It’s a club no one asks to join, and the price of admission is unfathomable duress followed by a lifetime of watching your back.
I’m not talking about merely having the Twitter mob come down on you and maybe even losing your college admission or job, as horrible as that is. I’m talking about the incomprehensible weight of knowing millions of people who have never met you hate you and are howling for your head. The pain of being defamed. The emotional and financial strain on your loved ones. The horror of being railroaded for something you didn’t do. Suffocating uncertainty about whether you even have a future.
Kyle Rittenhouse is the latest victim of systemic leftist persecution, but he’s certainly not the first. American progressives hate men, especially young, white, patriotic men, and they have developed a sick process by which they target for destruction any lad who refuses to cower before them.
Here’s a quick trip down memory lane, as we pause to remember some of the innocent targets of organized leftist wrath who came before Kyle.
Nick Sandmann
At only 16 years of age, Nick Sandmann was on a trip with his Catholic school class to Washington, D.C., where the young men participated in the 2019 March for Life. As they waited for their bus to pick them up from the event, some of them wearing red “Make America Great Again” caps, the boys drew the attention of some of the more radical, vulgar regular protestors in the area. Eventually, professional rabble-rouser Nathan Phillips joined in the intimidation, walking up to within inches of Sandmann and banging a drum loudly in his face.
That’s when Sandmann committed the unforgivable sin: he refused to back down. He stood his ground, smiling awkwardly as Phillips continued to invade his personal space.
In the blink of an eye, a dubiously clipped video of the event went viral, with the made-up claim that distinguished Native American elder Phillips had been approached and “disrespected” by the teens, and all hell broke loose. To no one’s surprise, the character assassination was led by the fake news media, who had no issues encouraging violence against and destroying the life of a teenaged boy.
Remember when you advocated for violence against a minor? pic.twitter.com/lS3xn9579n
— Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) January 8, 2020
Even more disheartening was the reaction of the boys’ school and diocese, who immediately believed the media lies and called for investigation and possible expulsion of the students in their charge.
Eventually, additional video came out, the students were completely exonerated, and Sandmann went on to sue some of his tormentors for defamation (so far racking up two sizable settlements from CNN and The Washington Post, with more suits still pending).
On Tuesday, Sandmann wrote an editorial for the Daily Mail, welcoming Rittenhouse to the club, advising him on the possibility of following in his legal footsteps, and reaching out to him in friendship.
Here’s hoping the two of them wind up becoming lawyers and founding the law firm from hell, specializing in holding our corrupt media accountable. Maybe they can even have club meetings at one of Trump’s country clubs; the former president surely knows a thing or two about being targeted by Big Left.
Related: Let’s Get One Thing Straight: The Kyle Rittenhouse Trial Is Not About ‘White Supremacy’
George Zimmerman
Like Sandmann, Zimmerman was raised Catholic. And like Sandman and Rittenhouse, he was civic-minded and actively involved in serving his community. In Zimmerman’s case, he was a security volunteer who managed his local Neighborhood Watch program. In 2012, while on patrol, Zimmerman noticed a suspicious youth and continued to observe him while calling the police. (Because, duh, all white supremacist murderers call the cops when they’re just about to do their evil deed.) Trayvon Martin, who was high at the time, attacked Zimmerman, got him on the ground, straddled him, and began smashing his head against the sidewalk pavement. At last, when Martin grabbed for Zimmerman’s gun, Zimmerman fired to defend himself, killing Martin.
Even though police cleared Zimmerman and declined to arrest him, the hounds of the left began to bay and agitate. NBC did its part to whip up rage by deceptively editing audio of Zimmerman’s 911 call. ABC “redigitized” post-incident video of Zimmerman, obscuring his obvious injuries from the beating he had taken. Under pressure, Fla. Gov. Rick Scott appointed a special prosecutor, while the Obama-era DOJ and FBI naturally also opened up investigations. The process is the punishment, and these guys hit the target with everything they’ve got.
Zimmerman was eventually (over)charged with second-degree murder and — you’ll never believe this — acquitted. The left had a hard time letting it go; AG Eric Holder continued to investigate Zimmerman for “civil rights violations,” and President Obama felt the need to openly identify with Trayvon Martin at a press briefing. Talk about punching down.
The entire Zimmerman family suffered. George had to go into hiding, and his parents were too fearful to return to their home. A year later, Zimmerman was reportedly homeless and destitute. But in 2019, he filed suit against the Martin family and their attorney, Benjamin Crump, as well as several prosecutors and others. A few months later, he filed a defamation suit against Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren, but that case was dismissed.
The Duke Lacrosse Team
In 2006, a politically ambitious North Carolina prosecutor, Mike Nifong, turned in a particularly disgusting extralegal performance as he railroaded three innocent Duke University athletes, Dave Evans, Collin Finnerty, and Reade Seligman. The three boys were accused of rape by a skanky stripper, Crystal Mangum, who had been hired to perform at a party. Up for reelection, Nifong decided to play politics with the case (Magnum was black) and went rogue, infamously withholding exculpatory evidence. (Notably, the accused were provably elsewhere at the time of the alleged attack, and an examination found the accuser was rife with sperm from five different men — none of them the accused.) The university immediately fell in line with the leftist narrative and suspended the entire lacrosse team. When Coach Mike Pressler stood by his team and refused to disavow them, he was fired.
Eventually, as always happens, the rape hoax was exposed as just that. Supported by their strong families and genuine innocence, the students were fully exonerated when the North Carolina Attorney General took the unusual step of pronouncing them “innocent” and victims of a “tragic rush to accuse.” And the reprehensible Nifong was disbarred, convicted of contempt, and eventually driven into bankruptcy.
Richard Jewell
Believe it or not, the FBI–Mainstream Media narrative complex got stories catastrophically wrong way before the Russia collusion hoax. Richard Jewell was an alert security guard who saved many lives at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Ga. Jewell noticed an abandoned backpack which turned out to contain a bomb, then he helped lead the evacuation effort. (The bomb, set by domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph, was powerful enough to kill two and wound over 100 when it did detonate.)
Jewell spent the next few days giving interviews when asked by media outlets. Without any solid leads on who had planted the bomb, the FBI theorized that Jewell himself had done so, in order to garner positive media attention. In an all-too-familiar pattern nowadays, the FBI’s conjecture was leaked to the media, who ran with it and published any allegation they could find about flaws in Jewell’s character or behavior. The security guard endured three months of living in extreme fear, being investigated by both the FBI and the media, and getting sued by two survivors of the bombing.
When the smoke cleared, Jewell was exonerated and even received an apology from Attorney General Janet Reno. He sued several media companies for defamation, as well as Tom Brokaw and Piedmont College (for allegedly providing false information). NBC, CNN, ABC, and Piedmont all settled. Jewell went on to work in law enforcement, marry, and be honored by Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue in 2006. He died at the young age of 44, most likely due in part to health problems he developed as a result of the stress he endured while being investigated and libeled.
Victims of the Tawana Brawley Hoax
In November of 1987, 15-year-old Tawana Brawley was found in a trash bag, her clothes burnt and torn, and her body smeared with feces and scrawled with racial slurs. Brawley told a bizarre story of being abducted and held in the woods for several days by six white men, whom she claimed repeatedly raped her. There were many indicators early on that no such thing had happened: a rape kit showed no evidence that an assault occurred; Brawley was not suffering from exposure as she would have been, had she actually been held in the woods for days in the cold New York State weather; and she appeared well nourished and uninjured, though her clothes were damaged.
Nonetheless, noted race hustlers Al Sharpton, Alton H. Maddox, and C. Vernon Mason took up the cause and, with the assistance of an amplifying media, created a nationwide controversy. They accused everyone from the KKK and the mafia to the U.S. government of conspiring to cover up the alleged crimes. Eventually, the team latched onto a local police officer who had committed suicide just after Brawley’s alleged abduction, Harry Crist Jr., as a possible suspect. When Steven Pagones, an assistant county district attorney, attempted to defend the dead man against the accusations, team Brawley added him to the list of suspected evil white kidnapper rapists. As the investigation and trial by media dragged on, the accused men were persecuted for months. Finally, in Oct. of 1988, the grand jury that heard the evidence released its report: Brawley’s accusations were false and had no basis in fact.
One can only guess at the wretched circumstances of Brawley’s life that had induced the girl to go to such lengths as she concocted her story. Apparently, her mother and stepfather had a history of beating her when she got into trouble, so it’s widely accepted that her motivation for lying was an attempt to avoid more abuse. But there is no excuse for the men — and the outrage factory — that damaged race relations and tried to destroy the lives of innocent men in Brawley’s name (which they destroyed in the process).
Pagones went on to successfully sue Brawley, along with Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason, for defamation. The men have paid their relatively small judgements, though a court had to order Brawley’s wages garnished.
Bernhardt Goetz
Dubbed the “Subway Vigilante,” Bernie Goetz made headlines in 1984 after shooting four young men who had surrounded him on a subway train, demanding money in a menacing manner. The would-be muggers had rap sheets and were carrying sharpened screwdrivers. Pale, slight, bespectacled, and in his mid-30’s, Goetz had been mugged and beaten before and had a permanent knee injury as a souvenir of the incident. Indeed, New York City in the 1980’s was subsumed in violent crime.
After Goetz shot the men, he fled the scene, rented a car, and spent the next week or so hiding out in New England. As his identity was not yet known to police, the “Subway Vigilante” became a folk hero to New Yorkers who were weary of being terrorized by criminals. When Goetz eventually turned himself in, he was initially only charged with illegal possession of a weapon. But then, as the media began to circulate reports of Goetz’s “racist” views (the men he shot were black) and his popularity declined, the District Attorney’s Office resubmitted murder charges to a second grand jury, and Goetz was eventually charged with four counts of attempted murder, four counts of assault, and one count of reckless endangerment.
In 1987, a jury acquitted Goetz of all charges except the illegal possession of a weapon, and he served eight months in jail. He later lost a civil case brought by one of the men he shot, who remained partially paralyzed, and was ordered to pay $43 million to the plaintiff. Goetz eventually declared bankruptcy. Years later, when asked by CNN’s Nancy Grace if he wished he had just given the men the $5 they asked for, Goetz replied, “I think it would have been the better thing for me, in my life, if I had just given them all my money, even though they might have pushed me around and beat me up for a second. But I think it was good for New York City. What happened was very good for New York City because it forced them to address crime.” In fact, seven years later, the city had had enough and elected Republican Rudy Giuliani as mayor, and he did a magnificent job cleaning up crime. May Goetz’s words also hold true in Kyle’s case; may it force the country to address the violence and destruction being perpetrated by marauding Democrat mobs.
The more things change…
The more they stay the same. Not that long ago, the Democrat party was in synch with the abhorrent lynchings of young men in the south. Back then, uppity blacks and their white allies (to use the popular parlance) were the targets. Sometimes at the hands of a violent mob, sometimes by being railroaded with trumped up criminal charges and sham legal proceedings, disobedient young men were put in their place. Today, it’s young white men who are targeted, smeared, reviled, and persecuted. (George Zimmerman is the one exception. I always assumed Big Left heard his name and cranked up the rage machine before they actually saw what he looked like. In that case, The New York Times hilariously made up the new racial category “white Hispanic” to rectify the situation.)
Since its publication in 1960, Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird has been taught to schoolchildren. The book told the story of Tom Robinson, a fictitious black man who was simply being helpful, discreetly rejected the advances of a white woman and was subsequently accused of rape, railroaded in a biased court proceeding, and eventually shot and killed. Sound familiar?
So, welcome to the club, Kyle. I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through, and for what you’ll go through for the rest of your life. I hope you are able to tune out the hate directed at you and instead realize that millions of people have immense respect for you. We see that you’re a decent person who only wanted to serve your community. We will always admire you for standing up to the mob and winning, and at such a young age. Godspeed, and know that we’ve got your six.
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