There’s a Kyle Rittenhouse Cultural Center in Argentina—and It Just Got Raided

Authorities in Argentina this week raided a cultural center named after Kyle Rittenhouse—the American teen known for shooting three people, two fatally, during a Black Lives Matter protest. 

The raid came after one of the center’s members praised the recent assassination attempt on Argentina’s vice president. Police arrested José Derman on Monday, the same day as the raid on the cultural center, after he uploaded a YouTube video hailing the man who pointed a gun in the face of Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner as a “Brazilian hero who tried to do justice for Argentina,” according to La Nacion, an Argentine newspaper. 

The nearly 12-minute-long video was posted to the Facebook page of the Kyle Rittenhouse Cultural Center, which describes itself as an “anti-community space.”

Police confiscated an 83-millimeter mortar shell from the center’s building in La Plata, about an hour outside of Buenos Aires, La Nacion reported, adding that the police planned to destroy the shell. It’s unclear if Rittenhouse is aware of the cultural center or has any ties to it. Attempts to reach him through social media and his former attorney were unsuccessful. 

A judge ruled that Derman couldn’t be charged with public intimidation and instead ordered a professional mental health evaluation.

The outside of the Kyle Rittenhouse Cultural Center features a painting of Rittenhouse from the waist up wearing a suit and red tie, according to pictures posted online. Its Facebook page had some 600 followers as of Tuesday but has since gone dark. The YouTube video that prompted the raid had some 5,000 views. It, too, appears to have been taken offline.

Ariel Goldstein, a professor at the University of Buenos Aires who studies far-right trends in Latin America, said he had never heard of the center before the raid, describing it as “fringe.”

Still, the fact that Rittenhouse—whose trial became a cultural flashpoint in the U.S.—inspired a cultural center underscores the degree to which the far-right movement in the U.S. has exerted influence in Latin America. 

Rittenhouse became a poster boy for extremist ideals in the U.S. after he was acquitted of killing two people and wounding another with an assault rifle during a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020. He was 17 years old at the time of the killing. 

“The radicalization of the right wing of the Republican Party in the U.S. has a big effect on the Latin American right,” Goldstein said, noting the rise of far-right politicians in the region, from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to Argentine deputy Javier Milei, a libertarian who professes to fight against “cultural marxism.” 

Milei, who is planning to run as a presidential candidate in the 2023 elections in Argentina, distanced himself from the Rittenhouse cultural center and Derman. "We communicate that the Rittenhouse Cultural Center and Mr. José Derman who was arrested by the security forces are NOT part of La Libertad Avanza or any political space related to Javier Milei," he wrote in a message on Twitter following the raid.

Fernando Andrés Sabag Montiel, 35, the Brazilian who was arrested in the Sept. 1 assassination attempt against Kirchner, liked dozens of Facebook pages connected to far-right groups and groups associated with hate speech, according to local media, which reported that he is refusing to talk. His left elbow also reportedly features a tattoo of a black sun, an esoteric symbol used by Nazis and later neo-Nazis.