Kyle Rittenhouse Trial

[Neo-Scholastic]

What are you doing, Neo?

What am I doing? Trying to keep an open mind and not rush to interpret the events of the trial according to any presummed narrative.

[The Architect Of Fate]

What am I doing? Trying to keep an open mind and not rush to interpret the events of the trial according to any presummed narrative.

Bullshit 

[The Grand Nudger]

What are you doing, Neo?

What am I doing? Trying to keep an open mind and not rush to interpret the events of the trial according to any presummed narrative.

Whether or not a white supremacist is a white supremacist has absofuckinglutely nothing to do with interpreting the events of this trial.

Personally, I think that the crypto nazi ship sailed years ago, but you go ahead and keep fucking that chicken, and tell us you're not fucking that chicken while you're at it.  That train is never late.

I think we've found your portion of that venn diagram I was mentioning earlier.

[dill]

There is that photo of R giving the white power sign with some proud boys.

 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kyle-ritten...ys-photos/

I don't make a lot of that, though. He is a confused kid, responding to praise from a right wing organization, not a member of that of any other WS organization, so far as I know. 

The answer to your question may depend on how you define "White supremacist." Doesn't look like he had much sympathy for black lives matter; but it's not clear that he has committed himself to any movement explicitly working for that goal.

I hope we aren't going to add the confused kid defense to the affluenza defense so that people under 18 can get away with whatever they want.

Well, the "confused kid" label just addresses the question of whether R is a white supremacist. He might be ripe for the plucking by WS groups now, but I don't think he belonged to one when he "ran to danger" that night in Kenosha.

So my label is no defense of his actions. He clearly has absorbed a narrative about riots and BLM and our 2A "rights" in which he wanted to become an actor, exercising his 2A rights to "protect property"--someone's, anyone's--over there in that other state. A developing militia fantasy, perhaps.

I am not happy that our current constructions of gun rights and self defense makes it likely that armed kids who rush to riots can be absolved of responsibility for any resulting deaths.

[The Grand Nudger]

If we were being incredibly generous, we might be able to say that he may not have known he was already a race soldier. That is the predictable effect of white supremacist propaganda, after all.

I mean, the last time I picked up a rifle and patrolled the others streets there was no such confusion as to whether or not I was..in fact, a combatant...but okay. Down the rabbit hole we go. That would still be demonstrative of the power of white supremacy..as we have here a kid interested in law enforcement and what he did, at least to him....For Reasons™...looked like that. Aren't exactly alot of brown juveniles running around who imagine their path to a sheriffs badge involves patrolling the streets with a gun, let alone shooting white people..as another poster so helpfully pointed out.

That's a quick ticket to old sparky. If you even made it off the street where it happened alive, ofc.

[dill]

When people say white supremisist, I immediately think of David Duke and the neo-Nazis that marched in Skokie way back when. Those types are not shy about their beliefs.

I see two ways of viewing the term:

1. Common usage--David Duke, the Klan, neo-Nazis: people who organize and work for white dominance.

2. From perspectives like those of Critical Race Theory, which view white supremacism as more or less built into institutions and implicit, usually unstated and even unrecognized assumptions that white dominance of politics and culture is normal, "natural."  E.g., no problem if a white kid walks around a riot with a long gun. Doubtful the same holds for a black kid, or even a white kid sporting BLM slogans on his/her jacket. That scenario can unfold because of an unrecognized assumption of white dominance.

In this case, 2A and white supremacist groups recognize the significance of R's case for their cause, and that's why they are out there defending him, making him a cause celebre. It's not because he had prior connections to them. 

The kid will now have to consciously choose to associate or disassociate.

[The Grand Nudger]

Choose again, you must mean. He chose to be there that night, he chose to be there in the capacity of a combatant, he chose to shoot those people, he chose to flash white power signs with his nazi pals at a bar afterward. He chose to whine like a little bitch about how persecuted he was on the stand.

That's a pattern of behavior. I'm not exactly confident that he'll suddenly make some other and different choice. I like to hold out hope that people can fall away from this stuff..but most of them aren't neck deep in the shit like he is. Most of them aren't saddled with this kind of garbage, to have to walk back, if they ever hope to be well adjusted and productive members of our society..even in their own minds. In fact, should he walk, I expect him to go full zimmerman.

We'll see him again.

[Neo-Scholastic]

From your perspective, how does a conviction of Rittenhouse advance the state of race relations in America?

[dill]

Choose again, you mean.

Well, choose publicly, for sure.  

It is possible that this summer lifeguard thought himself, along similar lines and with encouragement for older friends and social media,
to be a "property guard," helping a nearby community.  

But if you are noting there had to be an underlying, even if unconscious, urge to go that militia and WS direction, and that was already
guiding his choices to buy a "cool" gun and bring it to a riot to defend property of someone he didn't know, then yes, I'd agree--he'd be "choosing again."

I also agree with you that, given the kind of social/emotional support he will continue to receive now, it is likely he will only go further
right, perhaps more actively, speaking on Right Wing news shows, asked for reliably 2A commentary, etc.

There might be social costs that lead him to eventually turn away from militia-WS support, but not in the short run.

[The Grand Nudger]

Not sure who that's aimed at....but in my perspective, it doesn't. You convict a murderer because he's a murderer, not because it moves the racial chains, and even when it might move them backwards. Otherwise, that's the go to defense for every lynching.

"Sure, your honor..ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client killed those people..but do you want there to be race riots? "- in the tone of a grinning skull.

@dill
Yeah, that's the worst part of it. I'm honestly not worried about the marginalized likes of the david dukes of the world. I'm worried about child soldiers in a race war they may not understand..regardless of whether that's an accurate description of the individual in question (which I strongly suspect it isn't). I have some experience with that kind of kid which colors my views. It's a shame when you gun them down and it always feels like shit..but...honestly and practically, that's the only way it ends...as they keep insisting. That's sort of the point. To force civil society into a position that strengthens their agit-prop bullshit...and, not for nothing, to the detriment not just of the hated other, but to themselves and anyone who associates with them.

They keep this shit up and there's gonna be regular uav strikes on american soil, and all that this entails. As systemically racist as our institutions may be, they'll never not protect their own authority, and specifically their claim to monopoly on justified violence here and abroad. Rahowa is a fantasy, the reality will be the clinical execution of insurgents with whatever appetite we have for collateral damage, which can be immense.