The United States experienced civil unrest in 2020 like nothing we have seen since mid-1960s, when militant elements from the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-War Movement created a storm of violence that bordered on insurrection at campuses and on streets. There is more to these two periods than meets the eye. Social unrest, which was rooted in real and imagined grievances, led to street protests in both instances. Both cases saw a fringe group of violent extremists trying to cause havoc and bring law enforcement into conflict with the protestors. If you’ve studied communist National Liberation Movements and Maoist revolutionary doctrine, this is not a shock. The concept is quite simple. Send your men to an actual protest. You commit arson. You loot stores. Join the most hateful elements. Provoke confrontations by attacking cops. In a perfect world, there would be a few civilians on the ground, then the next demonstration crowds of protestors might grow bigger and more angry. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Although we had been assured by many that protests were peaceful, the evidence was not strong. Nearly all the Black Lives Matter demonstrators showed up. Businesses were set on fire and looted. When the pudgy hormone-befuddled Antifa “black bloc” types showed up, the violence was even more extreme.
The majority of violent demonstrations were held in Democrat-dominated areas in Democrat-dominated countries. Civil power looked on in agreement as mayhem and riot became the norm. An acquaintance who has studied the Mexican drug cartels’ supplanting civil authority in Mexico pointed out that there were ominous parallels.
1) The state enters into tacit alliance with, or acquiesces to, a criminal enterprise.
2) The state vacates the security space versus the criminal enterprise.
3) Bereft of the protection of the state — no police, no prosecutions, no military — the citizenry arms and defends itself.
4) If the citizenry is unsuccessful at defending itself, the state stays silent.
5) If the citizenry is successful at defending itself, the state intervenes to crush it.
6) The criminal enterprise resumes operations.
If you’re keeping track, Kyle Rittenhouse exercising the right of self-defense on August 25, 2020, falls squarely on 3) in the progression. It was an unexpected outcome that 5 saw his acquittal. Our elites are making self-defense an exclusive right for the wealthy. Barbara McQuade contributed this essay. She’s a far-left lawyer who shamelessly peddled the Russia Hoax and, at least in her online persona, strikes one as a bit of a lackwit. That doesn’t mean other highly placed lackwits don’t read her and quote her; they do. It is a good idea to be attentive when she publishes an article entitled The Kyle Rittenhouse Verdict: Make Us Less Safe.
Now, cynical politicians are going to use the verdict to divide our nation. These politicians will disregard the narrow jurors’ view of cases and declare this verdict as a message to society to embrace vigilante justice. This case will be used by political opportunists to promote their political agendas. To promote the irresponsible and reckless use of assault weapons, they will point to this case. We are less secure when those without any law enforcement experience, training or oversight feel free to make their own laws.
The larger battle is one for another. There is an additional struggle that may be triggered if the Biden group, progressive Democrats and other neutered law enforcement agencies continue their coddling and support for violent street protests.
It is clear that everybody realizes that the riots of August 25, 2020 (and definitely those following November 19, 2021) will not be the exact same. Via Politico:
While the Kyle Rittenhouse Case was not directly about race but exposed the inequalities and flaws of the judiciary system. Legal scholars claim that it did more than just change the race of protestors.
Rittenhouse’s acquittal, scholars say, sends a signal to those who want to take up arms to defend property or attend politically or racially charged events: There is legal ground for you to use your weapon. Fear is not a valid defense.
These protections, though they are likely to be extended to some people, will not apply to all.
“I don’t have to tell you this, there is no set of circumstances, no reading of the law, no rendering of the imagination, in which a Black person could get away with this,” said Cornell William Brooks, former president and CEO of the NAACP, who now teaches at Harvard University.
It’s half-correct, half-baked.
The government will continue to support Antifa and BLM rioters as more and more citizens take action to protect their property, and to use firearms. It is right. Citizens must take the lead if government or law enforcement fail to meet their obligations. The half-baked part of this is that it does not change the “culture of protest.” If you are in a public space protesting, armed citizenry on private property presents no threat to your right to protest. The limits on your right to pillage and arson might make it a little more difficult. Cornell Brooks argues that Blacks do not have the right to self defense and provides no proof to support it.
The larger point is that rule changes that cause rioters to die can change a protest culture. This is easy to prove.
The New York Times presents To Paramilitary Grups, Rittenhouse Verdict means Vindication.
In 2020, this strain of armed vigilantism was reactivated by the struggles of mostly Democratic state and local governments and law enforcement in responding to rioting and prolonged unrest in several major cities after Mr. Floyd’s death. This was encouraged and supported by Republican politicians as well as conservative media.
“I’m really concerned about the gun fetish, and those who really buy into the ‘good guy with a gun’ scenario,” Anthony Kennedy, an alderman in Kenosha, said after the verdict. “Those people who see the breakdown of society, think they need to be armed — this just validates their worldview. And that’s bad for all of us.”
Mr. Rittenhouse’s trial was an important test of how the legal system would address one of the signature developments that emerged amid the violent fracturing of American politics in 2020: the presence of armed counterprotesters at racial justice demonstrations, both peaceful and otherwise. Some armed individuals and groups were hostile to and openly opposed in some instances to demonstrators. They were sometimes portrayed as volunteers for security in government or private buildings or as peacekeepers. However, demonstrators rarely accepted them as such.
This is what these clowns defend, just for context.
The Daily Beast hit the same angle with a typical Daily Beast headline that shows the writer doesn’t understand very much of anything…including cause and effect. Kyle Rittenhouse Has Just Tried to Kill Our Right To Peacefully Protest.
Through Stand Your Ground Laws, Castle Laws and the like, they’ve worked to transform us from a responsible citizenry where people retreated or avoided these situations when at all possible to a country where as long as you’re white, there’s no culpability as long as you can claim to have had an iota of an inkling that perhaps someone might have harmed you had you not shot them first. Donald Trump and 1,000 baby Trumps, right-wing media have completed the NRA’s job. And so we’re here.
And the signal this trial sends—much like the trial of George Zimmerman and those of numerous cops who shot first and asked questions later in recent years including the shooting of Jacob Blake seven times in the back, which led to the protest where Rittenhouse decided his presence was necessary—is that lives matter. White lives are important.
We’ve now lost our guaranteed First Amendment right to peacefully assemble to a half-cocked, cocaine-cowboy version of the Second Amendment. Mix that together with a witch’s brew of right-wing propaganda and white power, and the result is that any time you march for your rights you have to accept that any dimestore Kyle Rittenhouse can point a weapon of war at you and pull the trigger.
As in the previous quotes, this is the exact same message. He views burning cities as an acceptable protest method and worries that armied citizens will stop street thugs from burning and robbery. Again, no one’s right to peacefully assemble and protest is constrained, but the ante is raised if you decide to riot.
These developments do not go unnoticed by the Antifa dimmers. Andy Ngo helped to collect some of this better stuff.
#Antifa accounts in Portland & beyond are terrified over the #Rittenhouse acquittal because they’re afraid others will shoot them dead during an attack & have a legal argument for self-defense. So they are urging their comrades get guns as soon as possible so that they can kill without being shot. pic.twitter.com/H7dz2Bm1rc
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) November 23, 2021
According to my view, Rittenhouse’s verdict could completely alter the cost-benefit analysis of the business model used by the Democrat-Rioter Complex. People, especially businessmen, will learn the law of self defense and be able to use it when there is rioting again within three or four more months. People will be more likely to show up at political rallies with guns. If the Supreme Court does the right thing and demolishes New York’s fascist gun control law (see New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen), I know I will be armed at any political rally I attend.
Antifa, along with the other thugs who follow any BLM demonstration, will need to make a decision about whether looting is worth it. They will also have to weigh the benefits and risks of arming. I suspect that the pathetic creatures that trick themselves out in “black bloc” gear will elect not to arm because ultimately, they rely upon the police they claim to hate to avoid ass-whippings.
Governments that allow and promote this kind of nonsense like Portland or Seattle will have to choose whether they prefer law and order to be administered by their police departments, or by citizens armed with guns.
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