‘I believed things he told me that I now understand to be … lies,’ Dave Hancock says in new Rittenhouse documentary

A former spokesperson for Kyle Rittenhouse says he became disillusioned with his ex-client after learning that he had sent text messages pledging to “fucking murder” shoplifters outside a Chicago pharmacy before later shooting two people to death during racial justice protests in Wisconsin in 2020.

Dave Hancock made that remark about Rittenhouse – for whom he also worked as a security guard – on a Law & Crime documentary that premiered on Friday. The show explored the unsuccessful criminal prosecution of Rittenhouse, who killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

As Hancock told it on The Trials of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 90-minute film’s main subject had “a history of things he was doing prior to [the double slaying], specifically patrolling the street for months with guns and borrowing people’s security uniforms, doing whatever he could to try to get into some kind of a fight”.

  • norimee@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    And that’s exactly why we shouldn’t give him attention and media space.

    He is a “right-wing darling” because of articles and documentaries like that. He is triggering a negative reaction from the other side and that’s why he’s hailed a hero by the right.

    More attention makes it worse.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      If we do not give him attention, they still will. All you are doing is not letting people know who they think is praiseworthy. I don’t see that as helpful.

      You do not get to control who the right idolizes. All you can hope to do is shave some of them off by explaining why those people should not be idolized.

      Why people who have gone through all of childhood haven’t found out that ignoring bullies doesn’t actually make them go away is beyond me.

      • MagicShel@programming.dev
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        3 months ago

        One of the differences between the right and the left, you just made me realize, is how we treat heroes.

        Kyle murders two protestors and he’s a hero. He can fuck it up, but that’s all it takes to get there.

        If a left leaning person became a hero for rescuing cats out of a house fire, you’d have a hundred reporters digging up dirt about how he cuts in line at Starbucks, or an ex coworker thought his obsession with cute animal butts was a little creepy.

        I’m minimizing. People who do good things sometimes have done real shit but I don’t want to sidetrack. Point is, the right elevates their heroes while the left humanizes them. It’s not just a different playing field, it’s a whole other sport.