Here’s the thing with the far-right – they’re invariably idiots. Watch any interview with skinheads or English Defence League types and you’ll see there are more intelligent molluscs.
One particular fella may just take the cake though, and that’s Stewart Rhodes who has just been convicted of sedition in a US court.
The January 6 lot weren’t exactly a MENSA convention but he really might be the stupidest insurrectionist to pick up a rifle in anger.
Who is Stewart Rhodes?
He’s the founder of a far-right anti-government militia called the Oath Keepers. Members of the group turned up with rifles as protests against police violence erupted in Ferguson, Missouri. A former St Louis police officer was fired after threatening to arrest a CNN host, and it later transpired he’d given a speech to an Oath Keepers meeting where he declared: “I’ve killed a lot and if I need to I’ll kill a whole bunch more”. Rhodes himself described Kyle Rittenhouse as a “hero and a patriot” after he shot two people dead.
Why is Rhodes the dumbest insurrectionist?
He actually has a law degree from Yale – though he was disbarred in 2015 after refusing to respond to two grievances against him. What makes him a candidate for stupidest Capitol rioter is his eyepatch.
Having an eyepatch doesn’t make someone an idiot…
Of course it doesn’t. People have lost eyes in accidents or through illness, there should be no stigma around wearing an eyepatch. What makes Rhodes an idiot is that he shot himself in the face with his own gun.
How did he do that?
Well, you see, he was working as a firearms instructor at the time and…
He was working as WHAT?
I know, I know. Anyway, the year was 1993, he was working as a firearms instructor when he dropped a loaded gun which went off and shot him in the eye.
What’s he been convicted of?
Rhodes is facing a lengthy spell in jail for seditious conspiracy – basically trying to overthrow the US government to keep Donald Trump in the White House. While he didn’t enter the Capitol building himself he was recorded telling Oath Keepers to “rise up in insurrection”, stashing weapons in a hotel, expressing regret that he didn’t bring those weapons to Washington and stating he could have hanged Nancy Pelosi from a lamppost.
Seems pretty daft to say and do all that stuff and hope to get away with it.
The man shot himself in the face with his own gun.
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