Kenosha rittenhouse kyle

===

see KYLE 2

see rhet god/devil terms

guns of course muy macho, kyle said he picked the AR15 b/c it looked cool = manly, warrior, lethal = power

note pedo-commie and bitch (co-opts black thug rap?]

pudgey white suburban so gets invite/summons on facebook to man up and go help the good guy cops who are besiged by black thugs [dylann r radicalized by blk on wht crime]

aha anti commie, fag and semite:

omfg parasite = cockroaches = exterminate vermin carry disease dirty

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/rittenhouse-2655770737/

no lnx pix req

Rittenhouse verdict championed on right-wing social media as green light for killing protesters

[Charlottesville "Unite the Right" Rally. Far-right Oath Keepers patrol Emancipation Park. Credit: Anthony Crider]

David Neiwertand Daily Kos November 21, 2021

The exultation on right-wing social media following Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal has been sickeningly predictable: Mainstream conservatives loudly valorize Rittenhouse as a "hero," while more extremist voices, applying the same logic, demand that more Americans follow his footsteps—urging the likeminded to take to the street now to begin using guns to "be like Kyle." They have even appropriated his name for their future plans, voiced in numerous celebratory threads: Any leftist protester shot by a right-wing "patriot" henceforth will have been "Rittenhoused."

As we forecasted, the acquittal is now a beacon-like green light granting permission to violent right-wing extremists to openly wage the kind of "civil war" against "the left"—which ranges from liberal Democrats like Joe Biden to the "antifa" bogeyman they have concocted—that they have been fantasizing about for the past decade. In the words of Charlie Kirk's interlocutor, it's the signal that now they "get to use the guns."

The bloodlust has been palpable. Online trolls celebrated that "it's Open Season on pedo-commies" and boasted that the verdict means "there's nothing you can do about it." A neo-Nazi channel on Twitter urged readers to "let this win fuel your rage." A fan of pseudo-journalist Andy Ngo commented in a retweet: "Every one of these anarchist criminal thugs should be shot in the street like the worthless dogs they are."

Far-right maven Ann Coulter posted a meme showing a gantlet of [marvel nazi nerd wet dr] comic-book superheroes bowing to Rittenhouse. On Facebook, Ben Shapiro framed any future violence as being left-wing: "The Left accepting the verdict in a peaceable manner remains the sizable elephant in the room."

The white-nationalist site VDare also extolled Rittenhouse's heroism:

This much is true: Kyle Rittenhouse is the hero we've been waiting for throughout the turbulent summer of 2020, where a Black Lives Matter/Antifa/Bolshevik revolution has our country on the brink of total chaos.

[Coulter-RittenhouseMeme.jpeg]

Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire blamed the media for there even having been a trial:

The verdict is right and just but Kyle Rittenhouse never should have been on trial at all. Now themedia will go to work, like the demonsthey are, to ensure that Kenosha burns because they did not get their blood sacrifice.

Walsh then added:

I hope Rittenhouse bankrupts all of you dirtbags in media who smeared him as a white supremacist. [sue for libel based on verdict? // charlottesville ~ KKK case finished ] I hope he ruins your life. I want you to suffer. It's what you deserve. It's justice.

Idaho legislator Tammy Nichols, a Republican, posted a meme featuring the Gadsden-flag "Don't Tread On Me" design, but with a graphic of Rittenhouse firing from a seated position as he did in Kenosha.

The Gun Owners of America (GOA)—a gun-rights extremist group headed by far-right militia figure Larry Pratt—joined in the celebration by announcing it was giving Rittenhouse a new gun.

Alert: GOA will be awarding Kyle Rittenhouse with an AR-15 for his defense of gun rights in America. Join us in saying THANK YOU to Kyle Rittenhouse for being awarrior for gun rights and self defense rights across the country!

Other "Patriot" Movement extremists saw the verdict as vindication for vigilantism and militia organizing. The "Washougal Moms," a militia-friendly group from eastern Washington state, opined:

Today the jury and legal system has reaffirmed our rights as citizens. The second amendmentin all aspects, to form a well regulated militia, the right to bear arms in self defense, and against enemiesboth foreign and domestic!

Kurt Schlichter, the right-wing troll with over 380,000 followers, taunted MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan, who had expressed concern about the double racial standard that the verdict reflects, on Twitter.

Your pain delights me. Kyle Rittenhouse killed two leftistcatspawsand bisected the bicep of another and there's nothing you can do about it.

A white-nationalist Twitter account called "Based Teutonic" celebrated the verdict by posting a fantasy that Rittenhouse would now embark on an action-hero-like mission—with the help of Judge Bruce Schroeder, who oversaw the trial in markedly biased fashion.

About to exit court room

Judge yells from behind:

Rittenhouse turns around

You forgot this

Tosses him his AR15

Credits roll, Eye of the Tiger plays

"Based Teutonic" wasn't alone in celebrating Schroeder's role in the verdict. On Telegram, a commenter in a Proud Boys channel observed:

Kyle's case shows how important is to have your guys in power on a local level. One vaguely conservative boomer judge made all of the difference in a monumental trial.

Other Proud Boys were more focused on their long-anticipated civil war. "There's still a chance for this country," wrote one. Another wrote: "The left wont stop until their bodies get stacked up like cord wood."

The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights monitored a number of far-right chat forums (particularly Telegram) following the verdict, and found an outpouring of extremist bile, much of it anticipating the ability to inflict lethal violence on "leftists," as well as Black "parasites" and, of course, Jewish people. A user called The Western Chauvinist commented: "The parasites are planning multiple 'protests' across the United States."

One user calling himself "Proud Boy To Fascist Pipeline" replied to one of these comments mocking Black leaders protesting the verdict as "parasites": "Your 17 year olds are already armed and terrorizing our neighborhoods, n----er."

Fittingly, Charlie Kirk fans—following the example of his Idaho audience member—were focused on the violence: "Arm up and tell them f**cking bring it!" one replied to predictions of leftist protests after the verdict. "Shoot these phukers," commented another.

Nick Fuentes' "Groypers" were also unbridled in their anticipation of gunning down their opponents. "The most American thing you can do is Killing Commies," opined one on the white-nationalist forum Gab.

Another Gab user exulted with a meme showing Joaquin Phoenix as The Joker, dancing: "When you find out it's officially Open Season on pedo-commies." Mocking "wannabe street thugs upset with the verdict," another Gab user replied, "you're gonna get Rittenhouse'd. Bitch."

Gab-OpenSeason.png

"Getting Rittenhoused" became a popular way of threatening leftists. After Ngo posted a handful of tweets from leftists angry about the verdict, hundreds of his fans piled on, making threats of violence against them. "Someone will Rittenhouse them too," one responded. Another replied: "I came here to say that!"

Antisemitism also was a common theme. Right-wing troll Keith Woods, who has 23,500 followers on Twitter, declared after the verdict: "Huge L for the Jews." His followers piled on; one responded with a GIF meme of Gollum and the text, "Curse you goyim." Another replied, "hopefully they take an L in Charlottsville trial too. WHITE BOY WINTER!"

White nationalist Eric Striker was more explicitly antisemitic, as well as strategic, in his commentary:

Beating the Jews to the narrative as incidents unfold is more important than anything that happens in court.

Once you frame a story with the facts (and the facts have to be 100% accurate) and disseminate it with an effective propaganda network, Jews will struggle to challenge it once it's cemented.

Notorious white nationalist and antisemite Mike "Enoch" Peinovich put out a statement through his National Justice Party: "This victory for Kyle Rittenhouse over the cosmopolitan elite forces that plague the nation isn't only a victory for the young man himself, it's a victory for justice and for all White people who take a stand," Peinovich said.

On Telegram, a white nationalist commented: "The victory of Kyle Rittenhouse over thejewish forces that plague the nation isn't just a victory for the man himself, it's a victory for justice, and for the masses of disenfranchised White people which populate the globe.

The neo-Nazi group White Lives Matter had this advice for its white-supremacist followers:

Don't let this one victory lull you back to sleep. That's what they want. They know small "victories" can placate the angry masses more than anything else. Instead let this win fuel your rage.Never forget the simple fact that this clear-cut self-defense should never have gone to trial in the first place. Muslim, Hispanic, and African invaders have raped millions of our women, WHITE women.Their time ofterrorizing our People with 0 consequences is coming to an end. The Rittenhouse verdict is a single tick in the scoreboard on our side. Our enemy doesn't have a scoreboard big enough for their victories. Fight harder, stronger, fiercer, and with the same remorse they have shown us. None. Get going, White man.

"This might be interpreted across the far right as a type of permission slip to do this kind of thing or to seek out altercations in this way, believing that there is a potential that they won't face serious consequences for it," Jared Holt of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council told NPR. "I worry that that might end up being interpreted by some people as a proof of concept of this idea that you can actually go out and seek a 'self-defense situation,' and you'll be cheered as a hero for it."

===

4 24

---

4 24

killer Kyle's Ex-Spokesperson Turns On Him](https://crooksandliars.com/2024/04/killer-kyles-ex-spokesperson-spills-beans)

David Hancock, who had acted as spokesman for Killer Kyle Rittenhouse and the Rittenhouse family comes clean about who Killer Kyle really is.

Credit: Screencap

171

By Chris capper Liebenthal — April 2, 2024

David Hancock was the spokesman for Killer Kyle Rittenhouse and his family during Killer Kyle's criminal proceedings three years ago. At the time, Hancock was laying it on as thickly as anyone, trying to portray Killer Kyle as a poor innocent waif of a boy just trying to do the right thing and who just wanted to go back to his old life and go on to Arizona State University and study to be a nurse to help people.

But that was then and this is now. And Hancock is, quite frankly, sick and tired of Killer Kyle's bullshit and he's calling him out on it. In a mind-boggling tweet, Hancock spills the beans about how they carefully groomed the image they wanted for Rittenhouse. They forced the kid to take four years of credit in just 10 months, with heavy reliance on "the Goggle Machine."

IFrame Content

For emphasis, let me repeat the key points:

Transforming a middle school dropout who was “angry at the world” with a history of violence and an unhealthy obsession with guns and killing into a respectable young man with a desire for higher education and a promising future was no easy feat.

> It was a meticulously crafted facade, which we sincerely hoped he would grow into. Instead, he squandered a full scholarship to study any subject at any university in the country to become a divisive douchebag and antagonize black Americans on college campuses. Kyle failed to learn a single thing. He remains the same uneducated, arrogant, and antagonistic individual, incapable of telling the truth.

It should also be noted that Hancock also pointed out a simple fact that he and Killer Kyle's other handlers made damn sure never saw the light of day was that just months before the fateful and fatal evening, Rittenhouse had applied for the Marines, but he was too stupid to even pass the aptitude test:

IFrame Content

Furthermore, not only was Killer Kyle too stupid for the Marines, but he was also too psycho for them as well and was permanently banned after he sent his recruiting officers an unsolicited video of him field stripping an AR-15. This fits in with what we know of him, such as how he made a video of him stripping down a Glock and saying that the ATF should be abolished.

The most ironic - and the most outrageous - bit of truth to come out of Hancock's confession is that Paul Prediger, formerly known as Gaige Grosskreutz, the man who Rittenhouse shot and wounded, was there as an ACLU observer and to provide medical aid to any who needed it. Contrary to what Rittenhouse and his defense team said in court, he was also the only one on the scene who had a valid concealed carry permit and the only one with medical training.

IFrame Content

Killer Kyle, like most of his miserable life, was just a poser and a fake.

I hope you'll understand if I don't hold my breath for the mainstream media to pick up on this story.

Topics:

David Hancock, Killer Kyle Rittenhouse

Explore more

257

Killer Kyle Kries: I Just Wanna Move On With Life!

—Aug 29th, 2023

186

Killer Kyle Rittenhouse's Really Bad Day

—Jan 14th, 2023

How Killer Kyle Got His Grift Back

—Aug 23rd, 2023

110

Killer Kyle Cancelled From Yet Another Event

—Mar 23rd, 2023

Killer Kyle's Grift Will Go On - Thanks To The Government

—Jan 24th, 2023

105

Killer Kyle: Cosplay Is Exhausting!

—Jan 11th, 2024

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/republicans-vigilante/

thom h

===

Say Their Names: 26 People Killed in the George Floyd Riots – PJ Media

Say Their Names: 26 People Killed in the George Floyd Riots

note shot 3 see snopes below

Tyler O'Neil | July 05, 2020

...

23. Joseph Rosenbaum

On August 25, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse armed himself and left his home in Antioch, Ill., and traveled 15 miles to Kenosha, which was suffering a spate of looting, rioting, and arson following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. The teen had gone to protect property amid the riots. Rittenhouse should not have traveled armed to Kenosha, but once he arrived, he reportedly gave rioters medical aid after police had used pepper spray on them.

Later in the night, rioters chased Rittenhouse and one man behind him opened fire. Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, was chasing the teen and Rittenhouse opened fire, apparently in an attempt at self-defense.

Rosenbaum died at the scene. A Texas native, he moved to Kenosha within the last year, the Milwaukee *Journal-Sentinel* reported. He left behind a fiancée and a young daughter.

He was also a registered sex offender. Earlier in the night, Rosenbaum taunted armed black civilians, saying, “shoot me, n***a.”

---

snopes pix What's True and False About People Kyle Rittenhouse Shot in Kenosha | Snopes.com

Update: On Nov. 19, 2021, Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges related to the Kenosha shootings. The Associated Press reported on the jury's verdict here.

Original story: In attempt to justify the actions of Kyle Rittenhouse — the 17-year-old accused of shooting three people, killing two, with a semi-automatic rifle during a protest on Aug. 25, 2020, in Kenosha, Wisconsin — Americans on the political right launched a grassroots effort to uncover any evidence to deny the shooting victims martyrdom among opponents.

The makeshift investigations revealed what hardline conservatives believed to be proof of criminal wrongdoing by the deceased — Anthony Huber, 26, and Joseph Rosenbaum, 36 —as well as by Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, who shot was shot in the arm and survived. One blog post alleged:

Anthony Huber was jailed for domestic violence. Joseph Rosenbaum was a pedophile. Gaige Grosskreutz was arrested and charged with burglary among other crimes [...] are you really saying the backgrounds of these ‘peaceful protestors’ aren’t relevant to the discussion?

Ultimately, the focus on the victims' backgrounds aimed to prove Rittenhouse's actions defensible, and discredit an underlying belief by the political left: that the victims acted heroically, and were wrongfully targeted by the armed teenager at the protest.

And though the rumors about the shooting victims varied in severity and nature, many alleged this: Huber was a known offender of domestic violence and rapist; Rosenbaum had sexually abused children; Grosskreutz had been arrested on suspicion of multiple crimes, including felony burglary, and all three victims were convicted felons. Based on court records and inmate rosters, aspects of those claims were indeed accurate, while others were outright false.

What follows is an explanation of those findings, as well as everything we know about the incident that made the three men symbols of the country's political divide, at the request of Snopes readers to investigate the wide-ranging online campaign to celebrate Rittenhouse, and smear the reputations of his alleged victims.

But we should note here: No evidence showed the victims' histories had anything to do with the protest, which began as a peaceful showing of people against racism by U.S. law enforcement after a white police officer days prior shot and wounded a Black man, Jacob Blake, who is now paralyzed from the waist down.

IFrame Content

Additionally, no proof existed to confirm or deny whether Rittenhouse knew of Huber, Rosenbaum, or Grosskreutz — or their criminal histories — before he was captured in video footage patrolling the protest with the rifle.

'I Just Killed Someone': How the Kenosha Shooting Unfolded

To understand the gravity of the rumors swirling about the shooting victims' past, let's unpack what happened that chaotic night in Kenosha.

(AP Photo/David Goldman)

Giving ideological ammo to Rittenhouse supporters on the frontlines of the country's culture war online, his legal defense team have framed the teenager from Antioch, Illinois, as a courageous vigilante who was patrolling the streets of Kenosha to prevent property destruction and theft when he needed to use his gun to defend himself. U.S. President Donald Trump, too, has said the teen appeared to be “in very big trouble” and “probably would have been killed” had he not acted the way he did.

That said, according to a statement to reporters by one of Rittenhouse's attorneys, the teen had heard the owner of a Kenosha car dealership wanted help patrolling his properties during the protest, so Rittenhouse and a friend armed themselves with rifles and headed to one of the auto shops.

After the city's mandated curfew of 8 p.m. passed, law-enforcement officers tried to clear a crowd of people a couple of blocks away — which, in effect, pushed the group toward the auto shop where Rittenhouse and others were stationed with guns. People in the crowd apparently threatened the teen and others acting as vigilante security guards, per the attorney's account. Then, after some running around, Rittenhouse attempted to go to a second mechanic shop, which he apparently believed was vulnerable to property damage. That's when the attorney said people "began chasing him down."

The back and forth between the teenager and the alleged "mob" was unknown, including if or to what extent they exchanged words. Also unknown were the locations of Huber, Rosenbaum, or Grosskreutz at that point in the night, or whether they had interacted with Rittenhouse before shots were fired.

The complaint outlining Rittenhouse's criminal charges — which include murder and first-degree reckless homicide — as well as bystanders' videos, explained what happened next, shortly before midnight: For some reason, Rittenhouse started running in the auto shop parking lot, while his first shooting victim, Rosenbaum, followed him at a close distance, and a journalist trailed Rosenbaum.

At one point, Rosenbaum — who appeared to be unarmed in at least one video — threw what appeared to be a plastic bag in the teen's direction while running, and it landed short of Rittenhouse. And within seconds, shots rang out, and Rosenbaum fell to the ground, according to the complaint. It was unclear who fired first.

Rittenhouse's legal team has said the teen didn't open fire first — but rather he heard a gunshot behind him as he ran, turned around, and saw Rosenbaum lunging toward him and reaching for the rifle.

As the journalist attempted to give Rosenbaum medical aid, Rittenhouse apparently called someone — and then fled. The complaint stated:

As the defendant is running away, he can be heard saying on the phone, 'i just killed somebody.' ... [The journalist] stated that he then heard other shots really soon after.

According to cellphone footage, a group of people followed Rittenhouse, yelling "Beat him up!" and "Hey, he shot him!" The teenager continued running, tripped, and then fell to the ground — from where he fired four shots.

Per the complaint, several people rushed toward the teen and hit him or tried to disarm him while he was lying on the ground. Among that group was Rittenhouse's second victim, Huber, who had apparently hit Rittenhouse with a skateboard during the scuffle. Then, the complaint stated:

The defendant then fires one round ... Huber staggers away, taking several steps, then collapses to the ground.

Rittenhouse sat up and pointed his gun at Grosskreutz, who ducked, put his hands in the air, and stepped back. Seconds later, when Grosskreutz moved toward the teen — apparently while holding a handgun — Rittenhouse fired one shot and struck Grosskreutz in the arm, the complaint alleged.

Grosskreutz ran away and medics took him to the hospital, where he was treated for a severe gunshot wound. Weeks later, in an interview with CNN that published Sept. 11, Grosskreutz said he was still recovering and missing most of his bicep where he was shot.

"I never fired my weapon that night," Grosskreutz said. "Everybody was there exercising their right to protest. And there were some people who were exercising their right to bear arms, including myself."

What We Know About the Victims — Aside From Their Rap Sheets

All victims apparently were familiar faces at protests against police brutality beginning in May 2020, when George Floyd, a Black man, died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for about nine minutes, and sparked an international reckoning over race and policing.

Porche Bennett, a Kenosha activist and business owner, told The Kenosha News while all three men were known by protest organizers, Rosenbaum and Huber were regular attendees of gatherings in the Kenosha area.

“They came out here every time with us,” Bennett said of the deceased.

Rosenbaum was originally from Waco, Texas. He lived in Arizona, where he went to high school and a community college, before moving to Wisconsin in 2020, per news reports and his Facebook page. He apparently worked at a Wendy’s restaurant in Kenosha at the time of his death, and he was survived by a fiancée and young daughter.

Those closest to Huber, a Kenosha resident, remembered him as a friendly, laid-back guy who loved skateboarding. His obituary said he "died a hero fighting for a cause he believed in."

Grosskreutz, meanwhile, isn't from Kenosha, a lakeside city between Milwaukee and Chicago with a population of about 100,000 people. Following Blake's shooting by a police officer there, however, Grosskreutz traveled about 40 miles south to Kenosha from his home in West Allis, a Milwaukee suburb, to show solidarity with those protesting the police officer's use of potentially lethal force against Blake.

Grosskreutz is reportedly a member of a Milwaukee-based social justice group called the People's Revolution Movement, and was patrolling Kenosha streets as a volunteer medic when the Aug. 25 demonstration turned deadly. And in addition to social justice work, Grosskreutz has worked as a wilderness medical instructor, among other jobs, and was a senior at a private liberal arts college in Ashland, Wisconsin, when he was shot and wounded, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

"I'm not an Antifa terrorist organizer," he told CNN. "I go to school. And yeah, I exercise my First Amendment right to peacefully protest."

What's True — and False — About the Victims' Criminal Histories

The viral claims alleging unlawful behavior by Huber, Rosenbaum, and Grosskreutz before the Kenosha shooting were a mixture of truth and falsehoods.

For example, yes, at age 19, Rosenbaum was sentenced to prison for sexually abusing five children — all boys between the ages of 9 and 11 — in Arizona's Pima County in early 2002, according to his case file obtained via a public records request by Snopes.

:{The documents said Rosenbaum was temporarily living with the boys' parents after his mother had kicked him out for disobeying her rules about one month earlier. Over the course of his weeks-long stay, Rosenbaum molested the boys, showed them porn, and performed oral sex on them, among other offenses, the documents showed.

He was sentenced to prison for roughly 15 years, and authorities believed at the time "his risk to recidivate being of great concern to the community" considering the victims' gender and age. (Let us note here: The records included an interview with Rosenbaum in which he said his stepfather sexually abused him and his brother on an almost daily basis when he was a preteen.)}:

Considering that evidence, the claim that Rosenbaum at one point was convicted of sexually abusing at least one child before his death was true.

Next, we analyzed criminal records involving Huber, and determined it also accurate to state he was charged with domestic abuse. We uncovered a Kenosha County criminal complaint that outlined his first serious run-in with law enforcement, in December 2012. And per that complaint, Huber, who was 18 years old at the time, threatened his brother and grandmother at their home with a knife, choked the brother, and demanded that they follow his orders. The complaint said the brother wanted to take Huber to a hospital, apparently for emergency mental health help, but Huber resisted. In the end, he was charged with strangulation and suffocation and false imprisonment, both of which are felony crimes.

On another occasion, about three years later, Huber paid a roughly $150 citation or possessing drug paraphernalia, court records showed. Then, in 2018, Huber was charged with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor offense, after a fight with his sister at their house, per a criminal complaint by Kenosha prosecutors.

But unlike what many Rittenhouse supporters claimed, we could find no court evidence that Huber had sexually assaulted anyone.

Also false was the assertion that all three of the teenager's victims were felons. Grosskreutz had not committed a felony crime, our analysis of court records showed.

He was, however, found guilty in 2016 of breaking Wisconsin's law governing the use of dangerous weapons — a misdemeanor offense — per Milwaukee County court records. He had apparently gone somewhere "armed while intoxicated," though the court records did not elaborate on what exactly had happened. Snopes requested a copy of the probable cause statement from county records administrators, but we have not yet obtained it.

Additionally, Grosskreutz at various points received tickets for minor offenses including disobeying police officers and making loud noises, the court records showed. However, no evidence showed he had indeed committed burglary, like supporters of the alleged killer claimed, though he had been arrested on suspicion of the crime in 2012. The felony charge was later dismissed, per Wisconsin Department of Justice's criminal data.

In the interview with CNN, Grosskreutz said he has paid his debt for his past crimes and that he had every right to carry a gun at the Aug. 25 protest. "I'm not a felon," he said. "I had a legal right to possess [a firearm] and to possess it concealed."

The Victims' Criminal Past 'Have No Bearing on Them Being Shot'

As of this writing, Rittenhouse was set to make his next court appearance on Sept. 25, and no court proceedings have called attention to the criminal histories of his alleged victims.

Threads on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and other social media sites for Americans on the far political right, as well as white supremacists and armed militias, were a different story, however. Those type of discussions were not unusual; onlookers of high-profile, controversial killings often focus on the criminal records of the victims, no matter the relevance of that history.

IFrame Content

The phenomenon is particularly prevalent when authorities kill non-white people; for example, conservative corners of the internet focused on Floyd's alleged criminal background after his death, which sparked a civil rights movement, and the rapsheet of another Black man, Rayshard Brooks,after a white Atlanta police officer fatally shot him in a Wendy's parking lot in June 2020.

Psychologists have said the strategy — whether intentional or not — of shifting focus away from questionable violence and onto the past unlawful behavior of victims makes it easy for people to subscribe to the "they had it coming" trope and justify deaths or injuries.

In response to that campaign, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel released a statement on Sept. 1 in which it explained why the newspaper had not reported on the victims' past legal records. The statement read:

There is no evidence so far that the backgrounds of the three victims — Anthony Huber, Joseph Rosenbaum and Gaige Grosskreutz — had anything to do with the clashes that led to the deaths of Huber and Rosenbaum and the wounding of Grosskreutz.

They are the victims of a shooting, and as far as we can tell their past legal records have no bearing on them being shot during a protest.

If more facts emerge that show their backgrounds are relevant to what happened that night in Kenosha, we would revisit our decision. For instance, if there is evidence that any of the victims' backgrounds could have affected their interactions with Rittenhouse, or if he knew anything about them before the shooting.

Sources

Updates

This article was updated on Sept. 23 to provide more information about Grosskreutz's criminal background.

This report was updated after Arizona's Pima County fulfilled Snopes' public records request for documents outlining the sexual child abuse for which Rosenbaum was sentenced to prison.

This article was updated with the jury's verdict in Rittenhouse's trial.

The headline for this report was changed to reflect the jury's verdict in Rittenhouse's trial.

By Jessica Lee

Jessica Lee is Snopes' Senior Assignments Editor with expertise in investigative storytelling, media literacy advocacy and digital audience engagement.

---

11 21

Political violence is on people's minds now that Kyle Rittenhouse has been acquitted. According to USA Today, far-right groups celebrated last week's unsurprising verdict. "Kyle Rittenhouse is the hero we've been waiting for" was posted on the Gab profile for VDare, a self-consciously fascist organization headquartered in the foothills of Washington, Conn. The takeaway appears to be that it's now OK to shoot anti-racists as long as the shooting can be credibly characterized as "self-defense."

Protests broke out in Kenosha, Wis., where Rittenhouse traveled two summers ago to"protect" propertywhile demonstrators, including some violent looters, protested the police murder of George Floyd. These newest protests were accompanied by a father-daughter duo carrying the same long gun Rittenhouse did. Instead of being white, though, they were Black. Instead of protecting property, they were protecting "anti-Rittenhouse protesters," said the New York Post.

Political violence is on people's minds. The right to petition the government for redress of grievances enshrined in the First Amendment seems to be running against the grain of the right to bear arms enshrined in the Second Amendment. After Rittenhouse's acquittal, anti-racists may feel it's too dangerous to petition. (The fascists are taking it to mean they can shoot first and often.) But some won't let the Second Amendment nullify the First. They'll arm up.

When racists with guns meet anti-racists with guns, it's likely the results will be bad, bad, very bad. USA Today, citing a study by Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, said "armed protests are six times more likely to turn violent compared to protests where no guns are present." That study examined more than 30,000 public demonstrations over 18 months between January 2020 to June 2021.

READ: [The dark Trumptopia we inhabit is the world science fiction warned us about]

Lead researcher Roudabeh Kishi told USA Today: "Oftentimes guns can kind of play a role with just increasing tensions. They're used as intimidation and kind of makes a tense environment even more tense. And so sometimes we'll see other types of violence breakout, not necessarily always a shooting," she said. "So it's like an indirect way arms can actually contribute to violence and destruction."

Political violence is on people's minds. Lee Drutman, a political scientist and New America fellow, said today that "violence is the alternative to politics. By normalizing violence, we undermine politics."

But what if political violence is normal? What if it should always be on people's mind. And what if our democratic politics is always already being undermined in some way by political violence. I suggest Rittenhouse's acquittal will not be the cause of future political violence. It is the effect of past political violence always already at work. We don't see it, though. Political violence is so normal it's practically invisible.

Political violence is the predictable consequence of democratic politics seeking to advance the cause of liberty, equality and justice for all coming into conflict with conservative politics seeking to maintain a social order in which white men rule American society with impunity.

READ: Charlottesville defendants found liable for civil conspiracy and ordered to pay millions in damages]

Because democracy won't stop, and conservative politics won't stop, that means political violence is always already there. It's better to see Rittenhouse's acquittal not as a cause of future violence but, I think, as an inflection point after which private political violence goes public.

Private political violence? What we are seeing now, in the potential for armed racists to silence free speech through intimidation or murder, didn't come from no where. It started at home, in the family, especially between husband and wife. When women challenge "authority," when children challenge "authority," conservative politics does not turn to democracy as a means of resolving conflict. It turns to violence.

It also covers it up. When a husband hits his wife, when a father hits his kids, our discourse almost never calls it political violence though the maintenance of the man's authority over his wife and children is almost always the reason he hits his wife and children. We call it "domestic violence." We call it "child abuse." *These terms are accurate but incomplete.Suffering is a political problem in democratic politics. Suffering is a political goal in conservative politics. Without suffering — without punishment for those people who deserve to feel their pain — anything can happen. Even liberty, equality and justice for all.*

Political violence has been growing acutely since we elected a Black president. The violence was enabled by Republicans loosening gun laws after Barack Obama's reelection. The Supreme Court is considering whether to make carrying a firearm openly a constitutional right. The NRA never gloried in mass murders. It did after Rittenhouse's acquittal. The private political violence that inspired the nation's worst shooting massacres is inspiring the institutionalization of public political violence. Where that leaves democratic politics, God only knows.

===

an 11 21

After the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse on Friday afternoon, right-wing trolls — many of whom are elected members of Congress — were ecstatic at this prime opportunity to trigger the liberals. Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Madison Cawthorne of North Carolina, and Paul Gosar of Arizona — all Republicans more interested in trolling than governance — made showily public offers of an internship to Rittenhouse. Cawthorne even took it to the next level, instructing his supporters to "be armed and dangerous."

Never one to be out-trolled, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia let loose with some truly unhinged tweets about *"radical Marxists" who are trying to start "a race war," proclaiming that "gun rights are the only thing holding back the Communist Revolution the Democrats are waging." And on the Senate side, Ted Cruz of Texas attacked the "corrupt corporate media," skillfully targeting the very people he needs to amplify his message and get that sweet trolling attention.*

Right-wing pundits joined in on all the gleeful trolling, as well.

Ann Coulter tweeted a meme equating Rittenhouse with superheroes, and Donald Trump Jr., forever trying and failing at being a Twitter wit, wrote, "The Rittenhouse jury just gave Biden his second colonoscopy of the day." Multiple right-wingers on social media wrote songs to honor Rittenhouse. On Friday, popular and trollish YouTuber Steven Crowder celebrated the verdict by insisting, "it's so wrong that we teach young men that violence is immoral," and encouraged viewers to follow in Rittenhouse's lead by taking up arms against Black Lives Matter protesters. Tucker Carlson, King of the Trolls, will host Rittenhouse on his Fox News show and insisted that he's "not a racist person." This claim is impossible, of course, to square with the photos taken earlier this year in a Wisconsin bar where Rittenhouse partied with Proud Boys and flashed white supremacist signs at the camera.

All of these provocations worked as intended: They got attention and garnered liberal outrage. "Liberal tears" are the most valuable commodity in Republican circles these days, and nothing brings forth tears like senseless violence. For those who subsist on liberal outrage, the dunks were easy and plentiful, because it turns out those silly liberals really do make frowny faces over the celebration of political violence.

The right is reacting to this verdict like they're sports fans whose team just vanquished a rival team in the Superbowl. The excitement on the right was palpable, but also measurable. As an analysis from Raw Story shows, Facebook exploded with conservative celebrations of the verdict, with "18 of the top 20 most engaged page links in the world" originating with conservative American pages. And the pleasure of the moment was explicitly tied to joy over how upset liberals — or at least those perceived as liberals — were. Right-wing figurehead Dan Bongino, who is reliably one of the most popular figures on Facebook, posted a link claiming Chuck Todd "nearly cries" after the verdict. The post garnered over 3,000 shares and 68,000 reactions, the majority of which were the "laughing" emoji.

It's not just that this behavior is tasteless. It also illustrates how violence is the logical endpoint of the right-wing obsession with trolling liberals. If your goal is provoking a reaction, then violence is surely the most efficient way to do it. Unlike mean tweets and "f*ck your feelings" T-shirts, violence simply cannot be ignored. By celebrating this violence, congressional Republicans and right-wing media are openly inviting more of it, because the reward of upsetting people on the left is just so delicious. The distinction between right-wing trolling and violence is collapsing.

To be certain, the escalation of violence-as-trolling has been going on for a while now. As Eric Boehler wrote in his Press Run newsletter, "The flashpoints of Republicans and conservatives promoting political violence have become ceaseless, to the point of frightening normalization," to the point where polling data suggests "that as many as 21 million Americans think that the use of force is justifiedto restore Donald Trump to the presidency."

Much of the month has been dominated by a story about Gosar tweeting out a fan-made video that depicts him murdering President Joe Biden and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. The Democratic-controlled House responded to this unsubtle threat by censuring Gosar and stripping him of his committee assignments, but nearly all Republicans stood by Gosar. The excuse used to defend Gosar's behavior was that he was just trolling liberals for fun. Gosar's digital director even put out a statement saying, "Everyone needs to relax. The left doesn't get meme culture. They have no joy."

However, right-wing "joy" is not mutually exclusive from violence.

Gosar's tweet was both trolling to get a reaction from the left and a threat of violence. Trolling is a crucial aspect to both amplifying violent threats and helping conservatives hype each other up for more violence. That's why Gosar doubled down by retweeting the video minutes after being censured for it. The message is clear: If you love outraging the left, then violence is the swiftest way to do it.

Even Rittenhouse's behavior prior to killing two people at a Kenosha, Wisconsin protest last year embodies this troll logic. As Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times observed, Rittenhouse's presence at the protest was clearly a provocation. Rittenhouse carried a showy AR-15 "in part because the rifle "looked cool," and the gun "seemed to invite conflict." Popular right-wing troll Drew Hernandez was at the protest that night, anthat, when some protesters saw Rittenhouse and other men with guns, "they immediately attempted to agitate them, to try and start some conflict with them."

In other words, Rittenhouse's AR-15 functioned both as a troll and as a deadly weapon. The distinction between trying to "trigger the liberals" and actually pulling the trigger on liberals collapsed completely the night Rittenhouse shot three people, killing two. He certainly got what every right-wing troll wants, which is an outraged and dramatic reaction from people he perceived as liberals. The result was two dead bodies — and another opportunity for GOP leaders to troll some more, further reinforcing the idea that, for those who live for triggering the liberals, nothing works better to get a reaction than actual violence.

===

an 11 21

on Friday, November 19, teenage vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted on charges of homicide and attempted homicide by a jury in Kenosha, Wisconsin — where, in August 2020, he shot three protesters (two of them fatally) during a racial justice demonstration. Countless right-wing media pundits, along with MAGA politicians like Rep. Matt Gaetz and Rep. Madison Cawthorn, have been celebrating the verdict. But Never Trump conservative Tim Miller, in a *humorous**but biting video posted by The Bulwark, lays out some reasons why he finds this reaction so problematic.*

"The right wants to make Rittenhouse a hero, a freedom fighter," Miller explains. "Ann Coulter says she wants Rittenhouse for president. He's been called a (patriot) and also a (good Samaritan)…. In their delusion, he's being wrongly persecuted by the woke state…. In this narrative, Kyle is a righteous vigilante battling against the real enemy, Antifa, and the BLM looters who are roaming free."

Miller goes on to show clips of "Hillbilly Elegy" author J.D. Vance (who is running for the U.S. Senate seat in Ohio) and Fox News' Greg Gutfeld praising Rittenhouse and mocks both of them as "soy boys." On the right, "soy boy" is a major insult. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his colleagues at Infowars have long been claiming that soy-based food products are a leftist "deep state" plot designed to reduce testosterone and make American men more feminine.

Miller says of Vance and Gutfeld, "Let's just take a moment to entertain this as a serious position rather than a performative tough-guy act. Is this really the society that these soft-handed soy boys want? One where a 17-year-old can self-deputize, marching through town with his gun drawn, making citizen's arrests if he doesn't feel like the government is doing a good enough job? That's a path to chaos, not justice."

The Never Trumper continues, "Now, we know the Fox hosts and Ivy League Republican politicians don't want this type of society because: (1) you can't even imagine these rich assholes sending their own teenagers into a riot armed with a weapon — and (2) there's no way we would've seen this same hero narrative on Fox if the righteous teen had been Black and he'd self-deputized to the Mall on January 6, killing two insurrectionists."

But as vehemently as Miller slams the MAGA far right in his video, he also criticizes some liberals and progressives for their comments on Rittenhouse — including Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, who described him as a "White supremacist domestic terrorist." Miller strongly disagrees that Rittenhouse fits the definition of a terrorist, but rather, considers him a "stupid kid in a shit situation."

Miller argues, "There's no evidence this kid is a White supremacist…[hang w proud boys hand gest oK?]. When it comes to Rittenhouse, here's the bottom line: He's not a martyr. Or a hero. Or an evil enemy. He's an 18-year-old with underdeveloped frontal lobes who got in way over his head."

Watch the video below:

btb fbk papers stas on militia recruit/organize by small number of superinviters? networked

===

*aha babyface kyle in sinday blue church suit is martyr [note self-def: can shoot anyone at any time as long as you can claim fear of having gun TAKEN?! which is what will happen in any active shooter Gabe Z PBUH] MATT GAETZ INTERN GIG OFFER BEFORE SENTENCE; JUDGE THREW OUT SLAM DUNK WEAPONS CHARGE, RINGTONE TRUMP SONG; https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/matt-gaetz/***

aha: almost truism but true that 1st step is to make enemy subhuman thus ok to kill; in fact it is your duty to kill enemy that threatens the sacred 14 words white children or OUR Way Of Life = capitalism freedumb see violence "when do we get to use the guns?"

xian end days = // qanon storm // turner diary cleansing fire of race war; madison [girl name?] cawthorne evokes satan? MTG? boebert?

nancy aoc, ilhan omar greta are women/ POC with power which is unnatural; nanny STATE gubmint take guns freedumbs vs strict fr who will punish/ put THOSE ppl back down in their rightful place //PHOBES basket of deplorables.

to apologize is unmanly, admitting defeat, esp to trump/istas for whom loyal tribal solidarity litmus is all; played inevitable victim card? gop minority in both houses explicit aim is obstructionist, gerry maintain minority power yet he bemoan/threatens this will be weapon in future?

aha: polarization --> demonization--> death threat --> death squad pinochet helo rides did nothing wrong Kyle

mantra of demonization can make name eg pelosi into a devil term; she was actively hunted 1/6 shoot bitch in the brain? AOC = commie? radicalization // demonization

landed here pol cartoon accidentally but interesting analogy? pirate creshaw action here, gosar flies? defeats evil? scott perry chr freedom cocks we must destroy dems/nazis; the flipside of demon is *martyr ashli babbitt who was willing to give life and commit violence for the sacred cause, what about you?!*

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/ocasio-cortez-gosar/

put in context of huge surge in death threats and 1/6 attack; gabby scalise shot; how signif is that this is pix? cartoon? anime genre? trump WWF vs CNN?

gosar censored for aoc kill anime, also biden; tired to blame staff? alt rt ploy just kidding? shooting bills in ads cliche so he just escalated to claiming that he was killing a rep/symbol of their policies [that are destroying am // scott perry freedom cock?]; prev border patrol agent vid rape aoc? threw burritos?

pretty good speech:

Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, a far-right MAGA Republican and conspiracy theorist who has never been shy about making inflammatory remarks, has been drawing vehement criticism from Democrats for posting a cartoon that depicts him murdering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City and inflicting harm on President Joe Biden. He has previously been criticized for appearing at a conference organized by white supremacists.

Many House Republicans, however, have been silent about the controversies. And Ocasio-Cortez, during a speech on the House floor this week, called them out them out for it.

The congresswoman, during her speech, made it clear that a much more vehement response from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other GOP leaders is needed.

AOC: "It's a sad day in which a member who leads a political party in the United States of America cannot bring themselves to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of Congress is wrong, and instead decides to venture off into a tangent about gas prices and inflation"pic.twitter.com/fi13Jb396s

— Justin Baragona (@Justin Baragona)1637178021

AOC: "Does anyone in this chamber find this behavior acceptable? Would you allow depictions of violence against women, against colleagues? Would you allow that in your home? ... And if it\u2019s not acceptable there, why should it be accepted here?!"pic.twitter.com/Bas9dS5dfo

— Justin Baragona (@Justin Baragona)1637178312

Ocasio-Cortez told fellow House members, "What I believe is unprecedented is for a member of House leadership of either party to be unable to condemn incitement of violence against a member of this body. It is sad, it is a sad day in which a member who leads a political party in the United States of America cannot bring themselves to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of Congress is wrong…. What is so hard, what is so hard about saying that this is wrong?"

READ: A growing threat is emerging from the theocratic wing of the GOP — but many liberals are missing it

The Democratic congresswoman added, "This is not about me. This is not about Rep. Gosar. But this is about what we are willing to accept."

Gosar has maintained that the anti-AOC cartoon was meant to be a joke, but Ocasio-Cortez stressed that depictions of murder should never be taken lightly.

"This nihilism runs deep," Ocasio-Cortez explained. "It conveys and betrays a certain contempt for the meaning and importance of our work here — that what we do, so long as we claim it is a joke, doesn't matter."

*jihad squad: https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/rep-ilhan-omar-torches-lauren-boebert-following-bizarre-rant-on-house-floor/***

===

an 921

Far-right extremism, or white supremacy, is the fastest growing ideology in the United States. The impact of white supremacists terrorizing Black communities has led to calls for serious action, even an anti-lynching bill. This alone reflects how dangerous they are.

Add to that the January 6 insurrection and the evidenced involvement of the Proud Boys, and other groups, leading to the FBI describing the attack on the United States Capitol as an act of domestic terror.

A mountain of evidence suggests that, just as Canada did (and as I've written previously for the Editorial Board), the United States should follow suit and list the Proud Boys (and others) as domestic terror groups, as part of its initiative to tackle white supremacy.

But that hasn't happened. Failure means the problem persists with the potential to worsen. The safety of Black people and people of color, and the internal security of the United States, depends on such a bold move happening. The failure to treat the Proud Boys as they should be by the federal authorities is continuing to have consequences.

Indeed, a couple of things have taken place recently that have once again brought this worrying reality into sharp focus. First, the clashes several weeks back between the Proud Boys and anti-fascists.

The scenes in Portland, Oregon, turned ugly, but thankfully nobody was killed. Here's the thing that's alarming. Prior to the Proud Boy protest and the counter demonstration, Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell publicly announced that officers would not intervene. The Proud Boys are a threat, but here they were treated with kid gloves.

The lack of policing means that an approach of doubling down will be needed the next time the Proud Boys appear. Because the calculated failure to leave them to their own devices in the streets is akin to Trump's message. It's extremely dangerous, and dare I suggest, not how millions of Americans want their tax dollars spent with policing. Surely, those Proud Boys who watched events unfold in Portland at home on the TV will be salivating at the prospect of the next protest.

The plot thickens even further.

Just days ago, a judge ruled that prosecutors in the murder trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the Kenosha shooter who shot three people at a protest against police brutality in 2020, will *notbe able to play for jurors a video of Rittenhouse allegedly stating his desire to shoot people — while agreeing with the Proud Boys' tactics. The news is another example of how dangerous the Proud Boys and their ilk have become.*

They can terrorize the Capitol, greenlighted by the former president, and, others would argue, in the streets, allowed to do so by a police chief in Portland. Apparently the Proud Boys were allowed to post banners around the city before the violence took place.

Their white supremacist ideology is something the likes of Kyle Rittenhouse was sympathetic to. How many more like Rittenhouse are on the sideline, "standing by" for their chance, brainwashed by the nonsense of the Proud Boys? It doesn't bear thinking about.

In recent day, the Times reported that a member of the Proud Boys who was present and took part in the insurrection was also an FBI informant and was texting his contact throughout the day.

That the FBI remained in contact suggests that law enforcement were more informed about imminent violence than previously suggested. One thing is clear by now. Law enforcement have more than enough evidence and knowledge, and means, as do the FBI, to halt the Proud Boys in their tracks before they carry out further serious crimes.

Trump was a dream come true for the Proud Boys. God only knows what messaging he might have continued giving to white supremacist groups had he secured another term. Biden needs to now break up the dangerous groundwork that was laid for groups like them. And ordinary Americans need to push him. The safety of tax-paying Americans, and American democracy itself, is depending on it.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/kyle-rittenhouse/

cf // active duty mil, this is pretty anecdotal? tho only work addy so more?

no lnx

A data breach of a Christian crowdfunding website has uncovered donations police officers and public officials made to Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teen accused of murdering two Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the officer-involved shooting of Jacob Blake.

According to The Guardian, the transparency group known as Distributed Denial of Secrets shared the breach information with a number of journalists. Donors who contributed financially to Rittenhouse's legal fund via GiveSendGo initially opted for anonymity have had their information disclosed.

Despite appearing anonymous after donating to the fund, the breach uncovered the email addresses those users entered when submitting the financial contributions. The publication reports many email addresses linked to the donations have been traced to police officers and other public officials. The use of professional email addresses also raises questions about public resources being used for these types of campaigns.

In fact, the publication also offered a number of specific examples in which official email addresses have been used for donations.

Donations also came to Rittenhouse associated with official email addresses for Keith Silvers, and employee of the city of Huntsville, Alabama, and another $100 was associated with the official address of Michael Crosley, an engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a body which is charged with maintaining the US's nuclear weapons stockpile."

One donor who contributed $25 to Rittenhouse's fundraising campaign also shared a comment that read, "God bless. Thank you for your courage. Keep your head up. You've done nothing wrong. Every rank and file police officer supports you. Don't be discouraged by actions of the political class of law enforcement leadership."

Rittenhouse's campaign raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. At the time, a number of Wisconsin police officers also donated to the campaign launched in support of Kenosha officer Rusten Sheskey who shot Blake. The campaign titled, "Support Rusten Sheskey," received more than $5,000 in donations. City employees' and public resource workers' email addresses were also tied to the contributions for Sheskey.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Wannabe stormtroopers: White men with guns in Trump's America ... ›

Fascism expert details the alarming similarities between Trump ... ›

Is a conservative coffee company supporting 'Kenosha killer' Kyle ... ›

“Kyle Rittenhouse for Congress”

ON AUGUST 25, 2020, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse arrived at Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he shot three demonstrators during a third night of protests following the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black father who was critically wounded by a police officer who fired seven shots into his back. Three of Blake’s sons were in the backseat of his car at the time.

Rittenhouse, an Illinois native who was responding to a militia group’s Facebook call for “patriots willing to take up arms and defend” the city, was armed with a military-style semi-automatic rifle, which he used to open fire on demonstrators who confronted him at two separate locations. The incident, captured on video from several angles, shows multiple chases and physical confrontations between Rittenhouse and several protesters, which led to the teen fatally shooting two protesters—one in the head and another in the chest—and injuring a third.

Rittenhouse was not arrested that night in Kenosha (video footage shows police cars drove past him despite Rittenhouse walking with his hands up towards them) but was later arrested at his home in Antioch, Illinois. After being extradited back to Wisconsin, the teen appeared in a Kenosha County court that Monday and was charged with multiple counts of homicide (including two counts of first-degree murder) and unlawful possession of a firearm. The court also set a $2 million bail due to the severity of the charges.

Rittenhouse’s case became a cause célèbre for the right and its conservative commentators. “I want him as my president,” Ann Coulter, a far-right media pundit tweeted in August, while Tucker Carlson, one of the most influential hosts on Fox News, said Rittenhouse was a well-meaning teenager attempting to “maintain order when no one else would.”“There is a certainty that if the defendant is convicted, he will be sent to prison and a strong likelihood that he will serve most, if not the remainder of his life, in prison if he is convicted of these charges,” Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger said at the time, referring to Rittenhouse as a potential flight-risk.

“If federal prosecutors had treated the organizers of BLM and antifa the way they treated Roger Stone, our cities wouldn’t look like Kosovo tonight,” Carlson said on Fox News.

Among Rittenhouse’s most prominent defenders was Trump himself, who claimed that the teen would have “probably been killed” had he not defended himself.

“You saw the same tape as I saw,” Trump during a White House press conference days after the shooting. “And he was trying to get away from them, I guess it looks like. And he fell, and then they very violently attacked him. And it was something that we’re looking at right now, and it’s under investigation. He was in very big trouble. He would have probably been killed.”

no lnx pix twt

September, several crowdfunding pages had been set up for Rittenhouse’s bail bond and legal defense. A #FightBack fundraiser raised $2.1 million for the 17-year-old, while GiveSendGo—a Christian crowdfunding site—raised more than $500,000 from more than 12,000 donors. “God is on your side,” said one of the donors. “Thanks for being a patriot and defending the American way of life from those who want to destroy it.”

The anonymous donor’s comment is indicative of a dominant narrative among conservatives that Rittenhouse was wrongly charged with homicide and should be celebrated as a defender of American values. This dynamic played out across mainstream media, social media platforms, and even within schools. For example, a teacher in Dallas, Texas, asked students to write an English essay about a modern-day “hero” with Rittenhouse listed among the options. Ironically, George Floyd and Malcom X were also among the options.

As for Republicans, much of their rhetoric shifted from a simple defense of Rittenhouse’s actions to full-throated commendation. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky stated that Rittenhouse showed “incredible restraint and presence and situational awareness” because he “didn’t empty a magazine” on the protesters. Florida State Rep. Anthony Sabatini wrote “KYLE RITTENHOUSE FOR CONGRESS” in a tweet that had some demanding his resignation.

However, while Republican politicians and conservative commentators continue to celebrate Rittenhouse’s fatal shooting of two protesters with glee and amusement, few anticipated that the teen’s case would become a cause for infighting between the right and the far-right.

Proud Boys vs. Black Rifle Coffee Co.]

:{:{}:

ON NOV. 20, Kyle Rittenhouse posted the $2 million bail and was released from custody. Shortly thereafter, one of Rittenhouse’s attorneys, L. Lin Wood Jr., posted a photograph of Rittenhouse standing alongside attorney John Pierce and actor Ricky Schroder, who donated $150,000 to the teen’s bail fund. Rittenhouse, who posed with a big smile on his face, was wearing a Black Rifle Coffee Co. T-shirt, a veteran-owned coffee company that panders to the far-right through gun-toting patriotism.

Rittenhouse’s decision to wear the Utah-based coffee company’s shirt led to a widespread backlash from those who assumed that the teen was sponsored by the brand. This message was amplified when Elijah Schaffer, host of a Blaze Media podcast that Black Rifle sponsors, tweeted a discount code for the coffee along with the photo.

“Kyle Rittenhouse drinks the best coffee in America,” Schaffer wrote in a since-deleted tweet.

Black Rifle has since vehemently denied any connection to Rittenhouse. Co-founder Evan Hafer said in a statement that his company does not “support legal advocacy efforts,” nor does it “have a relationship with the 17-year-old facing charges in Kenosha, WI.”

Kyle Rittenhouse standing between attorney John Pierce and actor Ricky Schroder (Screenshot: Karim Zidan)]

Black Rifle’s statement angered far-right groups, including the Proud Boys. At first, chairman Enrique Tarrio claimed that Black Rifle’s statements were “taken out of context” and that he would “reserve judgement” until addressing the matter with Hafer. Soon thereafter, the Proud Boys began calling the company “cucks” for not defending Rittenhouse and labeled them “Black Lives Matter Coffee.”

“Kyle Rittenhouse is a kid who’s been railroaded by the left in this country,” reads a statement issued by the Proud Boys on one of its channels on Telegram. “He did nothing wrong when he defended himself that night … everyone is innocent until proven guilty in this country.

“It’s simple,” the statement continued. “You’re either fighting for Kyle’s life like the rest of us or you’re not.”

The rapid escalation did not stop there. Black Rifle was criticized by countless far-right agitators who now considered them grifters targeting so-called patriots for their business. The comments sections accompanying several Black Rifle videos feature an endless array of spam and negative comments from Rittenhouse supporters, some of whom posted anti-Semitic comments targeting the owners for being Jewish. “The company is not run by patriots. Their allegiance lies with Israel – a foreign government dead-set on destroying America and white western civilization. They engaged in treason,” one comment read.

The speed with which the Proud Boys and their supporters turned on Black Rifle emphasizes what happens when companies pander to the far-right. Black Rifle marketed its products to “people who love America,” which attracted Second Amendment defenders and so-called patriots. They have also long pandered to the far-right through their advertisements on Gab, a social network filled with extremists. Most recently, the company’s website profiled Oleksii Kacho, who fought for the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in Ukraine—a Ukrainian National Guard regiment and far-right militia with connections to neo-Nazism.

In the aftermath of the Rittenhouse scandal, Black Rifle discovered what many conservatives have learned: When you pander to the far-right but refuse to entertain their every whim and fabricated conspiracy, they turn against you.

And yet, this is not the only example of infighting among conservatives. Lin Wood,one of Rittenhouse’s attorneys, has spread baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, many of which are linked to the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory. He appeared at a rally in Atlanta, Georgia last Wednesday alongside infamous “Kraken” lawyer Sidney Powell (whom Right Wing Watch reported on in-depth here) and told those in attendance not to vote in the Jan. 5 Senate runoff elections in Georgia. Instead, he demanded that Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler pressure Republican Gov. Brian Kemp to call a special session of the legislature to name pro-Trump electors.

“They have not earned your vote,” Wood said at the rally. “Don’t you give it to them.”

Wood, who had previously called for Trump to declare martial law and use the military to oversee a new election and told Steve Bannon that people need to be prepared for “another 1776,” faced backlash from Republicans for telling attendees not to vote in the Senate runoff. In an attempt to discredit Wood, who seems to have gone too far for even Trump, the president’s campaign suggested that the Atlanta-based lawyer is actually a Democrat planted to sow discontent within the Republican Party.

While the American right continues to be embroiled in a game of one-upmanship over how best to support Rittenhouse, white supremacists and neo-Nazis around the world have embraced the teenager as a propaganda tool for their ideology. To them, Rittenhouse is no longer just a kid forced to defend himself but a warrior who killed two demonstrators at a protest for Black lives while defending the Americans who matter most.

“Kyle was Right”]

THE FRASER RIVER is the longest river within British Columbia, Canada. It rises near Fraser Path in the Rocky Mountains and flows for more than 620 miles in the Strait of Georgia within the city of Vancouver. Along its journey, the river crosses through New Westminster, where it is a short walking distance from the Provincial Court of British Columbia. Outside the large, gray building is a statue of Lady Justice—blindfolded and holding a scale and sword—towering over arriving mortals.

Yet beneath this personification of justice, there was a large sticker of a young man armed with an AR-15 style rifle, a pair of rubber gloves, and a magnifying reflector in his left eye. Beneath it is a caption that reads: “Kyle was Right.”

The sticker was part of an international propaganda campaign by a white supremacist group known as the International Conservative Community. The group, which includes entities across Europe and North America, fashions themselves as a modernized network of neo-Nazis capable of “building bridges across countries and even continents.” Founded by American neo-Nazi Robert Rundo (who also founded the white supremacist fight club Rise Above Movement), the group specializes in spreading white supremacist propaganda through targeted campaigns, a recent example of which is Kyle Rittenhouse.

Over the past few weeks, the group has planted stickers, large-scale graffiti work, and banners of Kyle Rittenhouse across Europe and North America. In Serbia, where Rundo is currently based, the group painted a picture of an armed Rittenhouse standing proud with a Schwarze Sonne or Black Sun as his backdrop. The Black Sun (also known as the sonnerad) is synonymous with far-right groups that traffic in neo-Nazi ideologies. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the symbol is based on the ancient sun wheel artifacts that were used by Norse and Germanic tribes as symbols of pagan beliefs. Those ancient symbols resemble the complex symbol of the contemporary Black Sun, which was coopted by Heinrich Himmler, the main architect of the Holocaust.

The painting in Serbia was featured alongside a Confederate flag, and a picture of a deranged Homer Simpson aiming a gun with the caption “KILL YOUR LOCAL ANTIFA SCUM.”

Kyle Rittenhouse sticker in Serbia (Screenshot: international Conservative Community)]

A sticker featuring an image of Rittenhouse—similar to the one posted at the Law Courts in British Columbia—was spotted in St. Petersburg, Russia, alongside other stickers showing pictures of sonnerads, swastikas, Himmler, and Adolf Hitler himself. Others have since appeared in the United States, Hungary, Poland, Scotland, Germany, and Sweden. Others appeared in New Zealand, proudly displayed by known hate groups like Action Zealandia, and in Greece, where they were promoted by the likes of neo-Nazi group Pro Patria.

The sheer proliferation of Rittenhouse-related propaganda among white supremacists spotlights how the 17-year-old is being lionized by neo-Nazis for his actions. Where most people see a teenager on trial for killing two protesters, white supremacists see a hero who he took matters into his own hands and went after cultural forces they believe are threatening society as a whole.

Rise Above Movement members supporting Kyle Rittenhouse in Pennsylvania (Screenshot: International Conservative Community)]

“This falls right in the same pattern as the extreme and far right identifying “martyrs” and “saints” that they exalt and want others to emulate,” said Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Director of Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University and award-winning author of six books, including “Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right.” “They are positioning Rittenhouse as a heroic figure who sacrificed himself in defense of his community- it’s right out of the far right playbook strategically, but also allows them to identify aspirational qualities that “good nationalists” should aspire to.”

***

When Rittenhouse first picked up his rifle and left his home in Antioch for Kenosha, he could not have imagined he would become a symbol for American conservatives and international white supremacists alike. His case is no longer a matter of justice but of degenerative politics, cultural warfare, and societal upheaval—a battleground for the cesspool of far-right operatives delighted to have a new face for their cause.

To them, the accused killer is a martyr for their cause—a saint among sinners and an example to be emulated.

Tags: Ann Coulter Anthony Sabatini Donald Trump Enrique Tarrio Jacob Blake Kyle Rittenhouse Lin Wood Robert Rundo Thomas Massie Tucker Carlson far-right Kyle Rittenhouse white supremacy Black Rifle Coffee Co .International Conservative Community Proud Boys Rise Above Movement

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/rittenhouse/

no lnx twt

The headline was jarring: "Black Man Who Spent 25 Years Incarcerated for a Murder He Didn't Commit Has Been Exonerated," The Root's homepage shouted at me. The story of 62-year-old Jaythan Kendrick, who was arrested for a crime he did not commit on Thanksgiving Day 1994—when he was just 36—is a familiar one to anyone who's paid attention to the chronic miscarriage of justice Black people face: Had law enforcement and or prosecutors actually done their job, Kendrick could have been home in time for Christmas, or maybe never arrested at all. The evidence was thin—at best. It also was manipulated.

But this story is not about Jaythan Kendrick.

With a quick click of the Back button, and I was back to The Root's homepage; just below the Kendrick story I'd just read was the face of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old high schooler who definitely murdered two—almost three—Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha, Wisc. with an illegally obtained AR-15 rifle back in August. Rittenhouse was released Friday on a cash bail of $2 million, paid in part by Mike Lindell—the Trump fanatic usually referred to as the My Pillow Guy—and Rick Schroder, an ex-child actor best known for the vapid 1980s sitcom Silver Spoons.

While both Kendrick and Rittenhouse will be home just in time for Thanksgiving, the justice system journeys for these two men—one guilty, and one innocent, one white, and one Black—couldn't be more different. And so I rage.

Lin Wood, attorney for the newly-freed yet wholly unrepentant Rittenhouse, posted a photo of the grinning (and maskless) homicidal teenager to Twitter Friday evening.

Rabid militia enthusiasts, endorsers of white supremacy, and lovers of Donald Trump have all latched on to the murderous teen, elevating him to hero status in their hateful white power fantasies;over half a million dollars has been raised for Rittenhouse beyond the bail money, according to the local CBS affiliate.

Most of the money came from small donations, and Rittenhouse's attorney took to Twitter thanking donors and saying,"We the peopledid not let him down."

Rittenhouse, who again, absolutely killed two people, has a fucking fan base. A rabid one, with deep pockets.

The murderer, who has admitted to two murders and one attempted murder, told police "No, I don't regret it" at the time of his arrest, and is currently enjoying some surreal hero's life, admired by the sort of folks who vicariously watched cell phone footage of his cold killings and opened their wallets in support. These folks know exactly what Rittenhouse did and respect it. They consider his actions right and just, even as they smear his victims—all white men—to help justify their cold-blooded murders.

As Rittenhouse—an admitted killer whose injurious and life-ending acts were caught on video—settles in to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday as a real life Natural Born Killer, his jail time is currently a brief blip in his life's history, despite his night-of fears of being incarcerated for "the rest of (his) life." Army veteran Kendrick, on the other hand, would hardly be considered anybody's hero.

The former mail carrier was in prison for longer than Rittenhouse has breathed air, yet no six-figure fundraisers have been held in Kendrick's name to help him reclaim some semblance of a life; instead of the My Pillow Guy and a washed up actor, it was only a determined family member and the good folks at theInnocence Project who fought for his freedom.

"Mr. Kendrick has endured an unimaginable injustice for over 25 years. He has spent decades trying to right this wrong, but the system failed him at every step," said Susan Friedman, Mr. Kendrick's Innocence Project attorney. "This is a textbook case of wrongful conviction exposing the worst flaws in our system – racial profiling, unduly suggestive identification procedures and a lack of police accountability at very least. Thankfully, the new evidence in this case, including DNA, has provided overwhelming proof of Mr. Kendrick's innocence."

"I never thought this day would materialize. Tomorrow I am going to wake up and go home," said Mr. Kendrick. "I saw so many other people get to leave and I was still here. Finally the truth is out that I didn't commit this crime."

Rittenhouse's trial—assuming he gets one and doesn't plea out—will be one that both his fervent fans and justice seekers alike will follow in earnest. Whether he walks free for taking the lives of two white men—and shooting another in the arm—remains to be seen. It certainly seems impossible and wrong that a human being who crossed state lines with a illegally-procured device designed to kill as many people as possible might walk free after absolutely using that weapon to create two dead bodies and an injured one.

But it also seems impossible and wrong that innocent people like Kendrick whither in prisons all day, every day, waiting for justice, while an admitted and lionized killer walks free.

And so I rage.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Federal law enforcement officials directed to defend Kenosha ... ›

Kyle Rittenhouse's attorney plans to argue that the teen was part of a ... ›

Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse's Mom receives standing ovation ... ›

DHS officials were told to speak positively about the 17-year-old vigilante gunman who allegedly killed two people during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin

NBC News revealed on October 1 that instructions were given to public-facing DHS officials to speak kindly about Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who allegedly killed two people with an AR-15 rifle during protests in Kenosha.

A Media Matters analysis found that the DHS instructions were covered for a total of 27 minutes across the top broadcast and cable news programming -- and 26 of those minutes were on MSNBC. ABC, CNN, and Fox failed to cover the story at all, and NBC and CBS each covered the story for about 30 seconds apiece.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/dhs-officials-told-to-maintain-a-sympathetic-stance-regarding-kyle-rittenhouse-report

no lnx twt

Internal documents reportedly suggest federal law enforcement officials with the Department of Homeland Security were directed to maintain a publicly sympathetic stance regarding Kyle Rittenhouse — the 17-year-old facing murder charges for the fatal shootings of protesters in Kenosha, Wisc.

In preparation for questions from the media regarding the highly publicized shootings, DHS officials were advised to focus on focus on Rittenhouse's initial efforts, according to NBC News. The document, which included multiple talking points regarding the case, advised officials to suggest Rittenhouse "took his rifle to the scene of the rioting to help defend small business owners."

A different set of talking points distributed to officials also discussed the media's depiction of the group, Patriot Prayer. While the media is said to have labeled the group as "racist" following their clash with protesters amid civil unrest in Portland, Ore., DHS officials were reportedly told to dismiss the claims.

It remains unclear whether or not the directives came from the White House but President Donald Trump has shown support for Rittenhouse and law enforcement.

Now, multiple former Homeland Security officials have expressed concern about the handling of internal affairs at the government agency. Peter Boogaard, who served as a spokesperson for Homeland Security under the Obama administration, condemned the reports.

"It is as unprecedented as it is wrong," Boogaard said.

Elizabeth Neumann, who served as DHS's assistant secretary for threat prevention and security policy in the Trump administration, also pointed out one important suggestion that did not appear to be highlighted in the internal talking points.

"What strikes me about the talking points is that they didn't call for calm among the public," Neumann said. "Even in the early hours after the incident, it was known private militias had self-deployed. …They seemed more interested in Rittenhouse's reputation than calling for calm and actual law and order."

The latest regarding Kyle Rittenhouse follows multiple reports about the staggering number of donations he has received through fundraising efforts sphere headed by a Christian crowdfunding website. According to Rittenhouse's lawyer, the Christian has received more than $1 million in donations from more than 11,000 donors.

As of Monday night, a total of $605,550 had been donated to the FightBack Foundation for Rittenhouse's legal fund. Another $534,000 had also been donated to Rittenhouse through the Christian fundraising platform GiveSendGo. However, all funds will ultimately be transferred to the FightBack Foundation.

===

Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse's Mom receives standing ovation at GOP event in Wisconsin

AlterNet Staff

September 25, 2020

Highlights from a Republican women's event in Waukesha, WI., have left many Twitter users appalled by the series of events that unfolded.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/why-many-police-are-barely-distinguishable-from-racist-vigilantes/

Police in America, whose mottos claim to “protect and serve” us, have been openly declaring allegiance with the forces of white supremacy. It is no coincidence that this has become a hallmark of Donald Trump’s presidency. Trump defended Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old white suspect in the shooting deaths of two activists in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the days following the police shooting of a Black man named Jacob Blake. Implying that the suspected shooter was acting in self-defense against Black Lives Matter protesters, Trump said, “He was trying to get away from them, I guess, it looks like… He probably would have been killed.” Later, in a Fox News interview, he defended police in a similar manner, saying they were “under siege” and using a golf analogy to explain why they routinely kill unarmed people: “just like in a golf tournament, they miss a three-foot putt.”

Across social media, those claiming to “Back the Blue,” and that “Blue Lives Matter,” have taken their cues from the president and declared Rittenhouse a hero. The 17-year-old idolized police. And they clearly felt comforted by the presence of his armed group.

In a capturing their close collaboration, Kenosha police officers were seen going out of their way to ensure that Rittenhouse and the vigilantes that had gathered in their city had plenty of water. At the same time, they were enforcing the city’s curfew against someone else, announcing aggressively over a bullhorn, “You are a civilian. This area is closed to all. You are trespassing. Leave. Leave now.” Seconds later, the same officer is heard saying to Rittenhouse and his colleagues, “We appreciate you guys—we really do.” If ever there was doubt that police and armed white vigilantes see themselves as part of the same club, this interaction dispelled it.

Later, when the teenager walked toward police with his hands up soon after he allegedly shot protesters, officers ignored him, seeing him as no threat. Many have rightly questioned if law enforcement would have simply ignored a similarly clad Black teenager carrying a rifle that he was clearly too young to legally own.

right-wing extremist armed vigilantes and police officers are cut from the same ideological cloth of American society that feels entitled to patrol the collective behavior of nonwhites, women, etc.While not entirely white and male, both police and armed vigilantes are largely white men. In urban areas in particular, research shows that law enforcement officers are far less racially diverse than the communities they police and are overwhelmingly male. They epitomize the white male authority that armed vigilante groups aspire to. When armed groups show up to protests, police embrace their presence and see them as allies.

A new report published by the Brennan Center for Justice explores the overlap between these two groups at length. Written by former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent Michael German, it traces the history of American police, which is more relevant than ever today. “Slave patrols were among the first public policing organizations formed in the American colonies,” writes German. He adds, “Put simply, white supremacy was the law these earliest public officials were sworn to enforce.” Judging by police actions, especially over the last several months, this historical framework of policing appears to be intact hundreds of years later. Even the FBI has warned that “White Supremacist Extremism Poses Persistent Threat of Lethal Violence,” and German points out that in internal documents, the Bureau warns of the “active links” between extremist groups and law enforcement officials.

Trump is hardly responsible for creating the mess we find ourselves in. But he has ended the very modest police reforms that were put into place under Obama, and law enforcement has in turn signaled that it appreciates Trump. In fact, the National Association of Police Organizations, which had previously endorsed Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden in 2008 and 2012, has now switched its support to Trump.

What’s worse is that there are few elected officials offering us protection from racist police violence, let alone armed white vigilantes. It is no coincidence that so many fatal incidents at the hands of police have taken place in liberal, Democrat-run cities where politicians pay lip service to safety but give a free pass to police. Even in liberal California, the Democrat-dominated state legislature could not bring itself to strip officers of their badges when they commit crimes.

Within such a context, the disproportionate killing of Black Americans by police is rightly condemned as the ugly hallmark of a violently racist society. When Trump supporters claim that Black people are only killed because they resist instead of acquiescing to brutality, they conveniently overlook the fact that police manage to preserve the lives of white people who fight back when arrested.

From California to New York and everywhere in between, police treat Black and Brown people like target practice at best, and animals at worse. A Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy-turned-whistleblower has detailed the existence of a violent gang within the department called the Executioners, which he said requires aspiring members to kill someone or commit other violent acts as an initiation rite. Two sheriff’s deputies implicated in the shooting death of an 18-year-old Latino man named Andres Guardado were apparently prospective members of the gang. Guardado was shot five times in the back. In New York, a video emerged recently of Rochester police covering the head of a Black man named Daniel Prude with a hood and suffocating him to death. Prude was naked and defenseless in the middle of the street when he was killed like an animal.

These are only two examples out of countless violent incidents where police have claimed the lives of people of color. And such incidents are precisely why white conservatives support and defend police. They see law enforcement as keeping Black and Brown masses in check. They see their own armed groups as supplementary paramilitary forces to bolster law enforcement. And they see Trump, their president, supporting these cozy ties and close collaboration.

Against a well-armed police force linked to white supremacists, what chance do communities of color have at leading dignified lives free of police harassment, targeting, and killing? According to German, “the Justice Department has no national strategy designed to identify white supremacist police officers or to protect the safety and civil rights of the communities they patrol.” And this is precisely how Trump likes it.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-jr-makes-absurd-excuse-for-er-kyle-rittenhouse-we-all-do-stupid-things-at-17/

the cosmic disappointment of a son only Donald Trump could have, Donald Trump Jr., was on ExtraTV on Tuesday to discuss his new book, Liberal Privilege. I believe the book is sold exclusively at the Hypocrites Handbook Book Store on Nepotism Island, in the magical land of Cowpie. Right out of the gate, Junior was asked by Extra host Rachel Lindsay what he thought of the statement Black Lives Matter, as well as the movement underneath its umbrella.

Trump Jr. stammered his way into explaining that “the phrase Black Lives Matter is obvious, ah no one in America, you know, says anything else.” Lindsay, who is Black, cut Trump Jr. off to remind him that yes, in fact, there are tons of people that say *almost anything else besides Black Lives Matter. Trump Jr. responded that “no one” he knew did. Welcome through the looking glass, Extra! This is the Trump family, of course, so somehow this was the least offensive and ignorant thing Junior said in the interview. It was the first question, so he was likely just warming up those three brain cells he’s working with.*

Junior went on to explain that he thought Black Lives Matter was a “very good marketing message,” and a “great catchphrase,” but that the political ideology behind it didn’t support it. As opposed to, I guess, Trump and Junior’s white supremacist agenda. Trump Jr. went on to defend his father’s lack of communication with Jacob Blake’s family and his very direct communication with the Kenosha police department. His defense was the same one we’ve already heard: Trump called someone and the Blake family had asked that their family lawyer be on the call—and we know lawyers not in Trump’s pocket spook Donald Trump—and the police department that Trump was meeting with are fighting to save businesses.

Lindsay, a former reality television contestant, did about as well as any traditional media outlet host could, pointing out that those hollow talking points aside: “Why hasn’t the Trump Administration or President Trump condemned what happened in Kenosha with Kyle Rittenhouse—coming across state lines and murdering two people and injuring another?"

it is here that Trump Jr. reminds the world exactly who the Trumps are:

DONALD TRUMP JR.: We’re waiting for due process. We’re not jumping to a conclusion. If I put myself in Kyle Rittenhouse’s shoes, maybe I shouldn’t have been there. He’s a young kid. I don’t, I don’t want 17-year-olds running around the street with AR-15s. Maybe I wouldn’t have put myself in that situation. Who knows? But we all do stupid things at 17.

It looks like some of us continue to live a life of doing “stupid things” well into their 40s. Maybe Trump Jr. can speak to his father’s full page ad calling for the death penalty for the five children who lost decades of their lives, only to be exonerated later. Those kids were 14-year-old Kevin Richardson, 14-year-old Raymond Santana, 15-year-old Antron McCray, 15-year-old Yusef Salaam, and 16-year-old Korey Wise. Those kids were straight up doing “stupid things,” but went to jail for some completely other man’s truly evil actions. The reason those teenagers were falsely treated like rapists and attempted murderers was because they were children of color in a New York City where law enforcement’s job is to keep people of color far away from white supremacists like Donald Trump Jr.

Yes, we all know that being young is filled with doing “stupid things.” But there are degrees of stupid, and what is excruciatingly clear is that people like Donald Trump and his progeny believe that white youth are more valuable than Black youth, and therefore the rules must be applied differently. It’s that fundamental difference that is the root of white supremacy.

===

Media Matters: After Kenosha shootings, former Sheriff David Clarke advises radio listeners on how to get away with killing protesters.

an 920

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/to-simply-let-the-hate-trump-has-unleashed-go-back-into-hiding-would-be-a-grave-mistake/

cop beth...

Reacting to five Black teenagers who had been caught shoplifting, Beth pontificates that we need to lock this generation up and throw away the key before they start reproducing. Oliver is right to compare that to 1940s Germany.

But at the end of that clip, Beth suggests that he’s “not saying anything different than most people in society are thinking, but they’re afraid to say it.” That is what conservatives are talking about when they refer to “political correctness” or “cancel culture.” I am reminded of what the blogger Nezua wrote at The Unapologetic Mexican in response to a comment from Glenn Greenwald about “speech rules,"

In this analysis (or this part of his post at least) the problem is the various unwritten speech rules. But guess what? There really aren’t any. There are just poor attitudes we keep about people who look different. Or who we’ve been taught to think of differently. And there is a “White” attitude of deciding for everyone else how they should live, be, self-identify, and do many other things. There are old slurs and old tropes that hurt people. These are the things that are flushed out when people speak: attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, manners of speaking that hint at lurking attitudes.

People avoid talking about race because they are scared of exposing their thoughts and views on race…They are not afraid of “unwritten speech rules.” They are afraid that what they really think and feel will cause them to be ridiculed or ostracized in public, or that they may see a part of themselves they have to feel bad about. So they keep the potential to themselves.

But if we keep the focus on Speech Rules, we miss the opportunity to change ourselves.

Donald Trump has lead by example in chucking “speech rules.” Christopher Orr talked about that as the reason the president is so beloved by his most ardent supporters. Here is what Orr suggests is happening when they complain about the way Trump speaks and tweets:

It is almost always interpreted–and is clearly meant to be interpreted–as “I’d never speak/tweet that way because THOSE ARE BAD THINGS TO SAY, AND I DISAPPROVE OF THEM.”

But what if the unspoken 2nd half is often or even usually something closer to “I’d never speak/tweet that way, BUT BOY WOULD I LOVE TO IF I COULD GET AWAY WITH IT.”

As Orr suggests, David Frum made a similar point in writing about Trump’s speech at the Republican Convention.

Mid-speech, Trump expatiated on the greatness of the American past. “Our American ancestors sailed across the perilous ocean to build a new life on a new continent,” he began. Almost any other candidate, even any other Republican, would feel some need to acknowledge the experience of Native Americans and enslaved Africans, to place a question mark over the concept of wild frontier and open range—the literal phrases in his text. But Trump knows that millions of his fellow Americans are sick and tired of having to pretend to care about Black and Indigenous people. He wants them to know that he doesn’t care either. That’s what they love about him.

That is exactly what Biden was talking about when he said that, “If I’ve learned anything during the time of Donald Trump being president it’s this—hate never goes away, it just hides. And when leaders give it oxygen, as Trump has done, it comes roaring back.”

If it is true that hate never goes away, it raises the question of whether it is better to air it out in the open or send it back into hiding. Here’s what Ibram Kendi wrote about that:

[Trump] held up a mirror to American society, and it has reflected back a grotesque image that many people had until now refused to see: an image not just of the racism still coursing through the country, but also of the reflex to deny that reality. Though it was hardly his intention, no president has caused more Americans to stop denying the existence of racism than Donald Trump…

Trump’s racism—and that of his allies and enablers—has been too blatant for Americans to ignore or deny. And just as the 1850s paved the way for the revolution against slavery, Trump’s presidency has paved the way for a revolution against racism.

Personally, I’m not as optimistic as Kendi when it comes to the possibility of a “revolution against racism.” I suspect that once Trump is finally out of office, we’ll revel in the return of normalcy.

The good thing about hate going back into hiding is that it happens because, as a culture, we agree that racism is wrong. People hide it because they recognize that racism is taboo. The bad part is that, as Nezua wrote, focusing on speech rules stops us from changing. Eventually, someone like Donald Trump comes along to exploit the hate.

I am reminded of how former Attorney General Eric Holder was pilloried on the right for suggesting that we are a nation of cowards when it comes to talking about race. He was basically suggesting that we do away with political correctness.

Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race…We know, by “American instinct” and by learned behavior, that certain subjects are off limits and that to explore them risks, at best embarrassment, and, at worst, the questioning of one’s character.

The whole point of Holder’s speech was to suggest that “if we are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.”

Trump has no interest in a frank conversation about racial matters. But to simply allow the hatred that has been exposed to slide back into hiding would be a grave mistake.

===

db 920

https://www.thedailybeast.com/devin-nunes-may-be-trumps-person-who-witnessed-the-antifa-plane-firsthand

no lnx twt

defenders of accused murderer Kyle Rittenhouse, who is in jail after allegedly fatally shooting two Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, have insisted that he was merely acting in self-defense.

But Rittenhouse’s attorney, John Pierce, is mounting a more impassioned, perhaps novel, case to win his client’s freedom. Rittenhouse, Pierce argues, is the first hero of a new American Revolution.

“Kyle Rittenhouse will go down in American history alongside that brave unknown patriot at Lexington Green who fired ‘The Shot Heard Round the World’ on April 19, 1775,” Pierce wrote in a since-deleted tweet on Tuesday. “A Second American Revolution against Tyranny has begun.”

Despite not being a criminal-defense attorney, Pierce has become the public face of a growing legal and financial effort to acquit Rittenhouse, appearing on Fox News with Tucker Carlson, promising to send a “special forces team” of lawyers to Wisconsin, and taking the unusual step of posting audio from a jailhouse phone call with Rittenhouse on Twitter to thank his supporters.

Pierce has teamed up with famed defamation attorney Lin Wood to launch #FightBack Foundation, a nonprofit with a dizzying array of goals that includes saving Rittenhouse, “contesting surveillance abuse,” and “stopping human trafficking.” That fundraising effort has been endorsed by far-right columnist Michelle Malkin and former New York Police Department Commissioner Bernie Kerik. At least some of the money donated to the foundation from Rittenhouse’s supporters will go toward Pierce’s own law firm, Pierce Bainbridge, as part of the legal defense, according to Pierce.

What may not be clear to donors, however, is that Pierce and the once-prominent firm he founded are mired in millions of dollars of debt, while a payday-lender-style loan to cover his own expenses prompted him to take a leave of absence. As Pierce’s firm totters around him, he appears to be using Rittenhouse’s legal defense to give himself a new persona as a trash-talking, right-wing firebrand.

Asked for comment for this story, Pierce didn’t directly address the turmoil at his firm or the allegations of financial mismanagement that have been levied against him.

“I am not quite the rapscallion you make it seem, Will ;),” Pierce wrote in an email. “But I do love my God, my Country and Notre Dame, and I will fight to the death for Kyle Rittenhouse.”

Pierce’s collaborator in the Rittenhouse case did offer what could be described as a qualified defense. Wood said the #FightBack Foundation would have strict rules about approving expenses, including payments to Pierce’s firm.

“I have to draw a fine line, a sharp line, between his involvement with the foundation and his defense of Kyle,” Wood said.

Asked about Pierce’s financial problems, Wood said he didn’t know enough about them to comment.

“I will say this generally speaking: If you’re looking for a pristine lawyer in this country, good luck,” said Wood, who has represented Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann in lawsuits against various media outlets. “Last I checked, we’re all sinners, and that includes non-lawyers.”

https://www.kqed.org/arts/13885480/why-are-right-wing-pundits-celebrating-the-kenosha-shooter

KQED NAT V

:{*:{}:

Since the most recent wave of Black Lives Matter protests began in late May, a prevalent media narrative has been that they are violent. In reality, protesters have mostly held peaceful marches, drawing hundreds of thousands of people of all ethnicities and ages in support of civil rights for Black Americans. It’s true that some factions of protesters have smashed windows and graffitied buildings, but we need to be careful about word choice here: this is damage against property—not human beings.

Yet the same loud voices that seem to be appalled by this so-called violence against inanimate objects are now praising the murders of two people, and the severe maiming of another.

On Tuesday night, protesters gathered in Kenosha, Wisconsin to demand justice for Jacob Blake, who was shot by a police officer seven times in the back at point-blank range and is now paralyzed from the waist down. Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old with an AR-15, traveled from Illinois to Wisconsin to join an armed brigade of vigilantes attempting to protect the city from riots; a now-removed Facebook page organizing the group used racially coded language, referring to the protesters as “evil thugs.”

Rittenhouse has now been arrested for the murder of 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum, who, according to eye witnesses, was shot after he threw a plastic bag at Rittenhouse. Anthony Huber, 26, was killed when he attempted to disarm the shooter, and a third person, volunteer medic Gaige Grosskreutz, was shot in the arm and is currently recovering from nearly losing his limb.

It’s abundantly clear that this—not a smashed window at a chain store—is actual violence, and must be condemned by all sides of the political spectrum.

but, presumably because this shooter is white, and a staunch supporter of law enforcement and President Trump, right-wing pundits have praised his actions and elevated him as a hero. On Wednesday, Tucker Carlson told his prime-time Fox News viewers that Rittenhouse “decided [he] had to maintain order when no one else would.” Ann Coulter tweeted to her 2.2 million followers that she wants Rittenhouse “as my president.” (The post has now been deleted.) Former San Francisco Giants player Aubrey Huff called Rittenhouse a “national treasure.”

*}:

:{*:{}:

These comments are part of a disturbing pattern of normalizing white supremacist domestic terrorism and vigilante violence—a message amplified by the country’s biggest platforms and loudest megaphones. It’s the natural extension of President Trump’s “fine people on both sides” comment after the neo-Nazi Charlottesville rally in 2017, where a white supremacist drove a car into a counter-protester and killed her—or his tweets about shooting “looters,” another racially coded term, after the George Floyd protests. At the Republican National Convention on Monday, Trump handed that megaphone to, the couple who pointed a pistol and semi-automatic rifle at Black Lives Matter protesters who passed by their house during a march.

*}:

:{*:{}:

Protesters Gather in Oakland to Condemn the Shooting of Jacob Blake

*}:

:{:{}:

The McClokseys and other speakers at the Republican National Convention painted a picture of a nation gripped with violence and chaos at the hands of anti-fascists and left-wing extremists. But the looting that’s taken place at some Black Lives Matter protests pales in comparison to the spate of white supremacist violence, against human beings, that has seen a sharp rise over the last four years.

According to the country’s top terrorism experts, far-right, white supremacist extremism is the biggest threat in the United States. A former F.B.I. agent recently cited two decades’ worth of collected evidence that white supremacists have infiltrated police departments across the country, giving credence to the popular protest chant “Cops and Klan go hand in hand.” Of course, this is mostly news to white people; Black and brown communities that have dealt with decades of police brutality and a racist criminal justice system have known for much longer. The rest of us are just now waking up.

:{:{}:

Gilroy. El Paso. Dayton. How Long Before We Call it What it Really Is?

:{:{}:

It’s no surprise, then, that Kenosha police didn’t apprehend Rittenhouse when they drove past him after the shooting, even when witnesses identified him as the assailant. And it’s no surprise that, before the shooting, police thanked the vigilantes and made sure they were hydrated.

There is no doubt that a culture that normalizes white supremacist violence, and a president that stokes hate, emboldened Rittenhouse. Media commentary that lionizes him is having a similar effect; on Facebook, memes, tributes and even fundraisers for him are being shared by millions of people.

As we saw in Charlottesville and Kenosha, this type of rhetoric has already incited senseless bloodshed. It needs to be condemned by all sides and shut down immediately, before it happens again

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/white-supremacists-are-invading-american-cities-to-start-a-civil-war

wa mo

in his 2004 Democratic National Convention speech, Barack Obama said: “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.” If it was true then, it certainly isn’t true now. We are a nation on the edge of an increasingly hot civil war, one in which white supremacists are invading American cities, fomenting violence, and the overtly racist president they support sees the violence as benefiting him politically.

For the last two decades at least, Democrats have labored under the notion that if they were just reasonable enough, they could heal sharpening political divides in America. Meanwhile, Republicans spent the same time period inflaming every cultural resentment they could, maximizing racist, sexist and homophobic resentments among primarily white men. Republicans worked overtime to try to set urban and exurban populations against one another, disempowering and disenfranchising city dwellers through gerrymandering and voter suppression.

Donald Trump added kerosene onto the flaming bonfire built by Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes. He won the GOP primary not be being something radically different, but by accurately reflecting the existing dispositions of the Republican base. He embodies their ethos heart and soul, and they reward him with intense loyalty even as the economy begins to collapse and 180,000 Americans die in a pandemic he has ignored.

Many like David Neiwert have long predicted this would end in violence, but were largely dismissed. Conservatives are now both more desperate and more cocksure than ever before. As more Americans started living in cities, as the racial complexion of the nation diversified, as young people locked out of housing, trapped in debt and forced into dead-end jobs realized the need for a radical rethinking of the social and economic contract, and as a larger percentage of white people went to college and by extension became increasingly inoculated from the very worst forms of bigotry, the hold of conservative elements over the country has weakened. The Right has lost the culture war. American corporations, solicitous of the economic patronage of younger trendsetters and growing families, have established ever more left-leaning branding (at least on social and environmental matters.)

at the same time, however, political structures designed to empower the minority of conservatives in America to rule over its liberal majority are maintaining an apartheid-style government. The electoral college has put a conservative in the White House twice in the last two decades despite losing the popular vote, and threatens to do so again. The Senate majority belongs to conservatives who nonetheless control mostly rural states with a minority of the U.S. population, and the presence of the filibuster makes real change all but impossible even if Democrats were to retake the chamber. Gerrymandering ensures that the House of Representatives and state legislatures are stacked in favor of exurban dwellers and conservatives, with the result that even when Democrats do attain victory, those legislators are perforce more moderate than the majority of the Democratic base. And, of course, widespread voter suppression maximizes the disenfranchisement of urban progressives. Protected by these structures and with Donald Trump as president, conservatives feel that they are empowered to rule regardless of what majoritarian democracy would suggest.

The protests against police violence are reflective of this broader trend. Most police do not live in the cities they serve. They tend to be extremely culturally conservative and out of touch with the values of the taxpayers who fund them. In New York City, one of the nation’s most progressive enclaves where the president no longer dares to tread, the police union defiantly endorsed Donald Trump. Police violence against racial minorities has been a longstanding problem for decades, and one that has started to receive national attention through the diligent efforts of activists and through the presence of ubiquitous video technology to capture actions that in years past would have been sanitized in one-sided police reports. But it’s also the reality that in the age of rightwing radicalization, a large segment of the police have come more than ever to see themselves as occupying warrior forces in cities whose culture is threatening and alien to them. And the citizens of those cities know it and feel it– as psychological torment, legal harassment, financial hardship from court costs, and as scars on their bodies.

Protests in this context are inevitable. And why not? The people of America’s cities have a right to demand action from their city leaders. It’s a problem for America’s cities to sort out, as citizens demand that their representatives fear their political power as much as they do that of the police organizations.

But conservative white supremacist extremists are not content to allow that to play out. An empowered urban citizenry is a direct threat to their power, an acceleration of their loss of control. The “Boogaloo” movement wants to instigate a civil war along largely racial lines precisely to settle accounts before they suffer any further cultural or demographic declines.

So a few days ago a radicalized Trump-supporting teenager drove across state lines armed for a violent confrontation against protests, and murdered two people and injured a third. He did so after being welcomed by local police, given water, and ignored when he attempted to surrender. He is being celebrated in right-wing circles for doing so, and so-called “Christian” groups are funding his legal defense.

Yesterday, convoys of out-of-town trucks and SUVs bearing Trump flags stormed into Portland with the intent of creating confrontation. They allegedly rolled through groups of protesters in their vehicles, shooting projectiles and pepper spray into the crowds. In the ensuing violence, one of the far-right Trump supporters was shot and killed.

The Portland murderer should, of course, be brought to justice. There is no excuse for deadly violence. But all of this is happening because white supremacists are invading American cities with the express intent of starting a civil war. President Trump sees them as “very fine people” who are on his side. He sees the violence as politically beneficial, a useful cudgel against Democratic nominee Joe Biden–even though the violence is happening while Trump himself is president, not Biden.

Trump’s election theme is that Americans won’t be safe in a Biden presidency. The opposite is true. Americans won’t be safe as long as a white supremacist president is leading a movement of bigots to incite a civil war, and attempting to ensure that the majority of Americans with cosmopolitan, egalitarian values remain politically disenfranchised and under the thumb of those who fear and despise them.

===

https://religionnews.com/2020/08/29/christian-fund-raising-site-has-earned-nearly-200000-for-alleged-kenosha-shooter-kyle-rittenhouse/

august 29, 2020

---

:{:{Roxanne Stone}:

---

(RNS) — A Christian fundraising site, Give Send Go, has raised nearly $270,000, well beyond its $200,000 goal for the alleged Kenosha shooting suspect Kyle Rittenhouse as of Monday afternoon (August 31).

A scrolling ticker on the website shows who has recently donated to trending campaigns, many of whom are supporting the Rittenhouse fundraiser.

Rittenhouse, 17, was arrested on Wednesday, August 26, and is being charged as an adult with two counts of first-degree homicide and one count of attempted homicide, according to published reports. He also faces charges of recklessly endangering two other victims and possessing a weapon while under the age of 18.

The shootings occurred in Kenosha Wisconsin on Tuesday night, during protests demanding justice for the Sunday shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by Kenosha police.

The police were responding to a domestic violence call,[THAT HE WAS DE-ESCALATING?!] and video shows Blake walking away from two policemen, who had their guns trained on him. When Blake opened his car door, one police officer grabbed his shirt and then appears to shoot him several times in the back.

Blake was hospitalized and, according to his family attorney, the shooting has left him paralyzed.[SHACKLED TO BED TILL OUTRAGE]

Several nights of protests and unrest in Kenosha followed the shooting, with the police instilling a curfew on the city. After businesses in Kenosha sustained damage amid the protests, a group of armed, majority white civilians on Tuesday were shown in video to have gathered to protect a car dealership.

Rittenhouse, an Illinois resident, has been identified in these videos and can be seen talking with police and holding an AR-15 style rifle. He wasinterviewed by a reporter for the Daily Caller, telling the reporter that people "were getting injured and our job is to protect this business."

In one video, police can be seen handing out water bottles to the armed men and thanking them for their presence.

Kyle Rittenhouse. Photo via Facebook

"We appreciate you," said one police officer.

Later that night, after leaving the dealership, video posted on social media appears to show Rittenhouse being pursued by protestors. A shot is fired by someone in the crowd, and a person identified as Rittenhouse then turns toward the shot and fires multiple times, appearingto shoot a man in the head. He then flees and is pursued by several protestors.

One lunges at him with a skateboard and another is holding a handgun. Rittenhouse fires again, hitting the man with the skateboard in the stomach and the arm of the man holding the handgun.

Police then drive toward the gunfire, passing Rittenhouse who has his hands up. Bystanders call out to the police that Rittenhouse had just shot people, though the police drive by him without stopping.

Rittenhouse was arrested by police early Wednesday in his hometown, Antioch, Ill

The deceased victims have been identified as Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber. A third victim who survived a gunshot has been identified as Gaige Grosskreutz. GoFundMe campaigns have been set up for Rosenbaum, Huber and Grosskreutz.

Rittenhouse was a staunch supporter of police and multiple posts on his social media proclaim support for "Blue Lives Matter." He ran a Facebook fundraiser for the non-profit, Humanize the Badge, for his 16th birthday. Facebook has since removed Rittenhouse's profile.

The Give Send Go campaign for Rittenhouse, titled "Raise money for Kyle Rittenhouse Legal Defense," has a short description of how the funds will be used.

"Kyle Rittenhouse just defended himself from a brutal attack by multiple members of the far-leftist group ANTIFA – the experience was undoubtedly a brutal one, as he was forced to take two lives to defend his own," reads the campaign page. "Now, Kyle is being unfairly charged with murder 1, by a DA who seems determined only to capitalize on the political angle of the situation. The situation was clearly self-defense, and Kyle and his family will undoubtedly need money to pay for the legal fees."

"Let's give back to someone who bravely tried to defend his community."

The site, similar to GoFundMe, describes itself as the "#1 free Christian crowdfunding site," and has categories for campaigns that include "Mission," "Medical," "Memorial," and "Church," among others.

"Outside the obvious funding for mission trips, GSG also can be used to raise funds for medical expenses, business ventures, personal needs, churches, nonprofits, ministries or any 'God Adventure' you embark on," reads the FAQ page of the website. Give Send Go promises to give back 10% of its donations each month to other active campaigns on the site.

The Rittenhouse campaign was trending on the site Saturday, alongside campaigns for a woman in need of medical equipment for diabetes and a classical Catholic academy working to reopen religious schools in a Wisconsin county.

In one tweet, Give Send Go, said they are "the only platform that has allowed a campaign for Kyle Rittenhouse." In another, they describe themselves as a "veteran owned platform that hasn't fallen into the censorship/cancel culture that we see today."

Thanks for the shout out!! GiveSendGo is veteran owned platform that hasn't fallen into the censorship/cancel culture that we see today. Set up a fundraising campaign here: https://t.co/JTnotHlGUh https://t.co/BC865xZoB3

— GiveSendGo (@GiveSendGo) July 20, 2020

:{:{}:

Similar campaigns for Rittenhouse have popped up on other crowdfunding sites, including GoFundMe and Fundly, who have reportedly removed the campaigns.

Give Send Go did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the campaign.

===

stokes violence then sez only he can stop THOSE PPL:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trumps-signal-to-his-followers-is-clear-violence-and-chaos-are-my-only-hope/

no twt vid link

prez trump’s signal to his followers is clear: Violence and chaos are my only hope

Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon August 31, 2020

President Trump was having a normal one on Sunday morning, tweeting and retweeting 89 times over the course of three and a half hours. Many of them were tweets of polling numbers from obscure firms showing him in the lead after the Republican convention. But most of the tweets and retweets were incitement to violence among his true believers and complaints about “Democrat cities,” an ongoing mantra which he seems to think is a slam dunk to get him re-elected.

He repeatedly insulted and mocked Joe Biden, of course, and Portland, Oregon Mayor Ted Wheeler will undoubtedly have to change his phone number after the president of the United States posted it on Twitter so his followers could call and demand his resignation.

He also showed support for one of his fans in Wisconsin:

[]

It was a manic tweet spree and one that couldn’t have show the president’s state of mind any more clearly. Biden has said Trump is “rooting for violence,” and I don’t think anyone can reasonably argue with that.

In fact, Trump’s surrogates are saying it right out loud. Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked Trump campaign adviser Lara Trump whether she agreed with White House counselorKellyanne Conway’s assertion that “the more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order.” Lara answered, “Well, I think it paints a very clear picture.” She might as well have said, “You go, boys!”

On CNN on Sunday, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., agreed with Trump that the shootings by a 17-year-old Trump fan last Tuesday night in Kenosha were understandable:[]

What the president did was he offered to surge manpower and resources so the violence could end. The governor did not accept that that day, that night tragically two people lost their lives because citizens took matters into their own hands. I’m not for vigilantism. I’m not sure that’s what was happening. People felt, because the governor — local officials were looking for help.The governor did not accept the help, and so there was not the resolve to end the rioting, and so people took matters into their own hands, and that’s what ended up happening. People die.

Johnson is confused about everything, as usual.Trump publicly berated Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers for failing to call in the National Guard hours after Evers had already done so, telling his followers that Evers wasn’t protecting the city. Johnson basically said that people felt they needed to take matters into their own hands because the president had lied to them and told them the governor wasn’t protecting them. Yet somehow he’s against vigilantism. Everything about that is a grotesque inversion of anything one could call “law and order.”

Trump was at it again later on Sunday, tweeting in response to a press conference by Wheeler, the Portland mayor. Trump called him a “dummy” and ranted on, saying, “He would like to blame me and the federal government for going in, but he hasn’t seen anything yet. We have only been there with a small group to defend our U.S. courthouse, because he couldn’t do it.”

Conway’s little gaffe in which she admitted that the White House and the Trump campaign believe street violence is good for them illuminates the president’s fanning of the flames. He has finally grasped that he cannot unilaterally sending in a bunch of federal cops, as he did in Washington to stage his photo-op last June. Instead, he’s not-very-subtly signaling to his gun-toting fans that they are going to have to take action on their own if they hope to scare people into voting for him. Leave the propaganda to him, just ramp up the chaos.

He tweeted that MAGA “protesters” who came to Portland in a caravan on Saturday night were “Great Patriots!” and later explained why their behavior was understandable:

The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein wondered on Twitter whether “suburban voters look at these pictures and say, ‘yes, where I belong is in the same political coalition as men who crowd into pickup trucks w/guns, as in Bosnia 1998 or a Third World dictatorship?'” (Those huge flags flying behind them reminded me of men crowded “into pickup trucks w/guns,” as in news photographs of ISIS fighters.)

It’s a jarringly familiar sight, but it doesn’t look like anything we’ve seen in America before.

There was an actual shooting that night and someone died. It’s unclear what exactly happened. But it is very clear that this kind of confrontation is something that Trump and his henchmen are actively stoking for political gain.

As I wrote on Friday, this is hardly the first time Trump has deployed crude, racist fear-mongering. He’s been doing it for years, going all the way back to the full-page Central Park Five ad. If it isn’t marauding gangs of Black teenagers, it’s Muslim terrorists or Mexican rapists or left-wing anarchists. There’s always some bogeyman coming to get you.

The only thing he knows how to do is point a finger at “the other” and then promise people that he’s the only one who can save them. He feels confident that he’s got the troops to back him up, one way or the other. He gave an interview with Breitbart back in 2019 in which he made this explicit:

You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. Okay? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump — I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.

Yes, it would be very bad. The question is whether or not anyone will believe that Donald Trump is the man who can save America from all this mayhem he is creating. After all, he’s been promising to do that ever since he came down that elevator. Here he is at the 2016 Republican convention:

I guess that’s yet another promise he’ll fulfill after he makes America Great Again — Again.

===

---

https://theintercept.com/2020/08/28/kyle-rittenhouse-violent-pro-trump-militias-police/

THE VIDEOS that preceded Anthony Huber’s killing on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, are jarring. Among the most chilling is one from the parking lot of an auto repair shop. Several shots ring out. In the distance, you see the gunman in jeans and a green T-shirt. A man rushes up behind him. The gunman turns. More shots ring out and the man collapses to the ground. The gunman circles a parked car, then comes back to the man laid out on the pavement. He looks down at him and pulls out his cellphone. “I just killed somebody,” the shooter says, before jogging off. The man on the ground twitches and stares up at the sky, gasping deeply as bystanders work desperately to put pressure on his wound. Some cry, others yell for someone to call the police.

In a second video, the gunman can be seen jogging down the center of a two-way street as bystanders yell that he just shot someone. He falls to the ground. A handful of men run toward him; Huber is one of them. The 26-year-old swings his skateboard at the shooter and reaches for his rifle. The shooter pulls the trigger. Huber staggers back, then collapses in the street. A second man, appearing to hold a handgun, takes a bullet in the arm. The gunman rises to his feet and jogs, then walks, toward a column of approaching emergency vehicles. Again, bystanders yell that he just shot people. The gunman, with his hands in the air, is seemingly ordered out of the way and the police move on. In a third video, shot before the killings took place, the same young gunman is seen interacting with law enforcement in an armored vehicle, accepting a bottle of water as thanks for the efforts he and others in a group of armed vigilantes were putting in. An officer in the vehicle says over a loudspeaker: “We appreciate you guys. We really do.

[twt pix huber]

hours after the videos were taken, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, the suspected shooter, was arrested on charges of first-degree intentional homicide. By that point, he was miles away, in Antioch, Illinois, despite the fact that he had approached police and several bystanders identified him as the gunman whose shots law enforcement were ostensibly responding to. Rittenhouse is accused of killing Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum, a 36-year-old father who leaves behind a fiancée and young daughter, and wounding Gaige Grosskreutz, a volunteer street medic[armed?]. The killings came on the third night of protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man who was left paralyzed after being shot in the back in front of his children. Like other moments around the country, the response to the police violence has featured large-scale peaceful demonstrations, vandalism, and property damage. Blake remains hospitalized and, according to his father, has been shackled to his bed despite being unable to move.

Heidi Beirich, the chief strategy officer at the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said she was unsurprised when she woke up to the news of violence in Kenosha Wednesday morning. The summer of 2020 has already seen the targeting of Black Lives Matter protesters with a bomb plot in Nevada, the targeted killing of a federal court security officer and the murder of a sheriff’s deputy by a suspected right-wing extremist in California, and a Ku Klux Klan leader driving his car into a crowd of police brutality protesters in Virginia.

“As we’re approaching the election and Trump is hyping fear over the protests and ginning these people on with all this of law order stuff, it’s going to get worse,” Beirich told The Intercept. “I don’t expect this, unfortunately, to be the end of it."

at a press conference Wednesday, Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth offered no explanation as to why Rittenhouse was permitted to leave the scene of the shootings; in addition to being identified as a shooter out after curfew, the 17-year-old was not old enough to legally carry the weapon he did. “I don’t have a clue,” the sheriff told reporters, later adding, “I don’t even know the man’s name.” When asked why law enforcement gave armed vigilantes bottles of water, the sheriff said it was common practice. “Our deputies would toss a water to anybody.”

Hours before the shootings took place, the Kenosha Guard, a local militia group, issued a “call to arms” on Facebook, amplified by the conspiracy theory website InfoWars, urging armed citizens to come out in defense of private property. At Wednesday’s press conference, Beth indicated that the group had sought to be deputized by his office — a request that the sheriff claims he rejected.

Violent Pro-Trump Militias

The events in Kenosha are the latest in a long line of cases in which self-styled vigilantes have gathered under the banner of the “thin blue line” — a flag and movement devoted to the defense of law enforcement and the president — and engaged in violence with counterprotesters while police stood back.

Days before the killings in a Wisconsin, a so-called Back the Blue rally in Gilbert, Arizona, saw armed pro-police demonstrators beating counterprotesters while law enforcement looked on. In the run up to the confrontation, which are now a weekly event, supporters of the rally posted violent fantasies online and death threats against their critics. Days later, police in Portland stood by as gun-toting men waving “thin blue line” flags brawled with leftist protesters in the city’s streets. The clash came just weeks after Portland authorities acknowledged that a former Navy SEAL who had boasted about infiltrating “ANTIFA” was under investigation in connection with the detonation of an explosive device near protesters. Pro-police protests New York have also devolved into violence.

Armed Vigilantes Antagonizing Protesters Have Received a Warm Reception From Police

Mike German, a former FBI agent who went undercover in far-right groups in the 1990s and who is now at the Brennan Center for Justice, noted that law enforcement’s tendency to back off in the face armed right-wing protests was evident in altercations during Trump’s 2016 run for office, and has continued throughout his administration. “To see the police continuing to treat these far-right militants as friendlies is troubling,” he said. During the 1990s, German explained, law enforcement understood that the most violent members of right-wing groups, those with criminal records that exposed them to risk of arrest, did not show up at public protests. That’s no longer the case.

“There are people who have been engaged in protests in Portland for years now,” German said. “They’re well identified. I know them and I don’t live in Portland. Several of them are under court orders not to attend another protest because of the violence they’ve already perpetrated. And yet, they can engage with the police as if they’re auxiliaries. It’s really astonishing — people can point guns at people in broad daylight and not be arrested.”

[pix Alan Swinney, a member of the right-wing extremist group Proud Boys, fires sting-ball grenades as far-right demonstrators, many armed, clash violently with Black Lives Matter counterprotesters, in Portland, Ore., on Aug. 22, 2020.

Photo: John Rudoff/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images]

:{:{}:

Data collected by the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right and shared with HuffPost Friday charted nearly 500 instances of right-wing extremists gathering in response to Black Lives Matter protests since the police killing of George Floyd in late May, leading to 64 cases of simple assault, 38 vehicle assaults, and nine cases of shots fired at demonstrators resulting in three deaths.

Among the myriad factors contributing to the political violence and unrest the country is now witnessing is an inversion of the relationship between some elements of the armed right and the federal government, Beirich argued. “The anti-government movement is no longer anti-government in the sense that the federal government is no longer its enemy,” she said. “Trump has changed that calculation — the militias, the larger anti-government world, is essentially a pro-Trump political formation.” German, who published a report this week on extremist infiltration of law enforcement agencies, described the increasingly public alignment of the far right, police on the ground, and the White House as “a widening of the umbrella” for extremist groups.

“The president has identified the Black Lives Matter protests and so-called antifa as the enemy and that sends a message to the police as to who to go after but also to these groups,” he said. “So these groups and the police seem to have aligned on a common enemy, but law enforcement is making a very big mistake if they think that because they are enemies of your enemies, they are your friends. They are not your friends, as they have demonstrated and as they will continue demonstrating as law enforcement tries to regulate their violence.”

A Surge of Far-Right Extremism

The election of Barack Obama was followed by a surge in right-wing extremist activity that then exploded under President Donald Trump, Beirich explained. “There’s been this slow drumbeat of one white supremacist attack or militia anti-government attack, and then another, and then another,” she said. “It just kept accelerating into the explosion that we’ve seen lately.”

In Obama’s second term, the surge in right-wing activity became intermingled with a visible pro-police movement that took hold in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Rittenhouse came of age during this critical moment. On Wednesday, BuzzFeed News reported that the teenager had a front-row seat at a rally Trump held in January, and was part of a cadet program at a local police department that provided ride-alongs and firearms training. Speaking to Vice News on Thursday, former classmates described Rittenhouse as a “ride or die” Trump supporter who loved “triggering the libs.”

If the notice to appear drawn up by the Antioch Police Department is accurate, Rittenhouse was born on January 3, 2003, late in the 18-month window between the September 11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq. He came into the world just a few weeks before the Department of Homeland Security, and he was likely still in elementary school when the “thin blue line” flag that he included in the background of his Facebook profile became the symbol of a movement forged in reaction to Obama-era police brutality protests.

Posts Rittenhouse made on social media indicate that his worldview was drenched in a militarized culture that has animated large swaths of the country after nearly two decades of war and the emergence of law enforcement as a powerful cultural and political constituency. Embedded in that worldview is a “tactical” community with its own symbols and language, built around the idea of constant threat, good guys versus bad guys, and the sacred role of guns in maintaining social order. In a video taken before Tuesday’s killings, the teenaged Rittenhouse can be heard articulating his role at the protest in terms that echo the language of modern American police, which consistently strives to center police officers’ willingness to run toward danger.

“People are getting injured and our job is to protect this business, and a part of my job is to also help people,” Rittenhouse told a reporter from the right-wing website Daily Caller. “If there’s somebody hurt, I’m running into harm’s way. That’s why I have my rifle because I need to protect myself, obviously, but I also have my med kit.”

If Rittenhouse forged his political identity online in the past half decade, and it appears he did, he would have encountered a largely unchecked universe of blended pro-police and right-wing ideas, memes, and imagery, Beirich noted. “Just remember that none of the social media companies in this kid’s lifetime had really dealt with the issue of militias on their system,” she said. “He would have been exposed to every militant idea — the need for war, arming yourself — all that stuff would have been widespread where kids like this guy lived.”

Online support for Rittenhouse has exploded since his arrest, with fundraisers and “Free Kyle” memes spreading widely against the backdrop of a profoundly fraught political moment.

[pix Enrique Tarrio, chair of the Proud Boys, speaks with a police officer during the End Domestic Terrorism rally at Tom McCall Waterfront Park on Aug. 17, 2019, in Portland, Ore.

Photo: Karen Ducey/Getty Images]

From the beginning, Trump courted the hard-right edge of American law enforcement, gathering endorsements in his 2016 run for office from unions representing Border Patrol agents, ICE officers, and the Fraternal Order of Police. That courtship has continued into 2020, with the NYPD’s Police Benevolent Association, which represents 24,000 officers, throwing its support behind the president. In Philadelphia earlier this summer, a meeting between Vice President Mike Pence and the local police union also featured members of the Proud Boys, a right-wing street-fighting gang that often shows up at pro-police protests to brawl with leftists.

Trump Supporters Rush to Defend One of Their Own Who Killed Protesters in Kenosha

The killings in Kenosha came one day after a couple from St. Louis, Missouri, who used guns to threaten a Black Lives Matter protest outside their mansion, appeared as speakers at the Republican National Convention. The couple’s message, and the message of the Republicans and the Trump administration as the president seeks reelection, is that the protests that have roiled the country are a threat and that Americans, when threatened, are entitled to defend themselves. “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?” Fox News host Tucker Carlson told his millions of viewers Wednesday night. Referring to Rittenhouse on Twitter,Ann Coulter, the far-right commentator whose political views Donald Trump is known to consider as bellwether for his base, added: “I want him as my president.”

“That’s the message that’s going to be pounded every day until November 3,” Beirich said — and it should be deeply troubling. “When political figures and public figures take advantage of fraught situations in this way it always ends in violence.” Beirich added, “I can’t think of anything more irresponsible than what the RNC and Trump are doing. It’s unbelievable.”

The bullet that took Anthony Huber’s life pierced his heart, tearing through his aorta, his pulmonary artery, and his right lung. On Wednesday night, Huber’s partner, Hannah Gittings, put out a call to friends to meet at the local skatepark in Kenosha; a GoFundMe launched in his name soon raised thousands of dollars for the family he left behind. In addition to being a talented and known figure in the local skate scene,Huber’s friends remembered him as a “peaceful person” and a “defender” who “put his life on the line for others.” Gittings told a local CBS affiliate that he was the smartest, kindest, and most loving man she ever knew.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/new-report-details-how-far-right-militias-and-white-supremacists-infiltrate-us-police-departments

no lnx twt

https://theintercept.com/2020/08/27/tucker-carlson-defends-kenosha-shooter

no twt pix

TUCKER CARLSON set off a firestorm of criticism on Wednesday — by describing a 17-year-old Trump supporter who opened fire on protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin on Tuesday, killing two, as a well-meaning kid who decided he “had to maintain order” in the Democrat-run state because “no one else would” — the Fox News host was surfacing an idea that had already spread widely on the far-right.

“The chaos that began with the first George Floyd protests on Memorial Day has reached its inevitable and bloody conclusion,” Carlson told viewers tuning in for his buildup to the Republican National Convention, which had featured, on its first night, two speakers lionized for threatening to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters outside their mansion in St. Louis.

[twt pix]

Last night, three people were shot on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Two of them have died. Police say they’ve charged a 17-year-old with murder,” Carlson reported, without revealing that the suspect, Kyle Rittenhouse, was not the anti-fascist radical his viewers might have been led to expect, but a conservative vigilante who had posted video from the front row of a Trump rally in January, and written “BLUE LIVES MATTER” and “Trump 2020″ on his TikTok bio, as Buzzfeed first reported.[twt tucker]

rittenhouse was reportedly charged with six crimes on Thursday, including first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide, two counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety, attempted first-degree intentional homicide and possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18.

The incident came after a third night of protests in Kenosha over the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black father who was critically wounded by a police officer who fired seven shots into his back, but throughout his report on the fatal shootings Carlson pretended, as he has for months, that there were no non-violent protests over police violence against communities of color, just “riots.”

In Carlson’s telling, the moral of the story was not that Rittenhouse — who was photographed and caught on video from multiple angles shooting three men — had provoked trouble by responding to a militia group’s Facebook call for “patriots willing to take up arms and defend” the city from “evil thugs,” but that he was something closer to a victim, prodded to fill a vacuum by the misrule of the city’s Democratic mayor, John Antaramian, and the state’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers.

[

pix Kyle Rittenhouse was photographed hours before the shootings on Tuesday, among a group of volunteers who cleaned anti-police graffiti from a high school in Kenosha.

Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images]

“Kenosha has devolved into anarchy because the authorities in charge of the city abandoned it,” Carlson told Fox viewers unaware that the city had not, in fact, collapsed into chaos just because they were being shown isolated scenes of violence on a loop.

“People in charge, from the governor of Wisconsin on down, refused to enforce the law. They stood back and they watched Kenosha burn,” Carlson claimed, oblivious to the fact that video recorded by witnesses to Tuesday’s events showed Rittenhouse and other heavily armed young vigilantes had spent most of the night standing close to armored police vehicles outside a business they appointed themselves to guard.

[twt vid]

at one point in a livestream broadcast that night, a police officer could be heard offering water to the militiamen, including Rittenhouse, and telling them: “We appreciate you guys, we really do.”

Later that night, after Rittenhouse wandered a short distance away and got into a confrontation with a man he shot in the head, video recorded by a pro-Trump YouTuber, Drew Hernandez, seemed to show Rittenhouse running back down the street in the direction of the police vehicles. As he retreated from the scene, the video appeared to catch Rittenhouse telling someone on his phone: “I just killed somebody."

[twt vid]

according to the police complaint against Rittenhouse, released on Thursday evening, his friend Dominic Black told a detective that he received a call from his friend Kyle at 11:46 pm on Tuesday, in which the gunman stated that he shot someone.

A subsequent analysis of the video by the New York Times visual investigations unit suggested that, moments before Rittenhouse opened fire, a single gunshot was fired into the air for unknown reasons by someone standing near the parking lot where the confrontation took place.

Shelby Talcott, a video journalist for the Daily Caller, a conservative site founded by Carlson, captured footage of Rittenhouse fleeing the scene of the first shooting, as protesters shouted that he had shot someone.

[twt vid]

video shot by another pro-Trump YouTuber, Brendan Gutenschwager, appeared to Rittenhouse pursued by several protesters who suspected him of carrying out the first shooting. After he tripped and fell, just a block away from the police, two of those men attempted to disarm him, one by kicking him and another by hitting him with a skateboard.

[vid]

rittenhouse fired at both of them, apparently killing the skateboarder, Anthony Huber, with a shot to the chest as they struggled for the rifle, and then shooting a third protester, Gaige Grosskreutz, causing a gaping wound in his arm. Grosskreutz, a member of a social justice group who was wearing a hat with the word “paramedic” emblazoned on it, also appeared to be armed with a handgun.

In a remarkable scene at the end of Gutenschwager’s video, Rittenhouse can be seen walking with his hands up, apparently trying to surrender to the police officers he had been chatting with earlier in the evening, as a bystander shouts that he shot the protesters, but the officers drive right past him in the direction of the men he shot.

while all of this footage was available to Carlson before he went on air, later in his monologue he professed to have no idea what exactly had happened or whether — because the men who had attempted to disarm the vigilante after he had shot someone in the head could be seen kicking and hitting Rittenhouse — a jury might ultimately decide that he had acted in self-defense.

In this, Carlson was closely following a consensus explanation that had formed during the 24 hours after the shooting by pro-Trump YouTubers, bloggers, and commentators, who decided, after studying slow-motion imagery and still photographs, that the young man who had traveled to Kenosha from his home in neighboring Illinois to defend the city from residents enraged by the shooting of Jacob Blake, was merely acting in self-defense.

rep. Paul Gosar, a Republican from Arizona, suggested on Twitter that the slow-motion video convinced him that the killings were “100% justified self defense.” Hours before Carlson went to air, Gosar also blamed the violence on Kenosha’s local government. “Armed citizens defending themselves will fill the vacuum,” he wrote[twt dr paul gosar az cernovich?]

one of Rittenhouse’s defenders was Elijah Schaffer, a freelance producer for Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV and a pro-Trump political activist who releaseda misleading accountof a fight involving Black Lives Matter protesters in Dallas in May. Writing on Twitter on Wednesday, Schaffer described the Turkish journalist Tayfun Coskun’s photograph of the protesters attempting to disarm the gunman as Rittenhouse “being attacked by #BLM rioters.”

“One of the attackers,” in Schaffer’s words, was “about to assault him with a skateboard."

[twt pix]

that “assault” by the skateboarder Anthony Huber ended with his failed effort to wrest the gun away from Rittenhouse and being fatally shot in the chest.

Schaffer also thought a 20-second interview he did with Rittenhouse before the shootings provided important “context” as to what took place later, since the vigilante did not say anything racist or political in that third of a minute.

[twt vid]

as Jamelle Bouie, a New York Times opinion columnist, noted on Twitter, an obvious flaw in the conservative argument that Rittenhouse was just defending himself from the second and third men he shot is that they were only “attacking” him because he had just shot someone else in the head[twt]

carlson’s defense of Rittenhouse also hinged on the false idea that he had taken to the streets to oppose a phantom movement of violent radicals using the protests as cover. “The Justice Department could have stopped all of this months ago,” Carlson ranted over footage of Kenosha recorded by another of the conservative gonzo video bloggers who descended on the city this week, searching for images of chaos to discredit the protest movement. “If federal prosecutors had treated the organizers of BLM and antifa the way they treated Roger Stone, our cities wouldn’t look like Kosovo tonight.”

Another conservative journalist who interviewed Rittenhouse earlier in the evening was Richie McGinniss, who directs video for the Daily Caller, the website that was once used to smear Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager who was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer.

[twt vid]

mcGinniss appeared on Carlson’s show on Wednesday to discuss what happened in Kenosha and his own effort to save the life of the first man shot and killed by Rittenhouse, who was later identified as Joseph Rosenbaum.

What made Carlson’s interview with McGinniss odd, however, was that the Daily Caller videographer repeatedly referred to Rittenhouse as “the alleged shooter,” even though he was standing just six or seven feet away from Rosenbaum when he was shot and seemed to have been filming the confrontation at the time.

[twt vid]

it is unclear if McGinniss has video of Rittenhouse shooting Rosenbaum, but he told Carlson that he witnessed the crime at close range. Even so, Carlson failed to ask him directly if he could say for certain that Rittenhouse did shoot Rosenbaum in the head and cause his death. Instead, McGinniss offered what sounded like testimony to the gunman’s good character. “The 17-year-old who I interviewed earlier in the night, he actually mentioned that he was there to maintain peace, in the absence of police,” McGinniss said.

“It’s just hard to believe this is America,” Carlson said. “We can’t put up with this.”

When the complaint against Rittenhouse was released late Thursday, it said that McGinniss told a police detective that he did clearly see the teen shoot Rosenbaum at close range as the victim reached for the rifle. Footage recorded earlier in the evening showed that Rosenbaum was incensed by the presence of the armed militia members in the neighborhood.

The complaint cited a coroner’s report which “indicated that Rosenbaum had a gunshot wound to the right groin which fractured his pelvis, a gunshot wound to the back which perforated his right lung and liver, a gunshot wound to the left hand, a superficial gunshot wound to his lateral left thigh, and a graze gunshot wound to the right side of his forehead.”

As the momentum to excuse Rittenhouse’s crimes as justified spread online Thursday, amplified by far-right figures around the globe, Jamelle Bouie called it “the single most ominous development of the year."

[twt]

the journalist Matt Prigge noted that the increasingly obscene lionization of Rittenhouse echoed the wave of praise in 1970 for the National Guardsmen who killed four anti-war protesters at Kent State, documented by the historian Rick Perlstein in his book, “Nixonland."

at a news conference on Friday, Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said that he did not want armed volunteers like Kyle Rittenhouse on the streets during protests.

“This group of people that are carrying weapons here, if they’re in their house — and again, I support the Second Amendment — if they’re in there protecting their property, I have no issue with that,” the sheriff said. “The people that have been here carrying guns, they haven’t been arrested because it’s a right that they have. Have we asked for them to come? Are we asking for them to come in and support things? I’m not.”

“You could clearly see the situation escalated Tuesday night because a 17-year-old boy carrying what appears to be an assault rifle, who has no idea how to handle a situation like this,” Beth added. “I don’t care if he had the right intentions or not, two people are currently dead, and one almost had his arm blown off.”

intercept 820

the

Thin Blue Line Between Violent, Pro-Trump Militias and Police

Ryan Devereaux

Police in Kenosha told armed vigilantes, “We appreciate you guys. We really do.” Then one of them killed two protesters.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/what-the-kenosha-shooter-tells-us-about-donald-trumps-america

C d V

Events this week in Kenosha, Wisconsin, are no surprise. They follow an all-too familiar social script in America.

On Wednesday, a 17-year-old named Kyle Rittenhouse traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin from his home in Antioch, Illinois, not far away. Rittenhouse did this in response to online appeals from a right-wing militia group to “protect” businesses, property and lives in Kenosha from “rioters.” In reality, the protests in Kenosha over the last week have come in response to the shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man who was unarmed and shot seven times in front of his children. Blake is reportedly now paralyzed and handcuffed to a hospital bed. There are credible reports that at least some of the violence in Kenosha has been committed by white supremacists or other right-wing agitators who are trying to discredit and undermine peaceful protests against police brutality and other forms of social injustice.

Rittenhouse was armed with an AR-15 military-style rifle. Under the laws of Illinois, where he lives, Rittenhouse is too young to own such a weapon. He also violated the law by traveling across state lines with a firearm.

As shown by his Facebook page and other social media, Rittenhouse was obsessed with guns and the police. He also supports the Blue Lives Matter movement — an implicitly racist response to the human and civil rights campaign Black Lives Matter.

rittenhouse is also an ardent Trump supporter. There is evidence that he was in the front row at a Trump rally in Des Moines, Iowa.

Vice interviewed several former high school classmates of Rittenhouse and they describe a young person indoctrinated by the right-wing media machine:

Kyle Rittenhouse loved cops, guns, President Trump, and “triggering the libs,” according to some of his former classmates at Lakes Community High School in Lake County, Illinois. His clothes were often branded with pro-police slogans, and he carried a Blue Lives Matter phone case, one student said.

Some of his classmates joked that he’d be a mass shooter one day. “I personally believe he went to Wisconsin with the intent to kill,” said one former classmate, who asked not to be identified out of fear for their safety….

Rittenhouse was also known as a “ride or die” Trump supporter. “If you said anything bad about Trump, he’d threaten you,” Joe said. In January, Rittenhouse even traveled to Iowa, where he had front row seats at a Trump rally, Buzzfeed reported. “Kyle was the type of kid to wear a MAGA hat or other apparel just for attention, or to “trigger” people,” Joe added.

Another one of Rittenhouse’s classmates said he used to refer to the school, located in a Chicago suburb, as “libtard af.”

“Kyle was kind of shy from what I remember, but he was definitely in your face and pushed his views hella,” they said. “Like one of those kids that liked ‘triggering libtards.'”

In Kenosha, Rittenhouse wandered through the crowds of protesters and sought to ingratiate himself with local police officers and other law enforcement. They appeared to be receptive to Rittenhouse’s overtures. As police have consistently done when white right-wing militias and other white right-wing extremists have appeared at protests against police brutality or the Trump regime, local cops evidently viewed Kyle Rittenhouse as one of the “good guys.”

Later in the evening, Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly shot and killed two protesters, and injured another, in a series of confrontations whose precise details remain unclear. It appears from video collected by the New York Times that the second and third shootings occurred as people tried to detain him for having initially shot a man in the head, killing him.

After these shootings, Rittenhouse ran away and apparently trying to surrender to police, who ignored him. He then escaped to his mother’s home in Illinois, where he was arrested on Thursday by local law enforcement.

Rittenhouse’s right-wing defenders are predictably claiming that his actions were all in “self-defense.” As legal experts have pointed out, Rittenhouse acted in a premeditated manner by going to Kenosha with a high-powered rifle and looking for trouble. Any such claim of self-defense is highly dubious.

Can you imagine what would have happened if Kyle Rittenhouse were Black or brown or Muslim? Again, the script is well-worn and obvious, but its truth must still be highlighted because of what it says about the color line and justice in America. In that scenario, the mainstream media, (white) politicians and others would of course be summoning a great moral panic about “bad culture” and “terrorism” and “social pathologies.”

With Kyle Rittenhouse there will be no such breathless news coverage with its questions such as:

Who, how and what is radicalizing white men to commit such acts of domestic terrorism and mass shootings?
What is Donald Trump’s role in encouraging political and other violence by white men and boys? What of Fox News and the broader right-wing echo chamber?
Is something wrong with the white family? Why are their sons and men so violent?
What should law enforcement and white politicians do about white crime?
Where are the white fathers in the white home?
When will white leadership step up and stop white right-wing domestic terrorism?
Is white American culture pathological? Why are white people so violent?

There are other parts of this cultural script as well.

When innocent Black and brown people are killed by police or white vigilantes, every part of their lives is publicly scrutinized in order to make them, the victims, responsible for their own murders.

Kyle Rittenhouse will be humanized and depicted as a tragic soul. Perhaps as a cherubic innocent or a “good kid” who somehow went wrong despite his parents’ best efforts. There will be calls for empathy and sympathy because Rittenhouse is “just a child” and we should respect his and the family’s privacy during this horrible time.

Trayvon Martin was 17 years old, the same age as Rittenhouse is now, when he was killed. Tamir Rice was only 12. Black children and other young people are seen, in the white gaze, as somehow always being “adults.”

The “adultification” of Black children and the infantilizing of white men — Donald Trump’s adult sons are frequently described by the news media as “kids” or “boys” — is one of the most obvious and insidious ways through which white privilege works in America for the purposes of legitimizing police and other violence against innocent people.

As I wrote here at Salon in 2015:

When a white person commits an act of mass violence he or she is “a lone gunman,” “mentally ill” or “disturbed.” White men commit a disproportionate percentage of the mass shootings and domestic terrorism in the United States. Yet their actions are never taken to be reflective of white men as a group. The mere suggestion of this basic fact is met with outrage by Republicans and the right-wing news entertainment complex. However, when an “Arab” or a “Muslim” commits a crime, said event is processed by the White Gaze as an indictment of an entire population and to summon the bogeyman of “Muslim terrorism.”In all, whiteness is freedom from collective responsibility and indictment; to be the Other is an a priori assumption where the actions of one non-white person means that all members of the group should be punished and made suspect.

Kyle Rittenhouse’s apparent vigilantism and political violence are the logical and predictable result of the energies summoned up by Donald Trump and his agents.

Trump, his regime and their compliant news media have repeatedly depicted nonwhite people, Democrats, liberals, progressives, Black Lives Matter supporters, anti-fascists and the majority of Americans who oppose him as un-American “terrorists” who should be destroyed.

Trump, the Republican Party, and their media use “stochastic terrorism” to encourage such violence while denying responsibility for what follows.

The shootings in Kenosha occurred simultaneously with this week’s ghoulish, racist, lie-filled, death-cult celebration at the Republican National Convention, which should be no surprise. Kyle Rittenhouse may have imagined himself to be a great soldier in Trump’s personal army as he waded through a sea of “evildoers.”

New York Magazine’s Eric Levitz describes this dangerous situation:

Before Trump’s emergence, some of the most powerful interest groups within the GOP coalition already viewed the Democratic Party as a threat so catastrophic the imperative of keeping it away from power would justify most any means of resistance.

Trump has certainly cultivated his party’s authoritarian elements more energetically — and delegitimized his opposition more shamelessly — than any other 2016 presidential candidate was liable to do. But regardless, thebasic fact remains that the GOP is — and has been — dominated by a movement that sees the Democratic Party as an internal enemy of the United States and any election that a Democratic president wins as illegitimate by definition

In sum, Kyle Rittenhouse channeled the juvenile, lethal, immature and simple-minded masculine fantasies of fascism — and he represents a broader cultural and political crisis in America in other ways as well.

Rittenhouse’s apparent shooting spree in Kenosha exemplifies the way that Donald Trump has served as a type of permission function for the darkest forces in American society by continually encouraging violent and other anti-social behavior by his followers. It would seem that Kyle Rittenhouse was listening closely.

As the United States further succumbs to Trump’s neofascist authoritarian movement, historian Timothy Snyder’s warnings about paramilitaries and police become even more ominous. He wrote this in his recent book “On Tyranny”:

Be wary of paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching around with torches and pictures of a Leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.

Kyle Rittenhouse is only 17, but that too is instructive. He is an example of how the average age of right-wing extremists is decreasing. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that recent incidents of far-right violence have involved perpetrators with an average age of about 26, “markedly younger than white supremacist killers who came before them.” As with radical Islamic terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Qaida, social media and other online technologies are being used to radicalize (white) right-wing extremists in the Age of Trump.

Christian Picciolini, a former extremist and the founder of the global disengagement network called the Free Radicals Project, explained this process of radicalization to Salon via email:

The pressure cooker America is dealing with today is the culmination of 400 years of human rights violations by white supremacists against marginalized and disenfranchised American people being swept under the rug. To top it off, for the last four years we have an administration that is working against any progress that has been made toward equity and a dialogue of progress, in many cases putting forth outright white nationalist policies in the face of that progress. Now, we’re facing a dire multi-layered situation with protests against those racist policies and the killing of unarmed black Americans, a heated election coming up, mass job loss and economic hardship, and a pandemic with no real end in sight.

All this uncertainty and raw emotion and fear, not to mention the plethora of guns and vigilantism occurring on the streets, plus the propaganda, fake news, and misinformation radicalizing people who are spending most of their time online these days, I fear we are in a critical juncture for the future of our nation.

As Election Day 2020 approaches, there will be more political violence by right-wing extremists. Such violence will be committed by random individuals, as well as coordinated by militias and other paramilitary groups. The goal will be to create widespread mayhem and upheaval in order to keep Donald Trump’s white supremacist, authoritarian regime in power indefinitely.

Even if Trump is defeated on Election Day and leaves office peacefully in January, his foot soldiers and other fanatics will not go away. They will fight a rearguard action against Joe Biden’s administration and the multiracial democracy it represents.Kyle Rittenhouse’s alleged actions are another warning of what awaits us in the months and years ahead, a reality for which most Americans are not prepared. Whether Donald Trump wins or loses in November, his most extreme loyalists will still be with us, seeking to exact revenge and make Trump’s nightmarish vision of America into reality.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/new-report-details-how-far-right-militias-and-white-supremacists-infiltrate-us-police-departments

no lnx twt

As law enforcement agencies and lawmakers respond to nationwide outrage over countless police shootings of Black Americans with pledges to address racial profiling and “implicit bias,” the Brennan Center for Justice released a report Thursday on what it called “an especially harmful form of bias, which remains entrenched within law enforcement: explicit racism.”

The presence of virulent racism within police ranks across the country has grown over the past two decades, Brennan Center fellow and former FBI special agent Michael German wrote in the report, as white supremacist and far-right militant groups have infiltrated law enforcement agencies.

“While it is widely acknowledged that racist officers subsist within police departments around the country, federal, state, and local governments are doing far too little to proactively identify them, report their behavior to prosecutors who might unwittingly rely on their testimony in criminal cases, or protect the diverse communities they are sworn to serve,” wrote German. “Efforts to address systemic and implicit biases in law enforcement are unlikely to be effective in reducing the racial disparities in the criminal justice system as long as explicit racism in law enforcement continues to endure. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that it does.”

According to the report, titled “Hidden in Plain Sight,” police officers with alleged ties to white supremacist groups or violent far-right militias have been identified in states including Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.

The report was called “wild and timely” by attorney and writer Madiba K. Dennie, as it was released two days after police in Kenosha, Wisconsin appeared to welcome the presence of armed militias at a protest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man who was left paralyzed.

As Common Dreams reported Thursday, cell phone video showed police telling armed white people that they “appreciated them being there” and handing them bottled water. One of the people in the video appeared to be a 17-year-old gunman who allegedly shot three people at the protest, killing two.

Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis blamed the victims for being at the protest after a city-wide curfew while defending the suspected gunman and other militia members for “exercising their constitutional rights.”

Footage of Kenosha Sheriff David Beth saying in 2018 that Black people who shoplift are “a cancer to our society” and “have to be warehoused” also surfaced on Wednesday, sparking alarm and outrage over the official’s open racism.

The ACLU on Thursday called for the immediate resignation of Beth and Miskinis.

[twt]

The conduct of police in Kenosha offers only the most recent evidence that law enforcement agencies in the U.S. have sympathy for if not direct ties to far-right militias and white supremacist groups, according to German’s report.

Police in states including California, Oregon, and Illinois are currently being investigated for their alleged connections to far-right groups that oppose the Black Lives Matter movement, with many law enforcement officers engaging “in overtly racist activities in public, on social media, or over law enforcement–only communication channels and internet chat rooms.”

Earlier this year, an officer in Salem, Oregon was caught on video asking “heavily armed white men dressed like militia to step inside a building or sit in their cars while the police arrested protesters.”

The officer said he made the request “so we don’t look like we’re playing favorites.”

Officials in Olympia, Washington opened an investigation into an officer who posed for a photograph with a heavily armed far-right militia group called Three Percent of Washington, allegedly after the officer thanked the group for guarding a shopping center.

The Brennan Center noted that few safeguards exist at the local and federal level to root out police officers who have ties to far-right militant groups or white supremacy.

The failure to respond to evidence of explicit racism among police officers “signals to white supremacists and far-right militants that their illegal acts enjoy government approval and authorization, making them all the more brazen and dangerous. Winning back public trust requires transparent and equal enforcement of the law, effective oversight, and public accountability that prioritizes targeted communities’ interests.”

In addition to working to end implicit bias in policing, German wrote, agencies must establish mitigation plans when overt racism is detected in their ranks.

“Mitigation plans could include referrals to internal affairs, local prosecutors, or the DOJ for investigation and prosecution; termination or other disciplinary action; limitations of assignments to reduce potentially problematic contact with the public; retraining; and intensified supervision and auditing,” German wrote.

The report also called on the FBI to determine whether its domestic terrorist investigations involving white supremacists uncover any connections to law enforcement, and whether police officers investigated for civil rights violations “have connections to violent white supremacist organizations or other far-right militant groups, have a record of discriminatory behavior, or have a history of posting explicitly racist commentary in public or on social media platforms.”

“The most effective way for law enforcement agencies to restore public trust and prevent racism from influencing law enforcement actions is to prohibit individuals who are members of white supremacist groups or who have a history of explicitly racist conduct from becoming law enforcement officers in the first place, or from remaining officers once bias is demonstrated,” German wrote.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/how-trump-created-a-permission-structure-for-the-shootings-in-kenosha/

...While Neumann’s remarks about the president’s mishandling of the coronavirus crisis are extremely important, what she has to say about the threat posed by white supremacists is incredibly timely. She talked about the fact that, starting in 2017, DHS became increasingly concerned about the growing threat posed by nationalist groups. Neumann goes on to say that Trump’s words and actions “gave permission to white supremacists to think that what they were doing was permissible.”

The reason why this is so timely is that, in the midst of protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, three people were shot—two fatally—on Tuesday night. The story about what happened is still developing. But here’s what we know so far:

AD REMOVED FOR SUBSCRIBED USER

The suspect, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, was reportedly arrested in his hometown of Antioch, Illinois, and charged with first-degree murder on Wednesday…

Investigators say they are focusing on a group of men with guns who were lined up outside some businesses a few blocks down the road from the courthouse, [Sheriff David] Beth told The New York Times. Ostensibly, the vigilantes were there to “protect” businesses from fires that had been set during previous nights of demonstrations.

Some may have been drawn to the city through a Facebook post by a group calling itself the Kenosha Guard, whichencouraged “patriots” to “take up arms and defend our city tonight from the evil thugs,” The Verge reported.

Mike Householder and Scott Bauer have provided us with some information about Rittenhouse.

Much of Rittenhouse’s Facebook page is devoted to praising law enforcement, with references to Blue Lives Matter, a movement that supports police. He also can be seen holding an assault rifle.

Other photographs include those of badges of various law enforcement agencies, including the Chicago Police Department. All of the badges have a black line across them — something police officers do with black tape or other material whenever an officer is killed in the line of duty.

In a photograph posted by his mother, he is wearing what appears to be a blue law enforcement uniform as well as the kind of brimmed hat that state troopers wear.

As of Wednesday, four people have been shot in Kenosha, Wisconsin, with two dead. The people responsible for that violence are law enforcement and a gunman involved with a vigilante group that referred to the protesters as “evil thugs.” But we have a president who has never called out the groups that are actually responsible for spurring most of the violence. Instead, he sends federal troops to attack peaceful protesters.As Neumann pointed out, Trump’s words and actions have communicated that what these vigilantes are doing is permissible. It all started before he was even elected.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/thats-pretty:{-offensive-:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:kellyanne-conway-snaps-at-reporter-who-called-kenosha-vigilante-a-trump-supporter/

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/ny-times-investigation-tracks-the-activities-of-17-year-old-suspect-in-lead-up-to-kenosha-shootings-that-left-2-people/

bunch of twt/vids

in Kenosha, Wisconsin, large protests have followed the shooting of Jacob Blake — a Black man who was shot seven times in the back by police and is now paralyzed. Two people were shot and killed during one of the protests on Tuesday night, August 25, and the New York Times has analyzed and tracked the activities of the suspect who has been arrested in connection with the shootings: 17-year-old Illinois resident Kyle Rittenhouse — who, according to the Times, was a supporter of the Blue Lives Matter movement.

The Times journalists report that Rittenhouse was “carrying a military-style semi-automatic rifle” at the protest and has been charged with “first-degree intentional homicide in connection with shootings that left two people dead on Tuesday night.” And they explain that the Times “analyzed hours of footage to track Mr. Rittenhouse’s movements in the moments leading up to and during the shootings.”

According to the Times reporters, “Multiple posts on his social media accounts proclaim support for pro-police causes like the Blue Lives Matter movement and Humanize the Badge, a nonprofit that he ran a Facebook fundraiser for on his 16th birthday. His posts also suggest a strong affinity for guns, with videos showing Mr. Rittenhouse taking backyard target practice, posing with guns and assembling an assault rifle.”

The Times has posted a collage of videos of Rittenhouse that were taken before the shootings. In the footage, Rittenhouse is seen in front of a vehicle dealership in Kenosha, where he is holding a semi-automatic weapon and saying, “So, people are getting injured. And our job is to protect this business.”

The Times reporters explain, “About 15 minutes before the first shooting, police officers drive past Mr. Rittenhouse and the other armed civilians who claim to be protecting the dealership and offer water out of appreciation. Mr. Rittenhouse walks up to a police vehicle carrying his rifle and talks with the officers. He eventually leaves the dealership and is barred by the police from returning. Six minutes later, footage shows Mr. Rittenhouse being chased by an unknown group of people [unarmed, trying to disarm him?]into the parking lot of another dealership several blocks away.”

After the two shootings, Kenosha officials announced a 7 p.m. curfew for the Wisconsin city.Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, has announced that he is sending hundreds of additional Wisconsin National Guard members to Kenosha.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/tucker-carlson-claims-white-militia-guy-accused-of-ing-protesters-was-trying-to-maintain-order/

no lnx twt vid

twt

===

Carlson has been circling the toilet bowl that is right wing culture for years now. The millimeter thin scum that is the entirety of the conservative intellectual movement in our country, has been able to float on top of the drain for an interminably long time now. No one has benefited from this failure more than Tucker Carlson, whose only intellectual claim to fame was his anachronistic use of a bowtie in his 20s.

On Tucker’s Fox News show tonight, Carlson decided to take on the protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin. You know that there is zero chance that Tucker is going to speak to the injustice against Jacob Blake, shot 7 times int he back by law enforcement, while his young children watched in horror. You might think that Tucker would try to speak to “virtue signaling” or one of his other wafer-thin buzzwords, by going after NBA players striking in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. But you might also think that Tucker would stay as far away from talking about right wing vigilante militia racist and Trump-supporting accused murderer Kyle Howard Rittenhouse. But you would be wrong.

Speaking about Rittenhouse, Tucker decided to conflate fear-mongering and civil disobedience with rioting and then posture that young Rittenhouse was just trying to bring law and order back to a county and state he doesn’t even live in. “So are you really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder? How shocked are we that 17-yea-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?” Just. Man oh man.

Tucker has long been a hate-mongering spoiled bag of farts, but this crosses the line from simply being a mean and vapid prick, to being someone condoning vigilante violence against American citizens.

The fact that mass-shooter is someone that was brought in from out of town doesn’t even get mentioned by these ghouls on right wing media.

---

While Andy Ngo and Ben Shapiro tip toe around the subject, Tucker Carlson just says it outright. The right is pushing a line that it’s ok to shoot protesters.

Brendan Karet

@bad_takes

Tucker Carlson: "How shocked are we that 17 year olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?"

---

nikki mccann ramírez

@NikkiMcR

Tucker Carlson says that they don't have "more details" about the killings in Kenosha other than that the shooter was 17, killed two people, and possibly acted in self-defense, he then goes on to blame Kenosha leaders and protesters.

---

Once again a Fox host, this time Martha MacCallum, frames the Kenosha shooters a someone "protecting their business" throughout the segment neither Martha nor The Daily Caller reporter has mentioned that the shooter was from out of state and involved with a militia.

===

Kenosha rittenhouse kyle

Explore more

Killer Kyle Kries: I Just Wanna Move On With Life!

Killer Kyle Rittenhouse's Really Bad Day

How Killer Kyle Got His Grift Back

Killer Kyle Cancelled From Yet Another Event

Killer Kyle's Grift Will Go On - Thanks To The Government

Killer Kyle: Cosplay Is Exhausting!

Say Their Names: 26 People Killed in the George Floyd Riots

23. Joseph Rosenbaum

'I Just Killed Someone': How the Kenosha Shooting Unfolded

What We Know About the Victims — Aside From Their Rap Sheets

What's True — and False — About the Victims' Criminal Histories

The Victims' Criminal Past 'Have No Bearing on Them Being Shot'

Sources

Updates

By Jessica Lee

“Kyle Rittenhouse for Congress”

DHS officials were told to speak positively about the 17-year-old vigilante gunman who allegedly killed two people during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin

Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse's Mom receives standing ovation at GOP event in Wisconsin

Violent Pro-Trump Militias

Related

Armed Vigilantes Antagonizing Protesters Have Received a Warm Reception From Police

A Surge of Far-Right Extremism

Related

Trump Supporters Rush to Defend One of Their Own Who Killed Protesters in Kenosha

Thin Blue Line Between Violent, Pro-Trump Militias and Police

Ryan Devereaux