A good chunk of the "Hang Kyle!" crowd have been insisting that the criminal histories of the assailants are irrelevant.
Well, it's true that Rittenhouse couldn't have known that Rosenbaum was a child rapist who just got out of the looney bin and that couldn't have factored in to Rittenhouse's thinking. All Rittenhouse could know was that Rosenbaum was acting like a lunatic, had threatened his life a few times that night, was chasing him, and had his hand on his gun.
The thing that you're missing is that, if you're on the "Hang Kyle!" side, all you've had to work with since the video was released on August 26th of last year was the media narrative. You haven't had any facts on your side for the last year. That's where the criminal histories of the assailants are relevant - the narrative.
Just like you need to bury the facts to insist that Rittenhouse is guilty, you have to insist that facts that don't support the narrative aren't relevant. If the narrative is that Rittenhouse was a white supremacist, right-wing extremists, and domestic terrorist who went to Kenosha with a gun looking for trouble and hoping to provoke violence from a group of peaceful protestors marching for black lives and justice for Jacob Blake, you have to bury the facts about Rosenbaum particularly.
It's hard to maintain that Rittenhouse shot a peaceful protestor at a BLM march when you know that Rosenbaum was a violent, disgusting maniac who was shouting the N-word at the top of his lungs over and over while presumably marching for black lives. Rosenbaum was acting like a guy who wanted a fight and not like a guy who was there to peacefully protest for justice.
Terrorism is using violence, threat of violence, or intimidation to achieve a political goal.
It takes a special kind of stupid to see people engaged in violence, threat of violence, and intimidation in support of their political goals and then to call the kid resisting that violence a domestic terrorist.
Honestly, I don’t think I can abide any union with these people anymore.