Four years ago a white man choking a black man in a major city, his death, the subsequent trial and a failure to convict would have led to non-stop media coverage and equally non-stop rioting.

Instead, New York BLM leader Hawk Newsome (pictured above) accompanied by a few pals, some elderly black people and a handful of white girls in keffiyahs hung around outside the downtown Manhattan courthouse like groupies for some band that had broken up years ago. In a city where radical politicians show up to every protest, Newsome’s entourage didn’t even rate a councilwoman.

Newsome, who seemed to have doubled his weight since the heyday of BLM, ranted,

“We need some black vigilantes. People wanna jump up and choke us and kill us for being loud? How about we do the same?” But the only one the BLM leader seemed likely to kill was himself if he didn’t stop eating. And no one except FOX News was covering his antics.

A desultory effort at post-verdict rioting consisted of some light police shoving that was a far cry from the street riots that had wounded officers and paralyzed Manhattan only a few years ago.

As the trial demonstrated, Daniel Penny did not kill Jordan Neely, an unhinged madman who had assaulted elderly women on the subway, much like George Floyd, the fentanyl did that.

But Daniel Penny may have helped kill BLM.

A movement that had terrorized the nation and destroyed countless lives had faded into irrelevance. Not very long ago a trial like this would have put a city through months of violence followed by major carnage after the verdict, but now BLM could hardly muster more than an obese leader making impotent threats to a handful of followers before sulking off into the sunset.

A corrupt radical justice system led by pro-crime DAs had done its best to lynch Penny and the agitprop media had done its part to depict Jordan Neely as an innocent young Michael Jackson impersonator killed for no apparent reason by a meanspirted racist. The trial, during which Penny was repeatedly referred to as the “white man” by an unhinged prosecutor whose specialty was letting actual criminals go, seemed straight out of America’s darkest days.

But none of it worked. The jury did its job, most normal people agreed with the decision, and BLM couldn’t muster up more than a sidewalk scuffle. And Democrats quickly moved on.

What happened to the race riots of yesteryear?

After Trump’s landslide victory and defections across its minority coalition, Democrats have been treading cautiously on everything from transgender pronouns to identity politics.

But, more revealingly, without outside backing, BLM can’t even organize a candy store break-in.

The real question is where did those previous riots really come from? Was it really a bunch of grad students, aspiring screenwriters and posturing activists who terrorized a nation or the much better organized forces wearing them as gloves?

Over the last year much of the energy behind the BLM race riots had been diverted into pro-Hamas riots. The old BLM activists shouting at crowds through megaphones were replaced by Muslim activists with megaphones. But neither group is really capable of holding NYC hostage. The public faces of the riots matter much less than the leftist organizations that provide the street manpower and command structure, and the big foundation that fund the whole thing.

We have been told again and again that the six years of BLM violence were “organic”. The Daniel Penny trial shows that there wasn’t a single organic thing about that spectacle.

The BLM riots were a production from the same people who brought us the Women’s March, Occupy Wall Street, the anti-war riots and now the Hamas riots. The radical street groups and the big money propped up a timely ‘brand’ and the activists who became its public face. The latest outrage is monetized, organized and then retired once its time has passed.

Next week or next year it may be something else, an old cause or a new one, to riot over. For the moment the Left is still deciding what cause to champion after the Hamas riots wind down. And until the Left jumps one way or another, the causes will not catch fire on their own no matter how much Hawk Newsome hyperventilates and jiggles his chins because Penny is a free man.

Newsome, like Sharpton before him, is nothing without the backing of the Left. And that is why the aftermath of the Penny verdict is so revealing. Americans were taught to live in terror of a few swaggering thugs yelling at the camera. But the thugs were front men for the Left. Sharpton, without the backing of the political and cultural establishment, was a pathetic clown who, on his own, never actually had much black support. The establishment made Sharpton a kingmaker and had everyone from Comcast to Obama to Kamala bribing him for his support.

Daniel Penny didn’t mean to kill BLM, but the aftermath of the verdict showed all too clearly that the movement was a facade that was not only built on lies, but whose lies are no longer in vogue. The riots were never about George Floyd, just as it isn’t about Jordan Neely, and just as it isn’t really about Israel, the environment, abortion, or any of the other rotating outrages.

It was always about a leftist bid for power through violence, intimidation and terror.

Black people were a means to an end. And so were the black activists recruited to act as fronts for a fake movement. Now that BLM no longer matters, its activists have no manpower, no money and no publicity except whatever conservatives will give them. The only major media outlets that covered Newsome’s tantrum were FOX News and the New York Post.

BLM was a monster that Democrats, their media and leftist activists created. And they were always able to turn the violence on and off at will. From Ferguson to Floyd, they showed us how they could turn the violence on, and with Daniel Penny, they showed how it could be turned off.

From now on they must all be held responsible for keeping BLM violence turned off for good.

Image - WIN/Hawk Newsome. (X Screenshot)