Rittenhouse's appearance at a university generated hostility from a number of students but he remained positive, saying it had been "a great event."

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.

  • infamousta
    141·
    9 个月前

    I think that most critics of Kyle Rittenhouse don’t disagree with the carriage of justice as much as the disgusting capitalization of his person after the fact. And the entire rationalization for bringing a weapon to a protest is frankly sick, whether he used justified force or not.

    • Samueru@lemmy.world
      22·
      9 个月前

      I think that most critics of Kyle Rittenhouse don’t disagree with the carriage of justice

      This very thread is full of people saying that the judge was biased and lying with what actually happened.

      edit: look no further that people are comparing the trial to OJ Simpson kek.

      • infamousta
        3·
        9 个月前

        And those folks wouldn’t be commenting at all if he wasn’t paraded around like some “get away with murder” mascot. It was a massive and heinous childhood fuckup and he’s giving speeches at colleges now like he’s something one should aspire to be. Technicalities of the trial are not the real problem people have.

        • Samueru@lemmy.world
          11·
          9 个月前

          Bro all this crap started since day one, nothing is new here, all the parade and everything happened afterwards.

          I think this is some russian bot propaganda thing, because it can’t be that the same lies from day one are still being repeated over and over, including the one that kyle shot black people.

    • 0_o@lemm.ee
      16·
      9 个月前

      To be fair I was under the assumption that he wasn’t intending to capitalize on this situation at all, he did surrender the firearm used and requested it to be destroyed after the proceedings concluded so that it wouldn’t be sold-off and used as some sort of political symbol… It saddens me to learn that he is using such a tragedy to push any form of message other than a anti-firearm cautionary tale.

      • infamousta
        3·
        9 个月前

        Yeah so I don’t think he went and killed some folks to get famous, I think he happened to kill some folks and got famous. And he’s malaligned, certainly a dumb kid like most of us were.

        My criticism of Kyle is more around conservative folks who want to lean into that dumb kid fuck up like it’s something aspirational.

        I think absolutely if you want to hold it up as a triumph of the justice system I’m with you. But as an example of a good human not so much.