexity of the world. “Reality,” as we used to call it.
Nobody should be murdered because of who they are. But nor should a murderer be given cover because of who they are.
In particular they should not have their crime-scenes tidied up for them by a media and activist class who can’t deal with facts.
The reality is that life is more complex than the lies we have been telling ourselves in recent years.
America shouldn’t be divided by groups. And evil shouldn’t be divided by groups either.
Anybody might be a victim of hate. And anyone, from any group — even a minority — might be a perpetrator.
Ponder that and we’ll do this one victim, at least, a fragment of the justice he deserves.
* Article From: The New York Post
