What drives the progressives of the Rittenhouse case crazy: the citizen in arms defending property

22 November 20212 years ago babelfish

And so in the United States they acquitted a man for committing the crime? Judging by the headlines in the newspapers, but also by President Joe Biden himself, it would seem so.

The facts are these: last August 25, Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, in the midst of Kenosha of Black Lives Matter and Antifa 's protest against police violence (an African American, Jacob Blake, had been injured and left disabled, days before, as policemen), had taken to the streets with a rifle to defend local shopkeepers from any acts of vandalism. Rittenhouse was not from Kenosha, Wisconsin, but from Antioch, Illinois. However he was originally from Kenosha where he had work and maintained relationships with friends and relatives. Shops were regularly attacked during the protests. Attacked by left-wing militants, some of them armed, Rittenhouse defended himself by shooting. He killed two of his attackers, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and wounded a third, Gaige Grosskreutz. During the trial, the latter admitted that he aimed a gun at Rittenhouse before being shot and wounded in the arm.

The charge of illegal possession of the firearm was the first to fall, because in Wisconsin local law allows even a minor to have a firearm, as long as it is not a short barreled firearm. A law that may seem bizarre, but it is the law of that Midwestern state for now. The weapon was already in Kenosha and was legally detained. The accusation of having gone to Kenosha to look for trouble also fell during the trial, because Rittenhouse acted with the consent of the local community, although not of the city authorities (mayor and sheriff) who were against the patrols of voluntary vigilantes. He went to Kenosha a day before the bloody incident, so he did not deliberately dive into the chaos "hunting for prey". Eventually the Kenosha court acquitted Rittenhouse, now 18, of all five charges, including one willful and one manslaughter that could have led to him spending a lifetime in prison. Kyle therefore acted in self-defense: this is the fact recognized by the jury.

Yet, President Joe Biden himself says he is "indignant and worried", like "many Americans" about this verdict. Although, in his speech, he calls for calm and respect for the sentence, his choice of adjectives, his sharing of the feelings of "many Americans" is a political act and has cleared protests in all cities of the United States. We are already starting to count the damage.

The reaction of the Italian press was also incredible. The Republic headlined "USA, the nightmare of racism returns: Kenosha's kid-killer acquitted". If he was acquitted, it is precisely because he was not a killer. And it is not known what racism has to do with it, if an American of German origin kills two others of the same origin (Rosenbaum and Huber), both with criminal records and injures a third, also of German origin (Grosskreutz) who, for his own admission, he could have shot him. If in the demonstrations "against racism" white people with a criminal record in search of devastation participate and someone reacts in order not to be killed, where would the "nightmare of racism" return? By reflex, two online newspapers, Fanpage and Huffington Post , had written in the title that Rittenhouse had killed two African Americans. They corrected shortly after, but kept the point about the boy's guilt: he killed, but was acquitted. But even the largest and most "neutral" national newspapers, the largest and most prestigious, continue to implicitly hold Rittenhouse guilty even after evidence to the contrary: "Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed 2 anti-racist demonstrators in Kenosha, was acquitted" ( Corriere della Sera ), " He killed two people with a rifle during the racial protests in Kenosha: Kyle Rittenhouse acquitted "( RaiNews ). There is no way to understand otherwise: he is a killer, but he has been acquitted.

And here falls the mask: America is beautiful, as long as it ceases to be America. What scandalizes both intellectuals and Italian journalists, and a good piece of democratic American politics itself (Biden included) is in fact one of the distinctive features of the American Republic: being able to intervene, arms in hand, as private citizens, in defense of private property, against an attacker and in support of the police. Since 1789, when the US became a full-fledged state, the government has a tendential monopoly on violence. Tendency, but not absolute, contrary to Europe. The Second Amendment to the Constitution, introduced just two years later, guarantees citizens the freedom to possess and bear arms. Not only to defend against aggressors, but also, possibly, from the government itself, should this become tyrannical. This is the real stone of the scandal, for the American progressives and for the Europeans, addicted to the idea of an absolute sovereignty of the state.

The second reason for the scandal is more contingent: it is obviously the idea that the US is dominated by systemic racism. That is, that the institutions themselves are racist. Even in the Rittenhouse case, racism comes into play. And never mind that a German-American shooting is being judged (because this is it) in the course of vandalism: if these vandalism were committed in the name of anti-racism, then they become legitimate. And those who react, by not being killed or beaten in the name of anti-racism, are "in fact" racist. It doesn't matter that his innocence is proven, he is still "guilty". And this way of exercising justice, even if adopted by the progressives of the beginning of the 21st century, is exactly the lynching used by the racists of the beginning of the 20th century. Those who killed the black, or the Italian, even if acquitted, because the crowd had already found him guilty.

The post What drives progressives crazy in the Rittenhouse case: the citizen in arms who defends property appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/cosa-fa-impazzire-i-progressisti-del-caso-rittenhouse-il-cittadino-in-armi-che-difende-la-proprieta/ on Sun, 21 Nov 2021 03:55:00 +0000.