MSNBC Agitprop: 'Kyle Rittenhouse Trial Was Designed to Protect White Conservatives Who Kill'

Kyle Rittenhouse, who fatally shot two protesters and wounded a third during anti-police brutality demonstrations in Wisconsin last year, has been found not guilty of homicide — an outrageous yet unsurprising verdict in a trial marred by controversy.

Rittenhouse, who is white, was 17 when he traveled from his hometown in northeast Illinois to the protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year armed with his semi-automatic rifle. On the night of Aug. 25, 2020, as he carried his gun through the streets, Rittenhouse shot dead Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, now 27.

[...] The case had the makings of an acquittal before the trial even began. The outcome seemed clear even before an almost exclusively white jury pool was selected, even before Judge Bruce Schroeder created an uproar by ruling that the slain protesters could be referred to as “rioters” and “looters” but not “victims," even before Schroeder refused to punish Rittenhouse for what prosecutors said amounted to a violation of his bond conditions. Rittenhouse is a white teen who abides by white rules, and white people empathetic to those rules seemed poised to insulate him from repercussions.

The day he pleaded not guilty to felony homicide, Rittenhouse flashed a white supremacist symbol and was “loudly serenaded” by a group of men at a bar who belted out the anthem of the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group, according to prosecutors.

Conservatives are encouraging white vigilantes like Rittenhouse to police progressive spaces by all means. As one Slate article put it last year, "'Own the Libs' Is Gradually Morphing Into 'Kill the Libs.'"

The jury's decision was a dangerous endorsement of that vision.