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 honestly feel bad for this kid. His parents are clearly unhinged, which caused him to end up thinking he needed to defend businesses in another state from rioters, and the right using him as a tool of propaganda along with the expectations that come with that cannot be healthy for the mind.
He’s clearly making a decent living from this, all because he murdered someone and got away with it. I feel much worse about the family of the dead, or people working minimum wage trying to get by. I feel just about zero sympathy for this kid. Sure, maybe he was raised in a bad position, but it was his choice to do what he did. Do you see many other people raised in bad situations doing what he did? That’s on him, not his parents.
I’m sure a significant number of people in his life told him how to do the right thing and he choose racially based violence and murdered people.
There is no reason to feel sorry for him. At best we understand how he got to be such a waste of oxygen and try to counter that.
I get what you’re saying. He was a kid and probably had a fucked up childhood that led to everything. It’s rare that people like that develop in a vacuum. But that’s an explanation of how he got here, not an excuse.
Now he’s an adult. There are definitely people on the right using him, but he made the decision to let them. He could have easily slunk into the shadows and gone on with his life. Instead, he felt the court acquittal wasn’t enough and had to continue to prove he was right for his actions on the public stage. That’s his choice and his alone.
He deserves the ridicule.
I get you on this. A lot of people really struggle to maintain empathy with people they may otherwise find despicable, but to me, increasing empathy in the world among and for literally everyone is a paramount goal. Take this example: A huge percentage of men who sexually assault children were sexually assaulted themselves as children. It’s easy to dehumanize someone in this situation, but the reality is they have been both a victimizer and a victim in their lives. People are way more complex than our present instant judgment-based society allows for.
All that said, all Kyle Rittenhouse has to do is shut his ugly goddamn mouth if he wants to stop getting lambasted by the public.