Radly Balko’s analysis of the vigilante case down in Texas is a must read in its entirety. He knows his stuff. It’s vitally important to understand what’s really driving these people. It’s not good:
Incredibly, Tucker Carlson just had Kyle Rittenhouse on his show to discuss Perry’s conviction. The far right has been eager to draw parallels between Rittenhouse and Perry. And the two cases are similar, just not in the way they’re claiming. As Texas criminal defense attorney Mark Bennett has pointed out, when it comes to self-defense law, if we’re going to compare the two cases, the person in a posture most similar to Rittenhouse’s is Foster, not Perry.
Rittenhouse may have been reckless rush to the Kenosha protests with his rifle (and I believe he was), but doing so wasn’t illegal, and under state law, he should not have been charged. According to Rittenhouse — and a good deal of the evidence — the protesters in Kenosha mistook his lawful carrying of a rifle as an immediate threat, attacked him, and, as a result, he was justified in using lethal force in response.
Similarly, whatever you may think of Foster’s decision to bring a rifle to the Austin protest, it was perfectly legal. The fact that he and other protesters were in the street might have been a misdemeanor, but as Bennett notes, that isn’t relevant to Perry’s self-defense claim. It was Perry’s actions that presented an immediate threat, and it was Perry who then mistook Foster’s legal actions as a threat.
The only difference between the two is their respective politics and the fact that Rittenhouse was more reckless (he took his gun and rushed into a hostile protest, Foster was among supporters), and Rittenhouse killed his mistaken attackers before they could seriously harm him. Foster showed restraint — and was killed for it. Yet Rittenhouse is made into a hero, while Foster is turned into a villain.
It’s also notable that Abbott and others defending Perry seem to think there’s something inherently illegitimate about a BLM protester with a gun, but not the armed militia members who shut down a Michigan legislative session. We’ve also seen far right activists bring rifles to protest drag events, or while milling about outside of polling places, yet when a member of the Black Panthers stood outside a polling place with a club, it made headlines on Fox for weeks.
These are contradictions, but it isn’t quite correct say the right is being inconsistent. What they’re doing is perfectly consistent; it’s just that it has nothing to do with the Second Amendment or self-defense. The consistent theme running through all of these positions — defending Rittenhouse, smearing Foster, legalizing running down protesters, the Michigan capital protest — is the legitimization of violence and the threat of violence against their political opponents.
For all the degeneracy on the political right in the Trump era, this is what I find most alarming — the dehumanizing of political opponents to the point where violence isn’t merely justifiable, it’s almost a moral imperative. Their opponents aren’t just wrong, they’re criminal. People accused of crimes aren’t just presumed guilty, they deserve to be abused by police. Immigrants aren’t just crossing the border illegally, they’re mostly rapists and criminals. Protesters aren’t merely misguided, they should be flattened by big-ass trucks.
You only valorize Garrett Foster’s killer if you’ve convinced yourself that Foster deserved to die. And the only real evidence against Foster offered up by the right has been that was participating in a Black Lives Matter protest. So the math here isn’t difficult.
If Abbott and the Texas pardon board want free Perry and clear his record, they have the power to do it. But we ought to be clear about why they’re doing it. This isn’t about the rule of law. It’s the rule of ideology, enforced with violence.
As Charlie Sykes noted in his newsletter: “This is how a cold civil war becomes a hot one.”
I disagree about Rittenhouse. I think it is incredibly dangerous to allow people to attend political events armed with assault weapons. It literally makes no sense to me. And the kid obtained that gun illegally and went looking for trouble. Of course he should have been tried. But unlike these freaks in Texas, I accepted the verdict.
The defining characteristic of the right these days is a total unwillingness to admit that they might be wrong, that people might disagree with them or that they might lose. They simply won’t accept it. It’s a case of mass arrested development. They are spoiled children. Dangerous spoiled children with guns.