Kyle Rittenhouse abruptly departed the stage during an appearance at the University of Memphis on Wednesday, after he was confronted about comments made by Turning Point USA founder and president Charlie Kirk.
Rittenhouse was invited by the college’s Turning Point USA chapter to speak at the campus. However, the event was met with backlash from a number of students who objected to Rittenhouse’s presence.
The 21-year-old gained notoriety in August 2020 when, at the age of 17, he shot and killed two men—Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, as well as injuring 26-year-old Gaige Grosskreutz—at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
He said the three shootings, carried out with a semi-automatic AR-15-style firearm, were in self-defense. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest where the shootings took place was held after Jacob Blake, a Black man, was left paralyzed from the waist down after he was shot by a white police officer.
I’ll repeat what I said, I empathize with people. They are not just their utility. He is not famous for his speaking skills, but TPUSA are clearly trying to capitalize on them, whatever not my problem. Anyone who paid to see him knew what they were getting
You’re empathising with the same thing the audience went to see - the extreme right’s posterchild for killing your political opponents. The analysis is super-straightforward and backed by studies - this is simply ignorant hate, fear, and disgust stoked by the likes of TPUSA. The fact that you can’t progress to synthesising straightforward conclusions is a massive red flag.
I will empathize with everyone. It’s not an optional thing for me.
You’re very empathetic - that’s entirely unremarkable. One can empathise with Hitler - but only a mentally deficient or monstrous person would stop at empathy and be incapable of synthesising conclusions like he was a bad guy that did bad things. It’s like reading without comprehending.
Why can’t you advance past the insistence you empathise with Rittenhouse toward an opinion? Are you deficient or dodging?
What is there to have an opinion on? He’s socially awkward? I said that. What more is there to draw from this? Also remember insults and uncivil behavior are not allowed
Here’s mine.
Travelling interstate to put yourself in a position to shoot 3 people, killing two of them is incredibly stupid at best. Proceeding from that to a job for a transparently dishonest media org that has hired you primarily to celebrate your killings demonstrates a total lack of remorse, and incites similar politically motivated killings in what amounts to pretty clear-cut stochastic terrorism. If we take him at his word, he’s done no research into the media company that hired him, and has been on stage at events where openly racist nonsense has been celebrated without him noticing - if this is true, he’s deficient enough that he should be in assisted living. The reasonable conclusion is that he’s some degree of comfortable with the racism.
So we have a remorseless killer, stochastic terrorist, propagandist (or useful idiot) that doesn’t care about or actively embraces racism.
It has been several years, and he did cry a lot when it happened, but I’m not sure remorse is necessary if it was in self-defense. I’m also not sure what other opportunities he has.
Nobody tries to find problems with the hand that feeds them. Honestly, with everything said about people like Dennis Prager and TPUSA, from his perspective he can just think “leftists hate and lie about them like they hated and lied about me”.
He’s not new to the circuit, and he cried when it looked like he might wind up in prison. None of this is remorse.
True - though I’d say it seems common. Either way, crossing state lines to procure a firearm to take to that protest to create the pretext to shoot people was not self-defence. That’s premeditated.
I won’t be losing any sleep over someone having some extra difficulty finding employment after getting away with what he did. There’s no shortage of people that support him - finding a job that doesn’t involve bragging about killing 2 people isn’t a big ask.
This simply isn’t true. I’ve turned down lucrative job offers (e.g. 70%+ more than what I was on at the time plus significant chunks of equity and benefits) because I had concerns about the ethics of the prospective employers. I’ve also spoken out about issues with my employers that have cost me multiple jobs (and chasing me out rather than listening buried at least one of those businesses). I don’t hold others to standards I don’t uphold myself.
I’m not going to make excuses for him dismissing the endless, quantified criticism of a transparently dishonest, racist propaganda outfit and the parade of absolute scumbags he chose to work alongside.