Anti-BLM militiamen answer call to arms
Members of ‘Kenosha Guard’ hail teenager who killed two on night of Wisconsin protests
AS PROTESTERS massed on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, last Tuesday, Kevin Matthewson stood not far from his house holding an AR-15 rifle.
The 36-year-old private detective was on a mission to protect his neighbourhood, he told The Sunday
Telegraph. Shops across the city had been vandalised as public fury at the police shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed black man, spilt into widespread disorder.
After businesses were looted and homes burned, the group helped raise $20,000 (£15,000) to restore the damage, he claimed. But Mr Matthewson was also joined on Tuesday night by several hundred heavily armed men, who had responded to a “call to arms” he put out on his “Kenosha Guard” Facebook page for “patriots” to help defend the city from “evil thugs”.
“Our law enforcement was outnumbered. Our local leaders failed,” he said.
Experts say militias have proliferated under the administration of Donald Trump, and particularly since the renewal of the Black Lives Matter protests this summer.
On Friday, Mark Zuckerberg apologised for Facebook being “too slow” to take down the Kenosha Guard page, despite a number of users flagging it. He said the site’s policies on armed militia groups were “new”.
Some groups are unashamedly white supremacist such as the Proud Boys. Others have been involved in pitched battles with Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, Oregon, and Kalamazoo, Michigan. Mr Matthewson, a Trump-supporting member of the NRA, launched the Kenosha Guard Facebook page just days after the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota in May, as unrest swept across the nation.
Wisconsin is an “open carry” state, which means that neither Mr Matthewson and his supporters nor armed demonstrators on the other side were breaking the law merely for having guns on the street. But the Kenosha Guard eventually turned a febrile situation into a fatal one.
Among those answering Mr Matthewson’s call for “patriots” was Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old now facing murder charges after he allegedly killed two people that night.
Mr Matthewson never met Rittenhouse, a high school dropout who had travelled 15 miles from his home in Antioch, Illinois, to join the group on the streets of Kenosha.
“The teenager should never have been there,” he said, claiming that his invocation of the second amendment – which has stipulations against children bearing arms – ought to have been a warning. Still, Mr Matthewson has no regrets for forming the militia.
“Wisconsin’s Governor [Tony] Evers had rejected help from President
Trump to send troops,” he explained. “I had no desire to have outside folks come into our community.”
Another to answer the appeal was Justin Mishler, 28, a former marine, whose deployments included a spell in Afghanistan. Mr Mishler had fewer misgivings than Mr Matthewson about Rittenhouse’s presence in Kenosha.
“I personally believe that he defended himself pretty well, and did a much better job than most cops would have done in that situation,” he said.
Mr Mishler is a member of the Boogalo Bois, a far-Right group. He has attended a vast array of protests – from confronting Black Lives Matter demonstrators to opposing the Covid-19 lockdown.
“Boogaloo ideology is that it is their job to throw a wrench in the system,” explained Amy Cooter, senior lecturer in sociology at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.
“They tend to follow some of those traditional libertarian beliefs that government, especially the federal government, is too powerful and we should do something about that.
“Social media has been very important. Traditionally groups like this have met a lot in person. Even before this, the online presence has become more important in recent years.”
Police greeted the Kenosha Guard warmly, according to Mr Matthewson, and a video clip went viral of officers thanking members and handing out bottles of water.
But law and order experts believe the police are not in general relaxed about the rise of armed militias, said Arthur Rizer, the director of criminal justice and civil liberties at the R Street consultancy in Washington DC.
“The police see this rise as a very scary thing. You have people out with guns and you can’t determine easily if they are good guys or bad guys.
“You are making split-second decisions without knowing what the truth is,” he said.