The revival of lynching

benfell

See updates through December 7, 2021, at end of post.

What we see in the Kyle Rittenhouse exoneration for his killing of two people and the wounding of a third at a Black Lives Matter protest[1] is the natural confluence of multiple related phenomena. The first is in which police operate in the context of a distinctly dubious system of (in)justice,[2]

where original causes of deviant (colloquially labeled ‘criminal’) behavior are ignored,[3] where cops often exploit judicial deference to their testimony and perjure themselves, usually with impunity,[4] where cops have aligned themselves with white supremacist groups and refuse outside accountability,[5] where police departments have their own colors, their own rigid hierarchies, their own legitimization of violence, and their own ideas about what rules they should adhere to, and thus deserve to be presumptively labeled as white supremacist gangs.[6]

The second is a gun nuttery[7] in which justices on the U.S. Supreme Court worry more about a right of self-defense for people who have guns than those who do not,[8] even as it is apparent that there is little or no historical support for any right to carry deadly weapons in public,[9] that the gun nuts’ understanding of the Second Amendment is in fact incoherent,[10] and that this gun nuttery is specifically directed at Black people.[11]

Sarah Jones believes that the verdict will inspire more right-wingers to take up arms and to use them, as Rittenhouse did, killing people. Rittenhouse’s victims were white,[12] but the confluence of these two phenomena with a reinvigorated white supremacy movement[13] can leave little doubt that in Angela Davis’ reckoning of a line to be drawn from slavery through sharecropping and Jim Crow to lynchings, and to incarceration and the death penalty,[14] Black people face a return to commonplace lynching, not merely by the official white supremacist gangsters who, despite their oaths to protect and serve, kill with a defiant and nearly universal impunity,[15] but now by the oh, so ordinary Confederate flag-waving “patriots”[16] who demand to hear nothing beyond their one-sided history.[17]

Update, November 21, 2021: Eric Levitz explains that, legally, refuting Kyle Rittenhouse’s self-defense claim was a tall order for the prosecution[18] and I cannot do full justice to his argument with a mere limited quotation:

The prosecution therefore needed to prove that [Kyle] Rittenhouse could not have reasonably believed that it was necessary to shoot Rosenbaum in order to spare himself from imminent bodily harm. . . .[19]

Levitz turns to another point, one that directly supports my claim in a my original post.

On parts of the right, Rittenhouse has been celebrated as a defender of order against anarchy, and law enforcement against miscreants. Yet the culture that turned the 17-year-old into a revered killer — a culture of mass firearm ownership and vigilantism — is antithetical to law and order as it is conventionally understood. It is a culture premised on the illegitimacy of the state’s monopoly on violence and the incapacity of formal institutions to uphold social order or public safety. It sees America as a society forever teetering on the brink of Hobbesian breakdown, and firearms as the sole guarantor of individual security. And the more influential this culture becomes, the more its paranoid delusions come to resemble our collective reality. . . .

In much of the country, Americans have a legal right to openly carry weapons of mass murder. And yet all it takes is one suspicious bystander, a phone call to the police, and the arrival of a trigger-happy cop for the legal act of carrying an AR-15 — or a toy gun — to become a legal basis for one’s summary execution.[20]

Hence, in a major subset of the cases that Levitz believes enabled, lynching.

In addition, Levitz, in pointing to “the state’s monopoly on violence,” I think inadvertently but nonetheless effectively, highlights neoconservative hypocrisy in its support for so-called “gun rights” and “self-defense” laws. This illustrates the contortions a “law and order” tendency must go through to support a Trumpian coalition, but as Charles Dudley Warner wrote, “Politics makes strange bedfellows.”[21] Such hypocrisy poignantly extends far beyond neoconservatives:

Update, November 23, 2021: I don’t know how anyone could possibly be surprised that Republicans generally support the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, that many feel their “right” to “self-defense” has been affirmed, and that many have canonized him—that’ll be Saint Kyle, to you, heathens![22] As I said.

Update, December 7, 2021: Barton Gellman’s article in the Atlantic is terrifying. It aligns perfectly with what I see around southwestern Pennsylvania. Donald Trump’s supporters are armed, dangerous, and committed; they exist in a burgeoning and unstoppable gun nuttery movement that has merged with a anti-abortion movement as part of an apparent merger of authoritarian populism, paleoconservatism, and social conservatism;[23] their participation in the militia movement is only barely the tip of the iceberg.[24]

Gellman pulls together a lot of strands showing how Trump’s supporters are increasingly well prepared to seize power, whether or not they actually win the election in 2024,[25] in a way that aligns with my own dire anticipation that this country is becoming an evangelical white nationalist country,[26] with only rhetorical opposition in a divided but functionally acquiescent Democratic Party that fails to earn people’s votes.[27]

  1. [1]Kurtis Lee, “Kyle Rittenhouse found not guilty of all charges,” Los Angeles Times, November 19, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-11-19/la-na-kyle-rittenhouse-vedict-kenosha↩
  2. [2]Steven E. Barkan, Criminology, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentic Hall, 2006); David Benfell, “On the pretense of ‘law and order,’” Not Housebroken, September 11, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/09/11/on-the-pretense-of-law-and-order/; Ernest Drucker, A Plague of Prisons (New York: New Press, 2011); Jeffrey Reiman, The Rich Get Richer and The Poor Get Prison, 7th ed. (Boston: Pearson Allyn and Bacon, 2004); Dan Simon, In Doubt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2012).↩
  3. [3]Wanda D. McCaslin and Denise C. Breton, “Justice as Healing: Going Outside the Colonizers’ Cage,” in Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies, eds. Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna S. Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008), 511-529.↩
  4. [4]Mark Joseph Stern, “The Police Lie. All the Time. Can Anything Stop Them?” Slate, August 4, 2020, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/police-testilying.html↩
  5. [5]Mark Berman et al., “Protests spread over police shootings. Police promised reforms. Every year, they still shoot and kill nearly 1,000 people,” Washington Post, June 8, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/protests-spread-over-police-shootings-police-promised-reforms-every-year-they-still-shoot-nearly-1000-people/2020/06/08/5c204f0c-a67c-11ea-b473-04905b1af82b_story.html; Kyle Cheney, Sarah Ferris, and Laura Barrón-López, “‘Inside job’: House Dems ask if Capitol rioters had hidden help,” Politico, January 8, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/08/congress-democrats-capitol-riot-inside-job-456725; Tim Craig, “Proud Boys and Black Lives Matter activists clashed in a Florida suburb. Only one side was charged,” Washington Post, February 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/florida-protest-bill-unequal-treatment/2021/02/01/415d1b02-6240-11eb-9061-07abcc1f9229_story.html; Democracy Now! “Report Documents 32,542 Police Killings in U.S. Since 2000 with Vast Undercount of People of Color,” June 1, 2021, https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/1/report_police_killings_people_of_color; Ryan Devereaux, “The Thin Blue Line Between Violent, Pro-Trump Militias and Police,” Intercept, August 28, 2020, https://theintercept.com/2020/08/28/kyle-rittenhouse-violent-pro-trump-militias-police/; James Downie, “Time to toss the ‘bad apples’ excuse,” Washington Post, May 31, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/31/time-toss-bad-apples-excuse/; Jeet Heer, “How Not to Mourn George Floyd,” The Time of Monsters, April 21, 2021, https://jeetheer.substack.com/p/how-not-to-mourn-george-floyd; Arelis R. Hernández and Cleve R. Wootson, Jr., “Black Americans are buoyed by Chauvin conviction, but they worry it will blunt pace of reform,” Washington Post, April 20, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/20/chauvin-verdict-black-americans/; Jason Johnson, “I'm not happy. I'm not relieved. The verdict is a cultural make-up call. This ruling means it takes a Black man being murdered on TV in front of millions, a years worth of protest and a phalanx of white cops saying "this is wrong" for a black person to get a scintilla of justice,” Twitter, April 20, 2021, >https://twitter.com/DrJasonJohnson/status/1384637989444325378; Kimberly Kindy, Mark Berman, and Kim Bellware, “After Capitol riot, police chiefs work to root out officers with ties to extremist groups,” Washington Post, January 24, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/police-capitol-riot-extremists/2021/01/24/16fdb2bc-5a7b-11eb-b8bd-ee36b1cd18bf_story.html; Maggie Koerth, “The Police’s Tepid Response To The Capitol Breach Wasn’t An Aberration,” FiveThirtyEight, January 7, 2021, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polices-tepid-response-to-the-capitol-breach-wasnt-an-aberration/; Kurtis Lee, “Derek Chauvin is guilty of murdering George Floyd,” Los Angeles Times, April 20, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-04-20/jury-verdict-derek-chauvin-george-floyd-death; Kurtis Lee, Jaweed Kaleem, and Laura King, “‘White supremacy was on full display.’ Double standard seen in police response to riot at Capitol,” Los Angeles Times, January 7, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-01-07/la-na-washington-capitol-police-attack-race; German Lopez, “Police officers are prosecuted for murder in less than 2 percent of fatal shootings,” Vox, April 2, 2021, https://www.vox.com/21497089/derek-chauvin-george-floyd-trial-police-prosecutions-black-lives-matter; Wesley Lowery, “Aren’t more white people than black people killed by police? Yes, but no,” Washington Post, July 11, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/arent-more-white-people-than-black-people-killed-by-police-yes-but-no/; Brentin Mock, “What New Research Says About Race and Police Shootings,” CityLab, August 6, 2019, https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/police-officer-shootings-gun-violence-racial-bias-crime-data/595528/; Elie Mystal, “There’s Only One Possible Conclusion: White America Likes Its Killer Cops,” Nation, May 27, 2020, https://www.thenation.com/article/society/white-america-cops/; Alanna Durkin Richer and Lindsay Whitehurst, “1 verdict, then 6 police killings across America in 24 hours,” Associated Press, April 24, 2021, copy in possession of author; Jon Schuppe, “Police across U.S. respond to Derek Chauvin trial: ‘Our American way of policing is on trial,’” NBC News, April 15, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/police-across-u-s-respond-derek-chauvin-trial-our-american-n1264224; Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, “How Do We Change America?” New Yorker, June 8, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-do-we-change-america; Raphael Warnock, “Today’s verdict affirming Derek Chauvin’s responsibility for killing George Floyd is the right outcome in this trial, but it is not justice. . . .” Twitter, April 20, 2021, https://twitter.com/SenatorWarnock/status/1384651251061858323↩
  6. [6]David Benfell, “Stephen Zappala’s resignation would be nowhere near enough,” Not Housebroken, November 6, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/06/03/stephen-zappalas-resignation-would-be-nowhere-near-enough/↩
  7. [7]Abha Bhattarai, “‘We’ve got to protect ourselves’: Some threaten to shop elsewhere if they can’t openly carry guns,” Washington Post, September 6, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/06/weve-got-protect-ourselves-some-threaten-shop-elsewhere-if-they-cant-openly-carry-guns/; Jane Coaston, “The Virginia gun rights rally raising fears of violence, explained,” Vox, January 17, 2020, https://www.vox.com/2020/1/17/21067627/virginia-lobby-day-gun-laws-extremism; Jack Crowe, “NRA Sues San Francisco over ‘Domestic Terrorist Organization’ Label,” National Review, September 10, 2019, https://www.nationalreview.com/news/nra-sues-san-francisco-over-domestic-terrorist-organization-label/; Tim Elfrink, “Lindsey Graham says he needs AR-15 for defense: ‘My house will be the last one that the gang will come to,’” Washington Post, March 29, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/03/29/lindsey-graham-ar15-defense-disaster/; Lisa Marie Pane, “NRA sues San Francisco over terrorist declaration,” Associated Press, September 9, 2019, https://apnews.com/article/0b2eea0f775549eabef323e9f0b2f34a↩
  8. [8]Robert Barnes and Ann E. Marimow, “Majority of Supreme Court appears to think N.Y. gun law is too restrictive,” Washington Post, November 3, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/gun-rights-case-supreme-court/2021/11/03/6b9a75d8-3c13-11ec-a493-51b0252dea0c_story.html↩
  9. [9]David G. Savage, “Supreme Court looks to medieval England in gun rights case,” Los Angeles Times, November 2, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-11-02/supreme-court-looks-to-medieval-england-in-gun-rights-case↩
  10. [10]David Benfell, “Deconstructing the second amendment,” Not Housebroken, October 4, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/10/04/deconstructing-the-second-amendment/↩
  11. [11]David Benfell, “The banners and the guns: Flagrant racism in Pittsburgh,” Not Housebroken, April 6, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/09/20/the-banners-and-the-guns-flagrant-racism-in-pittsburgh/↩
  12. [12]Sarah Jones, “There Will Be More Rittenhouses The forces that created a vigilante also exonerated him,” New York, November 19, 2021, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/11/kyle-rittenhouse-cleared-and-there-will-be-more-like-him.html↩
  13. [13]Laura E. Adkins and Emily Burack, “Neo-Nazis, QAnon and Camp Auschwitz: A guide to the hate symbols and signs on display at the Capitol riots,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 7, 2021, https://www.jta.org/2021/01/07/united-states/hate-on-display-your-guide-to-the-symbols-and-signs-on-display-at-the-stop-the-count-insurrection; Ronald Brownstein, “Is the GOP’s extremist wing now too big to fail?” CNN, February 14, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/14/politics/republican-extremism-trump-impeachment/index.html; Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein, “9 Oath Keepers charged with sweeping conspiracy for role in Capitol insurrection,” Politico, February 19, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/19/oath-keepers-capitol-insurrection-470308; Christopher Ketcham, “What the Far-Right Fascination With Pinochet’s Death Squads Should Tell Us,” Intercept, February 4, 2021, https://theintercept.com/2021/02/04/pinochet-far-right-hoppean-snake/; Robert A. Pape and Keven Ruby, “The Capitol Rioters Aren’t Like Other Extremists,” Atlantic, February 2, 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/the-capitol-rioters-arent-like-other-extremists/617895/; Katelyn Polantz, “Justice Department says an Oath Keepers leader waited for Trump’s direction before Capitol attack,” CNN, February 11, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/11/politics/oath-keeper-justice-trump-capitol/index.html; Anne Quito and Amanda Shendruk, “Decoding the flags and banners seen at the Capitol Hill insurrection,” Quartz, January 7, 2021, https://qz.com/1953366/decoding-the-pro-trump-insurrectionist-flags-and-banners/; Richard Read, “Ammon Bundy, veteran of armed standoffs, builds militia network on COVID backlash,” Los Angeles Times, February 9, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-02-09/idaho-ammon-bundy; David Shortell, “Five people associated with Proud Boys arrested for Capitol riot on conspiracy charges,” CNN, February 11, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/11/politics/proud-boys-capitol-riot-arrest/index.html↩
  14. [14]Angela Y. Davis, Abolition Democracy (New York: Seven Stories, 2005).↩
  15. [15]Devlin Barrett, “FBI faces skepticism over its efforts against domestic terrorism,” Washington Post, August 5, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/fbi-faces-skepticism-over-its-anti-domestic-terror-efforts/2019/08/04/c9c928bc-b6e0-11e9-b3b4-2bb69e8c4e39_story.html; Mark Berman et al., “Protests spread over police shootings. Police promised reforms. Every year, they still shoot and kill nearly 1,000 people,” Washington Post, June 8, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/protests-spread-over-police-shootings-police-promised-reforms-every-year-they-still-shoot-nearly-1000-people/2020/06/08/5c204f0c-a67c-11ea-b473-04905b1af82b_story.html; Kyle Cheney, Sarah Ferris, and Laura Barrón-López, “‘Inside job’: House Dems ask if Capitol rioters had hidden help,” Politico, January 8, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/08/congress-democrats-capitol-riot-inside-job-456725; Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Blue Lives Matter,” Atlantic, December 22, 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/blue-lives-matter-nypd-shooting/383977/; Jelani Cobb, “Donald Trump’s Idea of Selective Citizenship,” New Yorker, July 29, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/donald-trumps-idea-of-selective-citizenship; Eliza Collins and Sadie Gurman, “Bipartisan Police-Overhaul Talks End With No Deal,” Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/bipartisan-police-overhaul-talks-end-with-no-deal-11632330043; Tim Craig, “Proud Boys and Black Lives Matter activists clashed in a Florida suburb. Only one side was charged,” Washington Post, February 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/florida-protest-bill-unequal-treatment/2021/02/01/415d1b02-6240-11eb-9061-07abcc1f9229_story.html; Jason Dearen, “White supremacist prison guards work with impunity in Fla.,” Associated Press, November 19, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/business-prisons-florida-race-and-ethnicity-racial-injustice-60b96681445509d89e6c0497405497d6; Democracy Now! “Report Documents 32,542 Police Killings in U.S. Since 2000 with Vast Undercount of People of Color,” June 1, 2021, https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/1/report_police_killings_people_of_color; Ryan Devereaux, “The Thin Blue Line Between Violent, Pro-Trump Militias and Police,” Intercept, August 28, 2020, https://theintercept.com/2020/08/28/kyle-rittenhouse-violent-pro-trump-militias-police/; James Downie, “Time to toss the ‘bad apples’ excuse,” Washington Post, May 31, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/31/time-toss-bad-apples-excuse/; Rick Earle and Amy Hudak, “Pittsburgh’s mayor wants police policy review after man dies following incident with taser,” WPXI, October 22, 2021, https://www.wpxi.com/news/top-stories/news-conference-planned-mayor-wants-policy-review-after-man-dies-following-police-incident/65UF44HFSRAXPNBLDMKJHIVKP4/; Dana Forsythe, “Punisher creator Gerry Conway: Cops using the skull logo are like people using the Confederate flag,” SyFy Wire, January 8, 2019, copy in possession of author; Jeet Heer, “How Not to Mourn George Floyd,” The Time of Monsters, April 21, 2021, https://jeetheer.substack.com/p/how-not-to-mourn-george-floyd; Arelis R. Hernández and Cleve R. Wootson, Jr., “Black Americans are buoyed by Chauvin conviction, but they worry it will blunt pace of reform,” Washington Post, April 20, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/20/chauvin-verdict-black-americans/; Jason Johnson, “I’m not happy. I’m not relieved. The verdict is a cultural make-up call. This ruling means it takes a Black man being murdered on TV in front of millions, a years worth of protest and a phalanx of white cops saying “this is wrong” for a black person to get a scintilla of justice,” Twitter, April 20, 2021, >https://twitter.com/DrJasonJohnson/status/1384637989444325378; Amina Khan, “Police officers treat Black and white men differently. You can hear it in their tone of voice,” Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-16/cops-treat-black-and-white-men-differently-you-can-hear-it-in-their-tone-of-voice; Kimberly Kindy, Mark Berman, and Kim Bellware, “After Capitol riot, police chiefs work to root out officers with ties to extremist groups,” Washington Post, January 24, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/police-capitol-riot-extremists/2021/01/24/16fdb2bc-5a7b-11eb-b8bd-ee36b1cd18bf_story.html; Kimberly Kindy and Kimbriell Kelly, “Thousands dead, few prosecuted,” Washington Post, April 11, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2015/04/11/thousands-dead-few-prosecuted/; Maggie Koerth, “The Police’s Tepid Response To The Capitol Breach Wasn’t An Aberration,” FiveThirtyEight, January 7, 2021, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polices-tepid-response-to-the-capitol-breach-wasnt-an-aberration/; Kurtis Lee, “Derek Chauvin is guilty of murdering George Floyd,” Los Angeles Times, April 20, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-04-20/jury-verdict-derek-chauvin-george-floyd-death; Kurtis Lee, Jaweed Kaleem, and Laura King, “‘White supremacy was on full display.’ Double standard seen in police response to riot at Capitol,” Los Angeles Times, January 7, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-01-07/la-na-washington-capitol-police-attack-race; Trymaine Lee, “Eyewitness to Michael Brown shooting recounts his friend’s death,” MSNBC, August 12, 2014, https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/eyewitness-michael-brown-fatal-shooting-missouri-msna388411; Carol D. Leonnig, Kimberly Kindy, and Joel Achenbach, “Darren Wilson’s first job was on a troubled police force disbanded by authorities,” Washington Post, August 23, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/darren-wilsons-first-job-was-on-a-troubled-police-force-disbanded-by-authorities/2014/08/23/1ac796f0-2a45-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html; German Lopez, “Cleveland police shooting of Tamir Rice: city to pay $6 million after 12-year-old’s death,” Vox, April 25, 2016, https://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7275297/tamir-rice-police-shooting; German Lopez, “East Pittsburgh police officer charged for shooting of 17-year-old Antwon Rose,” Vox, June 27, 2018, https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/6/20/17484480/antwon-rose-east-pittsburgh-police-shooting-video; German Lopez, “Police officers are prosecuted for murder in less than 2 percent of fatal shootings,” Vox, April 2, 2021, https://www.vox.com/21497089/derek-chauvin-george-floyd-trial-police-prosecutions-black-lives-matter; Wesley Lowery, “Aren’t more white people than black people killed by police? Yes, but no,” Washington Post, July 11, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/arent-more-white-people-than-black-people-killed-by-police-yes-but-no/; David Masciotra, “The Punisher skull: Unofficial logo of the white American death cult,” Salon, April 28, 2019, https://www.salon.com/2019/04/28/the-punisher-skull-unofficial-logo-of-the-white-american-death-cult/; Eliott C. McLaughlin, “Video: Dallas police open fire on schizophrenic man with screwdriver,” CNN, March 19, 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/18/us/dallas-police-fatal-shooting-mentally-ill-man-video/index.html; Eliott C. 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C. 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