Rittenhouse trial highlights the worst nature of American culture war

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
123
1917

One of the problems with seeing everything through an identity politics lens is that you tend to miss a lot.

That was the mainstream coverage of the Rittenhouse trial.

The mainstream media narrative drenched this story in woke dogma and made this kid a poster boy for the gun nutter right.

Sure, it’s problematic that the Police didn’t arrest him straight away, but beside that, I think it’s astonishingly lazy thinking to simply make this about racism.

The people he shot were all white. One of them was a child molester, the other a domestic violence abuser. He was there in the night offering medical help to protestors and protecting businesses after spending the day cleaning graffiti off the school. He was confronted by people with guns and weapons who attacked him.

He was always going to get off these charges because it was always self defense.

Former Wall Street Journal and New York Times columnist Bari Weiss is devastating in her criticism…

Here is what I thought was true about Kyle Rittenhouse during the last days of August 2020 based on mainstream media accounts: The 17-year-old was a racist vigilante. I thought he drove across state lines, to Kenosha, Wisc., with an illegally acquired semi-automatic rifle to a town to which he had no connection. I thought he went there because he knew there were Black Lives Matter protests and he wanted to start a fight. And I thought that by the end of the evening of August 25, 2020, he had done just that, killing two peaceful protestors and injuring a third.

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It turns out that account was mostly wrong.

Unless you’re a regular reader of independent reporting — Jacob Siegel of Tablet Magazine and Jesse Singal stand out for being ahead of the pack (and pilloried, like clockwork, for not going along with the herd) — you would have been served a pack of lies about what happened during those terrible days in Kenosha. And you would have been shocked over the past two weeks as the trial unfolded in Wisconsin as every core claim was undermined by the evidence of what actually happened that night.

This wasn’t a disinformation campaign waged by Reddit trolls or anonymous Twitter accounts. It was one pushed by the mainstream media and sitting members of Congress for the sake of an expedient political narrative—a narrative that asked people to believe, among other unrealities, that blocks of burning buildings somehow constituted peaceful protests.

…The hollowness of the woke character assassination against Rittenhouse has enabled the Right to champion his actions and make him a poster child for gun rights.

The issue isn’t the heteronormative white cis male toxic masculinity privilege of Rittenhouse, the danger is what happens when 17 year olds think the only option is taking to the streets with machine guns because the Police have walked away.

Drenching this story in woke dogma serves no insight or even oversight.

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123 COMMENTS

  1. Absolutely spot on.

    Sadly in the last decade in particular the big business media are ‘for hire’ news who have pushed together a cheap woke force who don’t seem to bother with investigation of facts anymore and often on gig contracts.

    The media make money from the click bait – racism and emotional stories that are full of errors or omissions are wonderful fodder for their agenda and very cheap to produce.

    But increasingly they are dividing democratic countries and helped create the propaganda war, as other entities start to emulate their approaches.

    • yea save, but the main clickbaiters are on the right, so yea the woke theory doesn’t really hold water does it?

      the MSM is anodyne, status quo supporting, unchallenging, drivel…but the right is where the big bucks are for the ‘disrupters’ and snake oil shills, so if anyone is dividing democracies it’s the right-whingers

      • Those wanting to string up the teenager are woke, not right wingers. It/s the right wingers supporting the teenager not wanting him in prison, I would imagine.

          • Ditto, I think we can agree that right wingers are behind much of this, but it is clear that they use the woke to do their dirty work.

            In addition don’t forget all the state sponsored terrorism in this space aka Russia, China, Israel, comes to mind to influence elections which is increasingly in the cyberspace to disrupt democracy or to unduly influence other countries policy, but becoming common in other countries.

            Like nuclear weapon proliferation, world agreements should ban state sponsored cyber terrorism and influence and instead encourage all the countries of the world (even if they don’t like each other much), to at least agree to preserve the planets environment in terms of air, land pollution, forests, ocean pollution and resist the private interests to control and destroy everything for the sake of our children.

  2. Also doesn’t help if Biden then calls the teenager a white supremacist.

    This is also why democrats are contributing to the race war and dividing the US just as much as Trump but in a woke, globalist agenda.

    Classic woke echo chambers in operations.

  3. This is an underwhelming argument–even unpleasant, provocative nuisances with a record, do not deserve death by gunfire as a response.

    The United States of America is one fucked up country when a teenager can easily roam the streets with a semi auto and use it with ultimate impunity. There are literally more guns than people resident in the US. If Rittenhouse had been black, even in identical circumstances, he would most likely not have made it back to the cop shop alive, or been given bottled water by cops earlier on.

    Hopefully the little shit will get his comeuppance at some stage.

    • The point is not whether he was a little shit, but was he acting lawfully?

      And in the US you are allowed to have semi auto weapons.

      And you are allowed the right to self defence.

      If you don’t like the law you change it (good luck in the US) not racially attack a teenagers who are allowed under their laws, to both carry the weapon and use it in self defence.

      In NZ we have gone the other direction and now woke are up in arms and people are allowed to come to NZ, continually offend, and they pay for 2 armed SIS agents to follow terrorists around before shooting them (but they get to knife 7 people and take up millions of dollars in resources that deprive poor NZ’ers of funding and support, because the woke are obsessed with protecting criminal rights.

      (Meanwhile everyone else rights and safety is compromised, and bear the brunt of each civil liberty law change to remove rights from law abiding people).

      Now police carry guns in South Auckland and there are shootings weekly in NZ from criminals. Don’t think their law changes and woke thinking is working well for the public! NZ way is to criminalise the law abiding and make exceptions and more funding for the criminals.

      Nobody is a winner here.

        • nice, nothing like mutual admiration and a good back scratch aay…“Save” is an expert at novella length comments

          • Yes my apologies to the woke brigade that think everything is solved in a short tweet and have no awareness of complexity.

          • TM A bit sour for you. SNZ does keep discussion going and questions flying looking for answers. So many people in their armchairs sucking their thumbs and cradling their comfort gadgets.

          • The problem with people like savenz is they have their head so far up their own arse they can’t see anything from their ivory tower. Just one boring cliche after another.

      • he wasn’t allowed to buy said weapon and crossed state lines to join a fight that wasn’t his, looking for trouble..and shot 1 guy before he was under threat….and the victims had no right to defend themselves from a shooter by trying to remove his weapon

        …I suppose

    • All three people killed threatened to kill him, one whilst pointing his gun at him and another while trying to get his gun off him.
      He shouldn’t have been there with a gun, but the world is a better place without all three of the people he killed.

    • As usual, Tiger Mountain, you are right on the money.
      USA is a fucked up country and their gun culture is obscene.

  4. The US has a brand of insanity firmly entrenched. The idea that a 17-year-old boy is able to access an automatic rifle, drive to another town, walk past law enforcement offices carrying the rifle is foreign to most of the civilised world. Then after killing two and injuring another he is able to walk free and seemingly benefit from his actions is further indicating a country where insanity is the norm.

    • It wasn’t an “automatic rifle” and he didn’t “travel to another town”. He lived in a suburb of Kenosha with one parent which happened be just over the state border, and the other parent lived in Kenosha itself. His grandparents owned one of the shops he was defending. The rifle wasn’t carried over the border, not that matters because in a free society we have freedom of movement, not like the autocratic police state we have here at the moment.

      Get your facts right or don’t comment

        • Who needs to go there – we are soaking in it. We get USA news, on radio and on tv, we get their films, we get their form of economic hegemony etc Shane Jones went to Harvard, so we get their mindset and propaganda.
          Why bother to attend in person and add to climate change.

      • Absolutely correct, Rittenhouse worked & had Family in Kenosha & his Home address was 20 miles from the Border, which he crossed over everyday to his job as a Lifeguard in Kenosha! This was another falsehood perpetrated by the Liberal MSM, that he crossed “BORDERS” to commit this so called Crime of self defence, as if Americans are restricted from Travelling interstate in their own Nation? This is why Mainstream Media is dying, they are being paid millions to spout endless lies & US Govt propaganda to espouse whatever tripe they wish to mindfuck the general populace with?? Despite what you think of America’s ludicrous “Purge” Gun laws, this kid may have got off the murder charges, but the knowledge that he took the live’s of 3 people will be a millstone, around his neck for the rest of his life, if he has a conscience & that’s something that can’t be undone by any Judge & he’ll be forever looking over his shoulder for people who will come after him for revenge!

    • Well said Power man, it’s must be the long covid messing with their already stunted intelligence.
      Ignore Andrew the gun toting right wing nutjob cum freedom whinging know it all.

  5. Good, self defence is a right. If you attack a clearly armed individual, you do so knowing your weapons & skills, believing you will win. You leave the other person few options but to defend as strongly as they can.

    An attack may be as subtle as a light push to the chest or as obvious as a screaming maniac with a battle axe, however if at the end of it you are dead, you may in hindsight wish you had used your +2 magical sword to protect your life.

    You may say you should have stayed home & hid under your bed, but that is the same thinking that says women on the streets are responsible for their own rape.

    If you never attack anyone, you will never be killed in self defence. If you are killed whilst not acting in threatening or violent manner, you should expect your killer to be condemned for your murder.

      • Then they would be tried for murder as they initiated the attack. Had they overpowered him, he most likely would have been killed, hence his self defence was justified. Scum dead, he walks. If he’d died, the scum could rot in jail.

        • oh really what about if they claimed ‘standing your ground’ or does that only apply to flabby incel soyboys?

  6. He was always going to get off these charges because it was always self defense.

    By that reasoning the outcome would have been the same if he were a black man.

    Really?

      • If all three were black, chances are that it would never come to media attention.

        The point is, that race based second guessing and division needs to stop being political and there needs to be a one justice system for all races. (Obviously difficult, but the trials by media are not helping solve race relations in the US with the rest of the world, chipping in).

        Face it, US gun laws seem bonkers and US justice seem bonkers too. The police and justice systems and laws seem to be too politically influenced to provide justice so no wonder nobody thinks it’s fair anymore.

        Oh and people’s actions seem bonkers too!

        Vigilantee groups are a sign that police have not got neighbourhood safety under control – maybe like NZ, they are more interested in revenue gathering and communications than old fashioned policing communities effectively?

          • I’m talking about the 2 dead and the one who shot them, all white makes 3.

            Now imagine they were all black, would it be newsworthy – 1 black teenager shooting 2 black victims? I think it would not make international news.

    • urgh peoples obsession with race these days is sickening

      There was a different case going on at the sane time as RK involving a black dude who was also claiming self defense in a fatal shooting. He got cleared as well. Look it up.

      Sad things is cos the black guy getting off on a similar self defense charge doesnt fit the MSM woke agenda it was barely reported

  7. It didn’t help the lefties, protesting the 2 killed by Rittenhouse, when asked by reporters they thought the dead men (and one injured) were black!
    Now let’s see the CNN & MSNBC work out how to defend/excuse the black driver of the SVU who ploughed through the Christmas parade….I can sense the framing now, ‘he was upset at the Rittenhouse verdict’ or some other nonsense.

  8. Ghislane Maxwell Trial is about to start…why is the media ignoring this?? perhaps they (Media CEOs) are a bit worried about her testimony??

  9. Now that our borders are opening. Can we expect characters like this and also those anti vaxx nazi in Australia to travel here to infect widdle ole NZ with their ideology and violence and potential terrorism?

    With the EU going off again too it seems as though it’s pre covid times of violent upheaval across the world again.

    Is it really worth opening up the borders to these types of risks?

  10. To my mind two distinct points are made here. The media and gun control. The point Martyn makes about the media is relevant and can be just as lethal. A story like this can be manipulated by the media to highlight a particular agenda at the expense of the real story and the facts. It can potentially wrongfully sway public opinion and alongside that, the same potential to wrongfully convict. It can be corrupt and dangerous. We see it here in a lesser form every day with, for example the “woke raciest accusations” when any criticism of policies that involve Maori are aired. It doesn’t seem that important but has the power to change public opinion. All media has a massive responsibility to avoid these traps but it seems making a quick buck comes first. The US gun laws are insane. It’s in their DNA firmly entrenched with “the right to bare arms”. It’s a concept not understood by anyone but them. The most insane part is the type of weapon. Any normal thinking person would suggest that unless in the sporting environment, a pistol with restricted fire power would be ample for any self defence, even in the US. We can only wonder how a kid can wander around with an automatic weapon in public especially in a volatile situation.

  12. Well, there ya go then…?
    Cheers @ MB for pouring some bleach on the MSM bullshit.
    Their’s was a totally different spin. I’m quite shocked if I must be honest. I had Rittenhouse heading to a life sentence.

  13. The most salient thing to take from woke thinking is that there is strong belief that a teenage white boy should be in prison for the rest of his life because he defended himself against an attack from two other white people.

    The woke have spoken and have decided he is guilty of racism.

    So in Wokeland if a black teenager kills two white people defending himself but is found not guilty by jury, is the black teenager still a racist and should be in prison for the rest of his life and the jury got it wrong?

    I don’t even believe teenagers should be allowed to go to prison, they should be put in special youth facilities and rehabilitated, no matter what their race.

    (At the same time, am against NZ encouraging foreign teenagers to come to NZ on visas, too young, not working out in NZ as more and more of them can’t cope and destruct causing harm to others or themselves).

    • Teenage white boy not old enough to buy a beer appointed himself as sherriff’s marshal or vigilante He-Man or whatever fucked up fantasy evolved in his head and armed himself with an semi automatic assault (i.e. designed specifically to kill human beings) weapon. He then walked into a protest situation that had already periodically flared into riot to protect property.
      What did he expect to do if and when property was damaged. The weapon was only for show was it?
      People died.
      And idiots make that chain of decision-making into something to admire, turning the cretin into a hero.

  14. When we were kids we read cowboy comics and occasionally saw westerns. Shoot ’em ups. We fashioned guns out of bits of wood and sticks and if you were lucky you got a real one, a cowboy gun for Christmas and ran around shooting people.

    Research from the 1990s:
    Number of murders seen on TV by the time an average child finishes elementary school: 8,000
    Number of violent acts seen on TV by age 18: 200,000
    Since the ’90s there has been a proliferation of realistic violent video games.

    Apparently Rittenhouse was a high school dropout. There are no accounts of him being an academic or being bright. He was just an American kid growing up in a country of bizarre extremes, where shooting people is quite common, where trouble on the streets is not uncommon. When he got older, he did the logical thing, he took a gun to town. What’s the big deal?

  15. Some context:
    August 23rd, 2020 in Kenosha, a (white) policeman shoots Jacob Blake seven times

    August 25th, as protests erupted, Rittenhouse armed himself with the fully loaded semi automatic and joined a group of other armed men. A shot was fired by someone in that group. Joseph Rosenbaum, an unarmed local resident, then tried to take the gun off Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse shot him four times, killed him and ran away. Among those now chasing him was Anthony Huber. Trying to get the gun off Rittenhouse, Huber hit him with a skateboard. Rittenhouse shot him in the chest and killed him.

    • correct kheala but the rightards will still defend him because it gives the fat, slow, militia, soldierboy wannabe try-hards a licence to be vigilantes.

      ….and that’s important legal aspect to them…the right to…
      wullll i dun shot im cawse his eyes were too damn close t’gether.

      • So what’s the lesson here?- don’t do things that are violent or are perceived as violent. Stay away from violent individuals and let the law deal with them. As sooner or later that will happen. Don’t put yourself in a position where you are exposed to them.

        1 Corinthians 13

        13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

        4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

        8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

        13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

        Larry Norman – Without Love You Are Nothing (Righteous Rocker) 1972
        https://youtu.be/LxfHaX8oi4Y?t=2

  16. soyboy incel gets to walk it’s that simple, the rightard defenders will make him a posterboy and he’ll make numerous paid appearances where he bigs himself up rather than crying like a bitchboy as he did in court.

      • nope wrong again son just don’t care for murdering rightard SJWs to walk on a murders.
        but I am mighty happy that the 3 redneck killers who murdered a black jogger are going down, literally and metaphorically.

  17. Well I do not know all the circumstances, mitigating or not but I do believe it should have been a police matter not a vigilante/militia one. They already had the presence of the National Guard. He may have studied some Police academy courses but he was not a sworn in officer. There were riot conditions, destruction of personal property, and a heated violent atmosphere. It was no place for a young civilian to be toting an automatic rifle, and this is exactly what happens when young ( Or older fellows) take the law into their own hands. It complicates Police operations.

    The Police should have declined any civilian involvement from the start. The onus of law enforcement should have rested on them and them alone. And that despite the USA’s gun laws and issues of self defense. That young man went out heavily armed into a volatile situation. When one considers the huge amounts of mass murders in the USA caused by AR15’s and similar, one can indeed say he was heavily armed.

    That young chap should have been securely tucked away at his relatives home well clear of the mayhem. Property’s can be rebuilt and are usually insured. The death of a human being can never be repaired. Despite what judgement we like to put on them for what they may or may not have done. This is why we have law enforcement, a judicial system and as an ideal,… equal rights before that law.

    Personally? The way I see it,? – America should divide their firearms into 3 groupings,…. for self defense, nothing stronger than a short range glock type pistol with a ‘license to carry’, – and only then after passing an approved Police firearms course.

    A hunting license approved for hunting purposes involving large caliber rifles and shotguns and/or also a pistol for both dispatching large downed prey or for those tramping/camping and being stalked by a bear or cougar, personal self defense. (Despite bear spray, a large caliber pistol is sometimes preferred). Again these to be required only after attending a Police approved firearms course.

    Thirdly, a collectors license for those wishing to own and operate special weaponry such as automatic military grade weapons or historical firearms ie military grade M1 Garand assault rifles. Again only after attending a Police approved firearms course with a special category regards military grade weapons with a stipulation that these must be only used on private property or within the confines of a registered firearms club.

    Black powder is a special category also, which after attending an approved Police firearms course would come under a special category of historical firearms , the difference being they do not have the rapid firing capacity as the military grade M1 Garand thus cannot be used in mass shootings.

    The logic of this is simple, – if you cannot bag your deer with one maybe two ( if you are so lucky ) well placed shots, you need to back to the gun club and do more practice. Military grade weapons are designed to kill human beings, not game. They are smaller caliber, usually rapid fire to ‘spray’ an area and by and large will not bring down Elk or Bear. They are designed to suppress, to incapacitate as much as to kill. By contrast, a conscientious hunter always aims to take their game with as little pain and suffering to the animal as possible. Essentially, good shot placement as opposed to wild automatic coverage.

    The civilian using firearms for immediate personal self defense need not have either military grade weaponry or large bore hunting caliber firearms. A short range pistol will easily incapacitate and kill a fellow human being. If that civilian is caught up on the periphery of criminal activity, and feels threatened, then its an issue for the law.

    In my view, the NRA, has perverted the ‘right to bear arms’ into a self serving exercise. If one reads the ‘right to bear arms’,… one soon discerns the historical context. That being of a fledgling society that had wished to escape the oppression of the various monarchy’s of Europe. They did not wish to replicate and revert to European domination after their hard won gains during the War of Independence. And that was a fair call. Essentially it reads ( 2nd Amendment) that the people have a right to resist and displace a tyrannical, despotic govt. However the qualifier was a ‘FLEDGLING’ society. The USA is now a mature society. They now have an organized military and state Police forces. And yet the right to resist , that being of the right to depose a tyrannical and despotic govt,…is still counted among being paramount. A worthy set of values when compared to Hitlers maniacal 15 year tenure.

    So now,… as a mature nation, there are better,… yet perhaps more slow moving ways, – without the use of direct force and bloodshed, – to change that govt. I have every confidence in the United States of America. They are an amazing peoples of all sorts of ethnic demographics. Born of immigrants, …their good values and their atrocities,… by and large have not been hidden from the world. But there is still much they need to do to fine tune some of their excesses. And I think they should start with the excessive ‘ Wild West’ mentality that belongs more to an era of lawlessness than todays lawful sophisticated superpower that they are.

      • Go back to the States if you don’t like how we do things here sonny and don’t judge me by your hawkish American standards as being a liberal either. Just because we here in NZ don’t agree with teenagers procuring automatic military grade weapons and blowing away multitudes in schools and public places doesn’t mean ‘ we’ don’t lack common sense. Its just a pity so many of your politicians in the USA seem to lack it.

        EH MATE.

  19. Kinda funny how our esteemed comrade get this mainstream critique on the money. Yet laps up the mainstream COVID narrative. Without irony?

      • Um, you are an idiot. Probably a 20 something one. Couldn’t give a shit but just here to see your own posts and smirk and laugh while not giving a fuck about the country you live in now because your parents brought you here despite the basement you lived in the state of Colorado.

        Are you lonely? Do you pine for the prom you missed and the date you missed out on with the all American girl you little fucker? Are you finding it hard to catch up with that first year grad student degree when your parents had had enough of the shit that passes as a civil society back in the states and moved to our fantastic country?

        My heart bleeds for you , you little punk. Come back in a few years when you get over your depression and can conduct a serious discussion among adults in a foreign land that do take local and national politics seriously you little worm.

  21. This is exactly the toxic masculinity that y’all woke beta peasants have been bitching about for decades and as soon as it they’ve got it, they don’t know what to do with it???? Dafuq!

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