““Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.” – Nietzsche
EXTREME CONTENT WARNING: – VIOLENCE ON PROTESTERS, RACISM, SEXISM, TRANSPHOBIA AND HOMOPHOBIA,
– These images, memes, comments, are just a sliver of what the Chicago area Back the Blue / Illinois Gun Owners Together supporters are posting to each other on their forums. It is a culture that is not just pro-police, but pro-violence on those that they perceive to be their enemies – Black Lives Matter, Antifa, Marxists, Anarchists, Socialists – every single protester is categorized into any and all of these movements; they are all left wing terrorists in their eyes. When Trump declared antifa and BLM to be domestic terrorist organizations, it gave these ‘Patriots’ an enemy. And they are receiving the green-light messaging from Trump daily as he’s supported Kyle Rittenhouse, citing his right to “self defense”, sends the military on protesters and condemns ‘dEMocRaTic gOverNOrs’ for not doing more policing to end the uprising. When you have Patricia and Mark McClosky, “Ken” and “Karen”, who went viral for pointing an AR-15 and pistol at Black Lives Matter protesters in St. Louis and later renamed by the internet as ‘Karen and Ken’, featured as guests at the RNC, you get Kyles. who post These are both internet warriors and vigilantes, the effect of this culture both online and in person leads to right-wing violence like what happened in Kenosha. In the words of Emily Cahill AKA Protest the Protesters, “Be a Kyle, not a Karen”
The point of posting these and looking at these should is to just remind ourselves that this is the darkness that resides deep in the law and order American psyche – a violent, reactionary, toxicity, a desire to kill, the making of a martyr, the unabashed glee from watching someone die. It is disgusting to no end. It’s going to take years of cultural shift to bring us away from this point.
Many of these authored by Illinois Gun Owners Together, the same org that organized a #FREEKYLE rally at the jail he was housed at.