On Friday afternoon, a Wisconsin jury found Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty of all five of the charges against him in his Kenosha homicide trial. During a period of riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020, following the police death of Jacob Blake, Rittenhouse fatally shot two people and critically injured another. He was found guilty and sentenced to prison.

Members of far-right groups infamous for their racist and white nationalist language reacted positively to Rittenhouse's acquittal, with some even saying that the 18-year-old should run for president in the future if he is not convicted.

Several conservative commentators have praised Rittenhouse's acquittal, believing that he was justified in using his firearm in self-defense against Black Lives Matter demonstrators. In addition to many other conservatives, Fox News personality Tucker Carlson has spoken out in support of Rittenhouse's actions. The president remarked in August 2020, "How startled are we that 17-year-olds armed with guns felt they had to keep order when no one else would," he said.

Axel Newhouse, deputy director of Middlebury Institute's Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, cautioned that a reversal of the jury's judgment might spark an increase in racial violence and provide a "open door" for extremists.

It has already been accepted as an excuse for future violence, according to Newhouse, who spoke to Insider about Rittenhouse's acquittal. "Many perceive it as a green light to employ violence at leftist demonstrations, while others see it as a spark in a looming civil or racial conflict," says the author.

Two counts of reckless endangerment and one count of attempted first-degree intentional homicide were filed against Rittenhouse in addition to the first-degree intentional homicide accusation. He entered a not guilty plea to all counts and took the stand to testify that he fatally shot the two individuals — Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber — on the evening of August 25, 2020, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, out of self-defense on that day.

After the shooting of Blake, a Black man, Rittenhouse drove from Illinois to Kenosha with an illegally obtained pistol in order to serve as a vigilante during the demonstrations that followed the shooting.

Rittenhouse 'will live on in glory,' according to users on far-right forums.
There were only positive replies to Rittenhouse's acquittal in the top 18 postings of one fringe forum on Friday afternoon, with the top threads each receiving more than 2,500 likes in total.

One of the most popular posts on the site contained a two-and-a-half-minute handmade song in favor of Rittenhouse called "Ballad of the Kenosha Kid," which was written by a member of the community. An anti-transphobic epithet appears in the lyrics, along with references to Rittenhouse wearing "an AR on his sleeve."

As a result of the event and the subsequent trial, several users have suggested that Rittenhouse should sue "the media" for its coverage of the incident and Rittenhouse's trial, with one user writing that his name "will live on in glory." Commenters on the site stated that Rittenhouse did not deserve to be in court in the first place and congratulated him on surviving the trial and "all he has gone through" so far.

Rittenhouse has been endorsed for president by others on that same fringe site, as well as the social media platform Gab, which is popular among conservatives. They have written comments such as "#KyleForPresident" and "Rittenhouse 2028" in support of him. Until 2040, Rittenhouse, who is 18 years old, would not be eligible to run for president of the United States.

Numerous individuals on a major Telegram channel with more than 425,000 followers, which was formed by a renowned conspiracy theorist related to the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, hailed the jury's verdict and urged killing "rioters."

According to experts, the acquittal might result in bloodshed.
The decision to acquit Rittenhouse has piqued the interest of extremism specialists, who are afraid that the judgment might encourage hazardous vigilantism and street violence in the future.

"Going out on the streets of Kenosha with firearms loaded for the purpose of gunfights," Newhouse saw several on the right saying, with others hailing the acquittal as "a victory for vigilantism and anti-leftist violence," Newhouse claimed.

As part of a tweet, Joan Donovan, research director of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University, expressed her concern that the decision will result in a "significant spike in street violence," vigilantism, and political violence.

—Joan Donovan, PhD (@BostonJoan) on Twitter. The date is November 19, 2021.
Several posts on a fringe forum referring to Rittenhouse as "Saint Kyle of Kenosha," with a photo of Rittenhouse's face superimposed over an image of a saint, were discovered by Insider.

In an interview with Newhouse, he stated that he has "already seen indicators" that Rittenhouse is being absorbed into far-right narratives, with some referring to him as "Saint Kyle."

The way fanatics have martyred far-right terrorists in the past, such as Brenton Tarrant and Patrick Crusius, according to Newhouse, is eerily similar to this. Tarrant livestreamed his shooting spree in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which he murdered 51 people and wounded 49 others in two mosques in February of this year. A day before the massacre, he published a racist manifesto titled "The Great Replacement" on the internet, which quickly gained widespread attention. Later that year, Crusius slaughtered 19 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and a similar manifesto, which police suspect was written by Crusius, disseminated online, according to the Washington Post. Crusius was later identified as the perpetrator of the El Paso Walmart massacre.

Several Republican members of Congress, like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, have expressed support for Rittenhouse. He told Newsmax on Wednesday that he felt Rittenhouse would "probably make a fairly decent congressional intern" in an interview that aired on the cable news network.