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Rittenhouse Coverage Showcases Left-Wing Obsession With Stoking Race Wars

By: Tristan Justice
4 min read
MSNBC Panel

The left’s toxic obsession with skin color has now primed Americans to look for storylines of racism even in its absence.

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Tristan Justice
@JusticeTristan
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Those who followed corporate coverage of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and nothing else might have come away with the belief that Rittenhouse was an avowed white supremacist who shot and killed three black people.

Rittenhouse, the narrative goes, crossed state lines with an illegal firearm to shoot righteous demonstrators rioting in the noble name of social justice. Although the distance traveled was a whopping 20 miles to a community where he’s worked, volunteered, and visited his father, the firearm used was a legally obtained weapon, and the three shot were all white (one survived), that hasn’t stopped the left-wing narrative seizing on Rittenhouse’s case to foment racial tension. It also hasn’t stopped the toxic narrative from feeding ill-guided grievance.

“It’s not okay for a man to grab a rifle, travel across state lines, and shoot three people and walk free,” said self-proclaimed comedian Amber Ruffin moments after a Kenosha jury ruled Rittenhouse acted in self-defense.

“It’s not okay for the judicial system to be blatantly and obviously stacked against people of color,” she added, alluding to the broader narrative Rittenhouse was only acquitted because he was white. Never mind that minorities walk away from murder charges on self-defense claims all of the time. Amy Swearer, a legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, chronicles several stories in the Twitter thread linked below:

Ruffin is a victim of the narratives peddled by talking heads at MSNBC, the same network banned from the courtroom after a producer was caught stalking the jury during deliberations. Since the altercation between four white men had nothing to do with race, the media conceived one out of thin air and engaged in blatant racism in the process.

Just before the verdict, Joy Reid published a monologue on TikTok complaining of Rittenhouse’s “white male tears” at the trial as the 18-year-old who faced life in prison was forced to recount the traumatizing moments where he killed two people on live television.

“It reminded a lot of people of something… Oh, the Brett Kavanaugh hearing,” Reid said, claiming the Supreme Court justice “cried his way through the hearings.”

Reid’s colleague, Tiffany Cross, said the Kenosha jury’s verdict was “disgusting” for having acquitted a “little murderous white supremacist.”

Her guest, Elie Mystal, who regularly fantasized about ramming his car into a Trump building and called on white people to be destroyed, then went on to claim white people were guilty of inciting violence.

“This is what a majority of white people vote for,” Mystal said.

Of course the only evidence to suggest Rittenhouse is a white supremacist is his apparent crime of being a white man with a gun, a legal one at that.

But MSNBC is far from the only outlet constructing a racial narrative where there is none.

While the examples above highlight overt bias at some of the nation’s largest media enterprises, they reflect a far deeper symptom of our divisions over race driven by self-righteous leftists who claim otherwise.

The left’s toxic obsession with skin color has now primed Americans to look for storylines of racism even in its absence. The media’s fixation on race has not only polarized the country with manipulated narratives, but they’ve reversed progress.

According to Gallup, just 43 percent of white adults and 33 percent of black adults said relations were “very” or “somewhat good” in their latest survey, a new record low for each group since the group began polling on the question in 2001.

How do you end racism when you’re openly being racist? You don’t, and that’s the point. The entire Rittenhouse trial had nothing to do with racism, but the innocence of a young white man who protected himself from a violent crowd inflamed the racists into crafting a narrative of white supremacy where there was none.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan's email newsletter here.

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