“The rhetoric that I’ve seen from elected officials, from media personalities, especially when it talks about things like urban crime is practically indistinguishable from what I’m seeing from white nationalists talking about the same subject,” he said. Rittenhouse’s appearance comes as the GOP and rightwing media have increasingly embraced rhetoric previously confined to fringe extremist groups, Piggott said, sparking fear and potentially increasing violence. “We are an inclusive and welcoming community and we join with so many others in voicing our dismay over such an insensitive and patently offensive event.” “Make no mistake, this unfortunate, distasteful and insensitive event was in no way supported by the City of Idaho Falls,” Casper said. Rebecca Casper, the mayor of Idaho Falls, said Rittenhouse “does not represent the majority of the people in Idaho Falls”.
“He was the guy who attacked me with a skateboard and I was forced to defend my life from him.” “I’m being sued by the estate of Anthony Huber,” Rittenhouse said. He complained that he was facing two lawsuits, one from the family of one of the men he killed and another from Grosskreutz. Rittenhouse addressed the crowd in Bonneville county, where he said stricter gun control laws would not “lower the unfortunate school shootings”. “For a GOP to not only host and organize a fundraiser with him, and a shooting range event, call that event Trigger Time, I think really is the very epitome of glorifying political violence.” “Elected officials and media personalities should really be denouncing political violence, not embracing it,” Piggott said. The embrace and lauding of someone like Rittenhouse is dangerous, said Stephen Piggott, a researcher at Western States Center who focuses on white nationalist, paramilitary and anti-democracy groups. The now 20-year-old Rittenhouse, who told the crowd in Idaho that the government was seeking to “take our guns” and “take the rest of our freedoms”, has become a darling of the far right since the shooting, appearing on Fox News and other rightwing media. He was found not guilty of homicide in November 2021. In a speech to the Bonneville county Republicans, Rittenhouse complained that he faces “ridicule on a daily basis” since he killed Rosenbaum and Huber. Rittenhouse joined other armed men acting as a self-described militia and roamed the city, before killing Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and wounding Gaige Grosskreutz, 27. Black Lives Matter protests had been taking place in the city after Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man, was shot seven times in the back by a white police officer, leaving Blake partially paralyzed. Rittenhouse was 17 years old when he traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin, from his home in Illinois, armed with an assault-style rifle, in August 2020.
The event, amid a prolonged spate of mass shootings – many conducted with AR-15s – suggests a further embrace by Republicans of the most extreme elements of the gun lobby in the US, despite polls showing a majority of Americans, across party affiliation, supporting some gun control laws.
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