Kathleen Belew says Rittenhouse’s acquittal signals an approval for growing militant vigilantism against racial justice protesters
Kathleen Belew, a historian of American white power movements and author of Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, argues that the fact that Rittenhouse’s trial is being read as a victory by more mainstream components of the right has the potential to serve as a rallying cry for increased militant vigilantism against US racial justice protesters.
There have been many acquittals and partial verdicts that the white power movement and militant groups have taken as signs that they can continue their activities unabated. I’m thinking of the acquittals in the Greensboro trials at state, federal and civil levels, [when members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi party shot and killed five marchers in an anti-Klan rally organized by the Communist Workers party in 1979], the acquittals in the seditious conspiracy trial in 1987-88 [after an all-white jury acquitted 13 white supremacists who were charged with plotting to overthrow the US government and kill federal officials] and the partial prosecution of Timothy McVeigh after the Oklahoma City bombing, where we saw the conviction of just one of a few conspirators rather than a prosecution geared at a movement, which is what this was.
I think Kenosha is a much more significant moment. It’s not my place to second-guess our judicial system. I believe in the rule of law. I believe in jury trial. But we know from the historical record that every time there is an incident like this, it has set off renewed activity by the white power movement, often with imminent casualties. Kenosha has not just been watched by extremists, but by a whole bunch of people on the right. It is a moment that animates not only the fringe, which is what we’ve seen before, but also components of the mainstream.