Daniel Penny: A Real Hero.

Unleashing the Power of Imagery in Politics: From Rosa Parks to Daniel Penny

The Left’s Reductionist Approach

From Rosa Parks to George Floyd, the left has a history of reducing complex events to singular images that help its cause. But let’s face it, these details don’t matter. The left’s ceaseless leftward march runs on reductive imagery. Poke the right until it bites, snap a picture of it, and use it to win. The left is now trying to do this with its manufactured image of Daniel Penny’s arrest. It wants us to see a brusk, racist, out-of-control white man finally, thankfully, corrected by the rainbow alliance.

The Backfire of Manufactured Images

But not every manufactured image works out the way they want it to. When Bernie Goetz shot four black subway attackers in the 1980s, the left painted him as a crazed racist, but he became, much to their surprise, a local hero among New Yorkers regardless of race or politics. And now, the image of Daniel Penny is blowing up in their faces. In the image, Penny looks like a superhero oppressed by a dark and grumpy empire. It has already sparked $2.4 million and counting in GiveSendGo donations. None of the attempts to control the damage worked. Penny still looks like a total Chad, and everyone knows it.

The Rise of Superheroes

Every now and then, an actual superhero appears. They’re not super because of their physical powers, but because of their heightened image in our collective consciousness. In being instantly elevated to myth status, Daniel Penny isn’t “like a superhero,” he actually is one. Our love of superheroes betrays an innate populist intelligence. It reflects an overwhelming frustration at our loss of control, especially in the cities. Only an individual with great powers — powers that match that of industrialized urbanity itself — can save us.

The Supervillain

Supervillains, usually out of resentment from past wrongs, decide to take out their fury on the world by trying to conquer it. George Soros, a “global citizen,” never sets foot on the streets of cities he corrupts by electing ultra-liberal DAs that refuse to enforce the laws. Soros isn’t “like a supervillain,” he literally is one. He’s driven by a genuine hatred of humanity.

The Big Character Poster

The Daniel Penny arrest photo is an American Big Character poster. His stated crime is racist violence, but this is obvious fiction. In reality, his crime is being white, strong, and bold enough to stand up to the regime’s drug-addled shock troops, on whose behalf they willingly destroy entire cities. But unlike a Big Character Poster, an image speaks words of its own. In warping truth, the regime has flipped a hero into a villain.

There’s something different about Penny. They were meant to be images of fear and division, but they were transmuted into images of strength and honor. We’re naturally drawn to them, these strong horses next to weak ones. They both did something we all yearn to do — a fulfillment of the hopes we pin on dreams and superheroes: First, to protect innocent people against bodily harm. Second, to stand up to an oppressive regime. And third? To look great doing it.