After spending days on social media churning up hatred toward Kyle Rittenhouse, an organized and planned mob of angry protesters intimidated, chased, and charged at people who attended an event at the University of Memphis where he was speaking.
🚨: Chaos breaks out at the University of Memphis after BLM protesters chased down @TPUSA people who were leaving the Kyle Rittenhouse event. Police had to prevent the hostile crowd from physically attacking them.@FrontlinesTPUSA pic.twitter.com/PFr8Ccqr0n
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) March 21, 2024
The mob chanting, "no justice, no peace," an implicit call for violence, charged and screeched at people who attended the Turning Point USA-sponsored event for Rittenhouse. The mob followed people who left the event to their cars. Thankfully, police intervened and prevented a riot — or worse.
Related: Prosecutors Finally Catch the Man Who Fired the First Shot Near Kyle Rittenhouse at Kenosha Riots
Rittenhouse brought his service dogs to the event. They help with his PTSD, he has said in interviews.
He began, “On August 25th of 2020, I was violently attacked by a mob of rioters,” and was quickly jeered and shouted down, according to News3 in Memphis. The speech was abandoned, and Rittenhouse immediately went into a question-and-answer mode.
As the mob gathered outside, "Rittenhouse was abruptly rushed off the stage after only about 30 minutes as protestors inside booed him, yelled and disrupted him," the news station reported.
As people left, they were "chased" by the mob. Some shouted "Get him! Get him!" as they advanced on the crowd.
The angry BLM crowd then tried to prevent @TPUSA from leaving the parking garage at the University of Memphis. Campus and state police had to push the crowd back to allow the cars to leave. Some protesters spat on the vehicles.@FrontlinesTPUSA pic.twitter.com/UiEPUznbk5
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) March 21, 2024
If you're Kyle Rittenhouse, this is a PTSD-triggering event.
It was in Kenosha, Wisc., in August of 2020, where the mob — BLM and Antifa — had burned and vandalized businesses for days. Rittenhouse, who had helped clean up the previous night's mob mess, had stayed to act as armed security for a local business.
As protesters and violent actors spilled over the streets, they chased, shot at, threatened, and attacked Rittenhouse and forced him to defend himself. When it was over, a just-freed convicted pedophile who chased Rittenhouse and whose friend had fired a gun, an Antifa mob member who attacked and knocked down Rittenhouse with a skateboard he brought to protests as a weapon, and another activist who pointed a pistol at Rittenhouse after he was knocked down, were shot, two fatally.
The teen, armed with an AR-15, shot them in self-defense. Though the mob wanted another white scalp during the George Floyd-inspired violence, Rittenhouse was acquitted of murder in a nationally televised trial. Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges.
Protesters met people going into the speaking event by chanting, "Black Lives Matter!" and holding signs calling Rittenhouse a "murderer," "little s**t," and referring to "Christo-Fascism," the left's latest verbal attempt to cast Christians as fascists and therefore targets.
One held a sign reading, "Say their names."
OK, here are their names, and we'll do you one better by including their rap sheets.
The people who attacked the then 17-year-old Rittenhouse were all white. That didn't absolve Rittenhouse of "racism," according to one of the signs held by the students arrayed to intimidate the crowd Wednesday night.
More than 100 students are gathered at the University of Memphis to protest the appearance of Kyle Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse was acquitted following the shooting death of two men during a 2020 Black Lives Matter rally in Kenosha, Wisconsin. @3onyourside pic.twitter.com/GWy7kG0HED
— Ashley Paul (@AshleyPaulNews) March 20, 2024
Some of the comments from these people "studying" in the halls of "higher education" were ones for the ages.
“This man is real violent and you have many people who told me they don’t even feel comfortable being on campus today," one student, who obviously didn't remember the August 2020 events, told News3.
And this idiocy might be my favorite: “They’re portraying him like this icon for the gun people,” student Franko Coleman told News3. But he "reasoned," “We already have enough gun violence in Memphis itself, so having this guy come here and spread racist views and also talking about how we need more guns on the street … I think it’s awful, just baffling, that they allow this. Because this is borderline free speech, but this is more toward hate speech.”
Of course, Rittenhouse never got to deliver his speech, so we'll never know what he would have said, but nice try, ya' big dope.
The mob promptly chased and followed supporters as they left.
There were far more angry BLM members than people inside to "hear" the speech. But this might have had something to do with it. News3 reported:
According to a spokesperson with the University of Memphis, tickets were re-issued after some people discovered the codes on their tickets had disappeared, and were concerned they wouldn’t work.
All ticket holders had to reapply for tickets Wednesday morning, after learning the tickets they got as early as weeks ago may not be valid.
Someone tampered with tickets. A mob angrily chased people who attended. Free speech was abandoned and canceled by the heckler's veto. And there were no arrests.
It feels like an election year.
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