Five years ago, one of the most tyrannical smear and censorship campaigns in modern history was unleashed on a 17-year-old boy.
After two nights of riots in Kenosha, WI, Kyle Rittenhouse volunteered to clean up the destruction and protect the immigrant Indian family business Car Source, whose car lots were burned the previous nights. He brought his lifeguard medical kit to provide first aid.
Videos published that night clearly show KR being attacked. A gunshot is fired behind KR as he runs from a masked man lunging at him. KR shoots him. Then, KR is chased by a mob, hit in the head, kicked in the face, and hit with a skateboard before firing again in self-defense.
But the media misinformed the masses.
NBC News with Alison Morris cut out not only the jump-kick but the entire chase, describing the 17-year-old, who fell after running away and being hit in the head, as "a man sitting in the middle of the street waving a gun at people running by".
MSNBC's "The Beat with Ari Melber" also edited out crucial moments. His audience never saw KR kicked in the face and hit with the skateboard before shots rang out. "Now this will be paused before that actual shot. That's part of our standards," Melber told viewers.
In an MSNBC "Morning Joe" segment, which didn’t show the attack footage, the host described it to viewers as Rittenhouse "just running around shooting and killing protesters".
Over at CNN, Anderson Cooper described the "white teenager" as the attacker in "a shooting attack on protesters."
Democracy Now's Amy Goodman spread the misinformation that KR was "shooting into a crowd," emphasizing that KR was a "white man".
Some Fox News pundits also rushed to judgment. Chris Wallace said there was "no justification" for KR's self-defense, and Marie Harf repeatedly described KR as guilty of "murder", just two days after the shooting, over a year before trial.
The next day, Facebook labeled KR a "mass murderer", affecting how the boy would be seen by billions —approx 35% of the world population.
Facebook's CEO told CBS, "We spent a long time looking into this deeply, and we've designated him as a mass murderer."
FB deleted KR's accounts and censored all search results for "Kyle Rittenhouse".
The other Big Tech giants—the most trafficked sites in the world—also censored the public discourse, including Google, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.
Some of it continues to this day.
Instagram removed comments sympathizing with KR when he cried on the stand as he recounted having his life threatened by a large man with a gun, being ambushed, running away, and eventually being forced to defend himself.
Twitter censored the words "Kyle Rittenhouse did nothing wrong," labeling the support for the 17-year-old who was attacked, "glorifying violence". Users were forced to delete these tweets to continue using Twitter.
TikTok removed even the most cordial discourse, accusing it of "harassment and bullying", like this clip from
.
Meanwhile, it was not considered bullying for the nation's most powerful lawmakers to call for KR's extrajudicial imprisonment and spread lies about him across the country. Lawmakers falsely accused KR of being a "white supremacist" and "terrorist".
As the online public discourse in KR's favor was systemically suppressed, the media continued to call him a murderer, ignoring key facts, and instead focusing on the utterly insignificant detail that KR "crossed state lines" as if it were a crime.
When Senate candidate Josh Mandel shared a meme mocking the incessantly repeated "crossed state lines" talking point, Facebook censored his post and threatened to delete his entire account.
FB also censored video creator Mark Dice for sharing a non-graphic video of KR offering medical care to an injured protester. He later bandaged the protester's injured foot. KR was not a certified EMT. However, he was a certified lifeguard with additional training in first aid.
GoFundMe shut down KR's family campaign to raise money for KR's bail and legal defense.
Both Facebook & Twitter censored users who shared other links to donate, including KR's lawyer and mother.
When KR’s mom shared a link to donate to, Twitter disabled the retweet button.
Discover, one of the world's largest payment companies, blocked donations to KR's GiveSendGo fundraiser. Discover did this without public announcement, but confirmed its actions after an internal email leaked.
When KR's family attempted to raise defense funds by selling "Free Kyle" t-shirts, the printing platform terminated the online store because they said KR's case was "controversial" and "complex".
Shopify, one of the largest e-commerce platforms in the world, also banned the sale of KR shirts, which were being sold to raise KR defense funds.
To this day (even after KR's acquittal), Google, Yahoo, Duck Duck Go, and Bing ban searches for Kyle Rittenhouse merch in their online marketplaces.
Yet they allow searches for merchandise of convicted serial killers and actual mass murderers, like Jeffrey Dahmer.
Miraculously, after 87 days behind bars, KR raised enough funds to pay the $2 million bail. Then, after enduring over a year's worth of smears and censorship, he would successfully defend himself again—this time in the courtroom. A jury acquitted him of all charges.
Despite the overwhelming exculpatory evidence that led to his acquittal, the censorship had a huge impact on public opinion. Nearly half the population was thoroughly convinced that KR is a murderous monster.
Corrections: An earlier version of this article misidentified NBC News's Alison Morris as MSNBC’s Kelly Clarkson. Shopify is one of the largest e-commerce platforms, not the largest.
Stay tuned for my upcoming feature-length documentary, "Killing Kenosha".
See a 10-minute teaser and support the project at GiveSendGo.com/KillingKenosha!
I’m looking forward to the movie.
The free and easy access to information is bookmatched by the free and easy suppression of information.
This is just one story, and it ended with a reasonably fair verdict. But for most of us freedom is in the hands of oligarchs, not juries, and there’s no appeal when justice lies behind a paywall.
Freedom is hard work, and it’s most costly when you think you don’t have to pay for it.
Thank you for your hard work putting this together.