Last week, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse was arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of two protesters and the maiming of a third on the night of Aug. 25 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Responses by local law enforcement and militia groups illustrate the disastrous assumptions that made this incident all but inevitable.
Ryan Balch, a 31-year-old Wisconsin man who joined Kyle Rittenhouse and a contingent of militia conducting armed patrols in Kenosha, used his social media accounts to link to a Nazi propaganda video, amplified white nationalist Richard Spencer, and uploaded symbols associated with the so-called boogaloo movement, Hatewatch determined.
In his 2018 book How Fascism Works, Jason Stanley details how the propagandistic cult of personality surrounding President Trump is reminiscent of fascist movements from history.
White people more than twice as likely as Black counterparts to be granted parole in June
In December 2018, a man named Rinaldo Nazzaro purchased 30 acres of remote land in Republic, Washington, a city of roughly 1,000 people about an hour’s drive south of the Canadian border. The tract was meant to serve as a training ground for a terroristic white power group he founded earlier that year called The Base.
Amid mounting protests against the death of George Floyd and other unarmed black Americans, President Trump took to Twitter early May 29, calling protesters “thugs” and warning, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
