It is important to understand the dynamic between these three forces. The managerial state is not itself leftist; it is not committed to a project of equality or the amelioration of social problems arising from capitalism. It is a neoliberal oligarchy focused on globalization, creating homogenous populations managed through the creation and provision of material desire, corporatist, statist, and bureaucratic, but above all committed to progressive ends through the benign rule of credentialed elites. Leftism figures into this as both a safety valve and system of control. Leftists amenable to the elite are parked in sinecures in universities, NGOs, and corporate HR departments, where they can do the hard work of destroying what remains of traditional culture, thereby serving the interests of neoliberals, for whom such is a hindrance to the creation of the mass-man they need to consume the new product. The other leftists, those too deranged, mentally ill, or violent for life in an office, are allowed to form militias that operate in territories given over to leftist rule, Portland, Oakland, etc. This is Antifa and its hangers-on, the black bloc of Nazgul who show up whenever the regime needs to remind the normies what happens when its protections are withdrawn. The media, for its part, has the task of packaging and contextualizing the violence and destruction as both legitimate and part of the bigger project of removing regime enemies in the name of keeping everyone safe. That’s a nice store you have there . . . be a shame if it got burned down because of racism. Best to let the nice people at GAE get back to running things. So remember, show up and vote D. You wouldn’t want us to have to come back.
The Democrat governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, denounced the police shooting, making sure to include phrases like “racism” and “merciless killing” in between meaningless caveats. The plan was clearly to give Kenosha up to the sack and the left got the message loud and clear. All summer, Black Lives Matter, an amorphous group/movement that was equal parts grift and instrument of leftist radicalism, had organized protests which devolved (or developed) into violence, often featuring Antifa, more anonymous, more violent, and more purely ideological. Now that fury was set to descend on Kenosha. The system called out the National Guard, people boarded up windows, but it was obvious that nothing meaningful was going to be done to protect lives and property should the left decide to attack either. The people of Kenosha were to be made an example of; their role was to cry in front of their burned-out donut shops while Joy Reid mocked their impotent white tears.
Into this situation stepped Kyle Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse, as noted, was in town due to his work and familial connections. After the first night of destruction Rittenhouse and some friends volunteered to clean up graffiti; he then stayed on in town to help protect businesses the next night. One of his friends loaned him an AR-15 for this purpose. Guarding a used car lot, which the police and National Guard were content to let be razed, Rittenhouse was attacked by two protestors, Joshua Ziminski and Joseph Rosenbaum. Both men were violent criminals; the former was carrying a stolen handgun while engaging in multiple acts of arson, while the latter was a mentally-ill, drug-addicted pedophile recently released from both prison and a mental hospital. Ziminski seems to have been the more calculating of the two, with Rosenbaum simply possessed of a perverse urge to destroy. In any case, they were but part of a larger mob making its way down the main strip, being driven there by riot control elsewhere. It seems that it was Ziminski who initially pointed Rittenhouse out to Rosenbaum, and Rosenbaum charged at him, daring him to shoot him while inexplicably screaming anti-black racial slurs at the white Rittenhouse. At nearly the exact moment Rosenbaum caught up to Rittenhouse, hurling a plastic bag containing all of his worldly possessions at the teen, Ziminski fired a shot in the air. Rittenhouse turned on Rosenbaum at the sound, whereupon the latter grabbed at the AR-15 Rittenhouse was carrying. Tucker Carlson described what happened next better than I ever could: