Kyle Rittenhouse texts pledging to ‘murder’ shoplifters disillusion his ex-spokesperson

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 716 points – Kyle Rittenhouse texts pledging to ‘murder’ shoplifters disillusion his ex-spokesperson
theguardian.com

‘I believed things he told me that I now understand to be … lies,’ Dave Hancock says in new Rittenhouse documentary

A former spokesperson for Kyle Rittenhouse says he became disillusioned with his ex-client after learning that he had sent text messages pledging to “fucking murder” shoplifters outside a Chicago pharmacy before later shooting two people to death during racial justice protests in Wisconsin in 2020.

Dave Hancock made that remark about Rittenhouse – for whom he also worked as a security guard – on a Law & Crime documentary that premiered on Friday. The show explored the unsuccessful criminal prosecution of Rittenhouse, who killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

As Hancock told it on The Trials of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 90-minute film’s main subject had “a history of things he was doing prior to [the double slaying], specifically patrolling the street for months with guns and borrowing people’s security uniforms, doing whatever he could to try to get into some kind of a fight”.

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Are "racial justice protests" synonymous with looting and destruction of property?

Imagine bootlicking so much for private property and capitalists that you think it is more sacred than people's lives. Let alome that you think racism is fake or that the atrocities that people of color went through isn't such a big deal.

Oh fuck off with the bootlicking bullshit. Such a tired argument and does not apply to my comment or me.

Yes it does. Lives matter more than objects, that's some crazy basic truth people understand past being a toddler.

Hmm. Just how old are you anyway?

People who (at best) don’t care about the reason for the protest, or (at worst) actively turn a peaceful protest into something chaotic and violent, will take advantage of situations when they present themselves - just like Rittenhouse did.

Now I wanted to say something about the fact that we have lived over these last two or three summers with agony and we have seen our cities going up in flames. And I would be the first to say that I am still committed to militant, powerful, massive, non­-violence as the most potent weapon in grappling with the problem from a direct action point of view. I'm absolutely convinced that a riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt. And I feel that we must always work with an effective, powerful weapon and method that brings about tangible results. But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., speech at Grosse Point High School in 1968

https://www.gphistorical.org/mlk/mlkspeech/