On Saturday, a rally was held in Kenosha calling for “justice for Jacob Blake.”

But one speaker’s words during the rally were decidedly not peaceful, as the Kenosha News reported.

Extremism at Kenosha ‘Justice for Jacob‘ Rally: ‘If You Kill One of Ours, It‘s Time for Us to Kill One of Yours‘ https://t.co/Kc2AUMWpkT

— Brandon Darby (@brandondarby) August 30, 2020

But near the end of the rally, one man introduced as “our president” strayed from the message by saying, “If you kill one of us, it’s time for us to kill one of yours.”

The man, who was not able to be immediately identified, said:

“I love being black. I love black people. I know some of you may not want to say that … You tell us how to behave when you have taken our lives. The black man is worth something. His life is worth something. I have to say god damn it – if you kill one of us, it’s time for us to kill one of yours. I know everybody don’t want to hear that. But damn why are we the ones who have to keep burying ours and got to keep clean for you to see us as being human? We ain’t never did nothing to nobody.”

Yikes. More than a little crazy.

Talk about stoking division.

There’s no reality there. There’s no recognition of the real circumstances surrounding Jacob Blake’s shooting. Or even that he’s still alive and not dead. Now, we still have to have all the facts come out. But what we’ve learned so far is that Jacob Blake was wanted on a warrant reportedly for sexual assault, that he allegedly resisted arrest having a physical struggle with police and had been tased twice but it didn’t stop him. He was reportedly also armed with a knife that the police told him to put down, but he kept walking away from them to go reach into his car for something. Only then was he shot. The knife was later found on the floorboard of the car.

That’s a far cry from the initial report just that he was “shot 7 times in the back.”

But even if the police were ultimately found to be in the wrong, that wouldn’t justify this kind of a threat. If the police were wrong in shooting Jacob Blake, how could that justify killing someone else? It’s that kind of mentality that has left millions in damage, people assaulted and dead because of riots, including black people. So how does any of this help anyone?

Now, Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes was there at the rally. Jacob Blake’s father called for civility:

“If we tear it up, we have nothing,” Blake Sr. said. “I don’t want you all to be homeless. I don’t want you to be store-less. I don’t want you not to be able to buy your sons, daughters and grandbabies the food and the milk that they need … show them for one night, we don’t have to tear up nothing.”

Let’s hope there’s far more of this than of the prior speaker.

But it’s been the kind of thought of that speaker in Kenosha that we’ve seen in the riots, the belief that violent actions are justified, the vile perception that black people are somehow in chains now, not recognized as human beings, that police are just trying to hunt black people down. If one believes that is reality, then you get reactions based on that perception, everything from fighting back against the police, because after all they want to kill you, to riots trying to burn down police buildings. How many people actually believe this and/or how many are just using this to hype anarcho-Communism? Either is a troubling thought.