Leftists have a martyr problem: namely, they keep picking rotten ones.

George Floyd comes immediately to mind. His was the death that launched a thousand riots four years ago — riots that resulted in at least 25 deaths, did more than $2 billion in damage, and unleashed an ongoing surge of Democrat-inspired violence nationwide.

Floyd became the subject of massive murals and nationwide remembrances despite having been a career criminal who once held a gun to a pregnant woman’s belly while his fellow thugs ransacked her house. On the day of his death, Floyd put enough fentanyl into his system to kill a man, and he repeatedly resisted arrest before being restrained by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was inarguably scapegoated and railroaded by the social “justice” mob.

Then there was Jordan Neely, an inarguably sick and dangerous man who was the subject of multiple Emotionally Disturbed Person reports and more than 40 arrests. Neely died on a New York City subway after being lawfully restrained by a brave Marine Corps veteran named Daniel Penny, who subdued Neely after he began ranting and raving and threatening to kill his fellow passengers. To those on the Left, this act of self-defense was a modern-day lynching.

Before that, there was Mumia Abu-Jamal, a political activist and journalist who, in 1981, walked up behind Officer Danny Faulkner on a Philadelphia street and shot him in the back during a traffic stop, then shot him a few more times as he writhed on the ground, then finally shot him point-blank between the eyes. Abu-Jamal might not qualify as a martyr, though, since he’s been repeatedly spared the death penalty, but the Left’s decades-long worship of this man is grotesque.

And speaking of living martyrs, let’s not forget the so-called Central Park Five, whose story is shamefully misrepresented in a Netflix film called “As They See Us.” These five young thugs were arrested and sentenced for the horrific gang rape and near-murder of a female jogger in 1989, only to be later exonerated when another assailant stepped forward to take the rap alone. As author Jeremy Carl notes in his powerful book The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart, “The Central Park Five, most of whom confessed to the crime that night and several of whom provided self-incriminating evidence, went free. In what was truly a miscarriage of justice, these five young men (four African Americans and one Hispanic) were collectively paid $41 million by the city of New York.”

Then there’s Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Jacob Blake, and the list goes on.

This week, we added yet another unworthy martyr to that list: Marcellus Williams, a career criminal and murderer who was executed three days ago by the state of Missouri.

Leftist activists, race-baiters, and con men like Ibram X. Kendi are predictably indignant. “Missouri lynched Marcellus Williams,” he posted. “DNA evidence proved he was innocent. It didn’t matter. Because the United States is a serial killer of Black people.”

Whatever, dude. As we noted four years ago, there were 7,300 black homicide victims in 2019, and more than 90% of those victims were killed by other blacks. The stats are only worse today. Furthermore, as researcher and author Heather Mac Donald has noted, “In the U.S., blacks commit the vast share of the interracial violence between blacks and whites … 88 percent.” But Kendi and his ilk can’t be bothered by stubborn facts. After all, they have a grift to run.

As for the martyr Marcellus Williams, on August 11, 1998, he was looking for a house to burglarize in a gated community in University City, Missouri. The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh has the grim details:

When Marcellus Williams knocked on the door of a home owned by a 42-year-old journalist named Felicia Gayle, no one answered. So Williams broke a window and let himself in. After he noticed that someone on the second floor was taking a shower, Williams went downstairs to the kitchen, grabbed a butcher knife, and waited. When Gayle emerged from the shower, Marcellus Williams stabbed her 43 times, including seven separate fatal wounds. He then stole Gayle’s purse and her husband’s laptop before leaving the house to pick up his girlfriend.

Williams was ultimately arrested and convicted, largely because his then-girlfriend noticed the bloody shirt he was wearing, at which point he admitted to the crime and threatened to murder her, too, if she told anyone. Then, after having been locked up for a separate offense, Williams bragged to a cellmate that he’d murdered Felicia Gayle, providing non-public information about the slaying in the process. Moreover, as Walsh notes, the cops “found several items belonging to the victim in the Buick that Williams was driving, as well as the stolen laptop belonging to the victim’s husband.”

But, hey, as Ibram X. Kendi sees it, Marcellus Williams was lynched.

Williams’s crime is horrific, but so is the fact that it took 26 years for justice to finally be served. And when we think of martyrs, we should think not of murdering dogs like Mumia Abu-Jamal and Marcellus Williams. Instead, we should think of Danny Faulkner and Felicia Gayle.

And we should confront these race-baiting leftist agitators, deny their unworthy martyrs, and debunk their filthy lies at every opportunity.