There will be no marches to commemorate the death of Phillip Thiessen

Imagine if you will, seeing the following story breaking on the news out of Wisconsin during all of the racial tension and rioting going on. A White guy in a truck is driving along the road when he sees a bicyclist approaching in the other direction. The bicycle rider appears to be dark-skinned, either Black or Hispanic. The White driver makes a spur-of-moment decision and intentionally swerves into the other lane, striking and instantly killing the bicyclist. When the police question him later, he freely admits that he ran the guy down intentionally because of his race and he’d gotten up that morning thinking about killing a person of color.

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That would be national news for weeks to come. Many other issues would be pushed off the front pages to make room for the coverage. But this is one story that’s actually true, and yet the odds are you haven’t heard a peep about it unless you follow one of a handful of conservative sites or live in the same town. That’s because the driver of the truck was Daniel Navarro, a 27-year-old Hispanic man of Mexican descent. And the victim (who was actually on a motorcycle) was Phillip Thiessen, a Marine, former Police Officer and worker for the Wisconsin Department of Justice. He was also White. National Review has more of the details that make the media silence on this story so glaring.

Citing “recent events” and the “racial climate in the United States,” Navarro referenced a “silent majority that voted for Donald Trump as president and the political and racial tensions in the news lately, including racial tensions related to President Trump.” According to the complaint, he emphasized that “if Trump and white people are going to create a world like we are living in, then he has no choice and people are going to have to die.” Deciding to act on this rage, Navarro is alleged to have “intentionally swerved his truck” into Thiessen head-on because all Harley riders are “white racists.”

Lest there be any doubt as to the intentional nature of the act, according to the complaint, Navarro had been “thinking about targeting a white person and killing them with a vehicle earlier that day,” and he “picked a motorcycle because he wanted the person to die,” because “white people drive motorcycles,” and “the Harley culture is made up of white racists.”

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There is no indication that Navarro and Theissen knew each other or had ever even met before. Theissen wasn’t “counter-protesting” any BLM marches or displaying anything overtly political or provocative. The father and grandfather was just some guy out for a ride on his Harley. Some White guy.

Navarro made no bones about what he had done. He didn’t try to pretend it was an accident. He had decided to kill a White guy that day and Theissen was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Also, for that it’s worth, Navarro appears to either be crazy or he’s doing a good job of faking it to help with his defense. He claims people have been slipping him acid and trying to poison him because he’s Mexican.

Incredibly, Navarro is actually being charged with a hate crime, so it’s not as if there isn’t some attempt at equal justice taking place. You hardly ever see that when the victim in a crime like this is White. And this was unquestionably a case of murder and the motive for the murder was racism. But despite all of these facts, you don’t hear a peep about this case outside of the local news. Regardless of the fact that Theissen had worked for the Minnesota Department of Justice, the Attorney General couldn’t even be bothered to put out a statement to mark his passing.

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You see, Phillip Thiessen doesn’t fit the narrative. He upsets the social justice apple cart. And that makes his death a local news story. Just file this story away for future reference because it’s far from the only incident like this, sadly.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 20, 2024
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