Do you believe this association is somehow unique to Christianity or Christians?
Also, I’d be a little more cautious about using “authoritarianism” and “fascism” quite so interchangeably. All fascists are authoritarians, but the vast majority of authoritarians through history have not been fascist.
Funny how Rittenhouse wasn’t in his own home, home town, or home state.
I know, I know… “something, something, tortured interpretation of bible passage to justify my own bigotry.”
You seem to be arguing semantics and getting off topic in the process.
Many, MANY self proclaimed Xtains are total hypocrites; so it goes with all religions.
But also like every group, they are not a monolith which always thinks & acts exactly alike, 100% of the time.
“You shall know them by the fruits of their labor.”
Right. It’s easy to do, especially if you’ve personally had a bad experience with a church. But there are 2.4 billion Christians in the world. There are so many different sects and derivations at this point that it’s hard to make a blanket statement about the faith, other than they all profess a belief in the resurrection story. They don’t even agree on the fundamental NATURE of Jesus, much less where they stand on the relationship between the church and power.
I didn’t say YOU specifically. I’m saying that there is a general feeling among some on the left that the Christian right in America is THE definition of Christianity, and that ignoring the actual nuance and variety of Christians is harmful to getting anything progressive done, since so many Americans are religious, even many progressive Americans. 
To counter my point of Christian anti-authortarianism. I brought that up, because some people in the thread seem to not understand that both things are true. I find it harmful to the cause, given how many Christians have been anti-Authoritarian and US and global history.
Doesn’t it? He practically describes himself as a police officer. He was behaving as someone managing the crowd the whole time. It speaks to motive.
I think they would be allowed make the argument that his intent wasn’t premeditated murder, rather it was self-delusion of being part of the law enforcement on the scene, and that delusion was supported and encouraged by the police. His presence with the weapon was illegal, and they let him play cop all he wanted.
Granted, this isn’t something I believe, I would throw the book at him, and the shelf the book was on. Between his age, though, and the behavior of the police, and the fact he was being chased, and the crowd was attempting to disarm him, I don’t think they’ll make murder stick.
Indeed; throughout human history, religion has often been a tool of control and oppression.
What?
This is a thread about a fund raiser for a vigilante on an explicitly christian fundraising site, right?
Sure. I never said otherwise. It’s also been a tool of liberation, subversion, and rebellion. Hell, the early Christians were a suppressed religious minority until they were accepted by Constantine.
But I always like this idea that the real stuff, the history making stuff happens between those two realities, the tensions that move history forward, the very debate about what it means to be a Christian has been one of many engines of history in the Mediterranean, later in Europe, and in modern era around the world…
Christ, am I sounding like Hegel now? Is that dialectical enough for people? 
As long as I don’t sound like Zizek, I think we’re fine…
I’m hip; I was agreeing with you and attempting to support your very valid point.
What you are describing is not a defense for the kid, its the basis of a lawsuit against the police.
He can claim he is king of America for all it matters. Objectively he killed 2 unarmed people and injured one with his hands in the air with an assault rifle. All witnessed and caught on video. Eyewitnesses and video have him pointing his gun at people at random. He was charged with reckless homicide (“depraved mind murder” in many states). A charge having more to do with views of actions themselves rather than motive.
There is no self-defense or any other affirmative defense here because he had no reasonable threat and plenty of opportunity to retreat. Moreover, the fact that he ran home, shows he was not acting scared and seeking protection. Otherwise he would have run to the cops at the scene.
At best “delusion” would only serve well for an insanity plea. Which would be even worse than a prison sentence since it means he will be involuntarily committed for life, as opposed to the possibility of spending his final years on the outside.
The stories I have seen stated the charges as two of murder first, and one of attempted murder. Were they revised?
A 17-year-old accused of killing two protesters and injuring another with an AR-15-style rifle in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday night has been charged as an adult with two counts of first degree homicide and one count of attempted homicide. The teen, Kyle Rittenhouse, also faces charges of recklessly endangering the safety of two other victims and possessing a weapon while under the age of 18.
If it is first degree murder, his motive, premeditation, is central. If they can prove he believed he was just an unofficial cop, sanctioned by official cops, protecting buildings from antifa, I am not sure how they could also prove he went there specifically to kill these individuals, or any individuals at all.
Anyway, dimes-to-donuts they offer a softball plea just to avoid the whole “militias on the courthouse steps” circus completely.
Ah, this classic christian trope.
If someone does good, they are a christian! If they do bad, they’re not a christian!
Doing ‘good’ doesn’t make someone a christian anymore than doing ‘bad’ makes them non-christian.
Seriously, this is pretty offensive. You don’t get to claim my good works and you don’t get to write off the many bad acts perpetrated by christians in the name of their faith as no true scotsman (christ-washing history? Is that a thing?)
The people supporting this accused murderer claim to be christians and I taken them at their word.
Too bad their are no christian fund raising pages for this guy’s victims. That would actually relevant instead of this ‘but not all christians!’ stuff.
This.
Religions don’t have some Platonic reality, such that you can say “Christianity is really like this.” The best you can ever say is “some Christians are like this, and some are like that”.
(More generally: decent religious people will find religious reasons to be decent, and shitty religious people will find religious reasons to be shitty.)
I think there is more than one way to get to first degree murder. Like killing someone while commiting a felony I think?
Yeah, intentionally used in irony, because it works against them too;
If they are against social services, if they support kids in cages, if they advocate killing protesters;
Those are the rotten fruits of their hateful-ass “labor.” Such “believers” have twisted their so-called faith and use it as a license to hate and oppress everyone they don’t like.
I think you are currently interested in arguing about Christians’ hypocrisy overall (maybe because of your own bad experiences) and that’s understandable… but it’s also OFF TOPIC.
I’m not Xtian, I’m against indoctrination, and I’m against the mixing of religion and legal policy that impacts us all, but those are not the topic at hand.
The subject is the killer Kyle Ritttenhouse and how racism is supporting him under the guise of religion.
There’s a commandment about not taking the Lord’s name in vain.
Sinning against it by cursing and swearing is trivial. The worst it does is make others say, “His God can’t be all that great, look how he disrespects him.”
The heinous sin against it is doing the Devil’s work in the Lord’s name. That’s a sin that’s been common throughout history but has raised its head in a particularly ugly fashion in these united states in the 21st century. It causes people like Dorothy Day or Gustavo Gutierrez to be lumped with the likes of Jerry Falwell or Jim Bakker.
“As ye have done unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” - Matt. 25:40
Studies show that the more racist views someone has, the more likely they are to identify as evangelical. (Note the direction of the correlation there…) Let’s not mince words - religion is culture and white evangelical Christianity in the US is fascist culture.
Or ‘defending private property’ when standing in the middle of a public street, either, you’d think.
But I finally realized - this white evangelical, i.e. fascist, American culture sees America as “their” country. As far as they’re concerned it is (or should be, as God intended) white, (their kind of) Christian, and they own it, period. It’s all theirs, even the cities that they hate. Non-white people are “guests” and should be properly “grateful” (subservient) for being “allowed” to stay. People who disagree with them politically are simply trespassers in “their” country. So it doesn’t matter where they are - it’s justified to shoot them, as they’re trespassing on “the property” of white evangelicals.
That was different - they were fighting foreigners. As far as these evangelicals are concerned, “antifa” are the foreigners here. Totally consistent. (I’ve also seen more than one person claiming that their American family members fought against “socialism” in the Second World War, so…)
Look at the criminal complaint pdf I linked to above.
There are 2 different “first degree” murder types here:
Neither of these depend on how one views his LARP’ing delusions. Only the conditions under which the people were killed. Both unarmed, under circumstances which “self-defense” with a firearm are not reasonable.
While you are not wrong, let them articulate that “defense” in court, though…
If you read the charges in the complaint, its not first degree premeditated murder. Its what would be murder 2 in most other places. Depraved mind murder and intentional unplanned murder.
