Thread by @robertpjones

1/ THREAD: The danger we're facing goes beyond a rogue killer. Among white Christians, a belief in America's divine mission doubles support for political violence.
I don’t say this glibly: God help us.
#RittenhouseVerdict
robertpjones.substack.com/p/free-as-f-ky…

2/ Despite his boyish white frat boy appearance, there was plenty of evidence of Rittenhouse’s deeper white supremacist orientation, both before and after the tragic events in Kenosha. Judge Bruce Schroeder ruled this evidence irrelevant and inadmissible.

3/ Just 90 minutes > pleading not guilty to murder/weapons charges in Jan, Rittenhouse appeared at a WI bar in a T-shirt that read “Free as F^(<,” and drank three beers, despite being underage. That declaration, heartbreakingly captures the brazenness of white supremacy in 2021.

4/ If Rittenhouse’s skin were Black, he undoubtedly wouldn't have:
-Received massive funding from a conservative white Christian crowdfunding site.
-Been celebrated by prominent white Republican elected officials who wear their Christian identity on their sleeve.

5/ “Free as F^(<”
That is the ultimate freedom, the unfettered license, of white supremacy. And we’ve seen it before—countless times.
robertpjones.substack.com/p/free-as-f-ky…

6/ Lest we make the mistake of thinking Rittenhouse is some aberration, recently released data from @PRRIpoll's Am Values Survey finds a frightening number of Americans—esp those who are white, conservative, & Christian—believe violence may be necessary to “save the country.”

7/ Today, for an alarming number of white conservative Christians, the mark of Christian faithfulness is not a love that inspires them to lay down their lives for their friends, but a defensiveness that lures them to take the lives of their fellow citizens.

8/ The anti-democratic and white supremacist core of this worldview snaps into focus as soon as we ask just one question: What is the “America” they are saving? This question is at the heart of the MAGA ideology that has now fully overtaken one of our two major political parties.

9/ If Trump has done anything for us, he has peeled back a thin veneer of patriotic- and Christian-sounding words to reveal the core claim underneath it all: That God intended America to be a white Christian nation.

10/ That MAGA claim has literally generated—for those among the chosen— a license to kill anyone who threatens that norm and the confidence that those actions will not only be free of negative consequences, but be rewarded both here on earth and in heaven.
robertpjones.substack.com/p/free-as-f-ky…