By David Futrelle
Call it a tale of two videos. On Monday, Vice News released a mini-documentary on “Race and Terror” in Charlottesville chronicling the #UniteTheRight march of this past weekend and the murder of antifascist activist Heather Heyer.
Some of the most chilling moments in the highly disturbing video, as I noted yesterday, came courtesy of Men’s-Rights-Activist-turned-white-supremacist Christopher Cantwell, one of the scheduled speakers at the abortive rally, who proudly showed off his numerous guns for the cameras before telling Vice News that he considered the weekend to have been a huge victory for the cause of white nationalism.
The fact that nobody on our side died, I’d go ahead and call that points for us. The fact that none of our people killed anybody unjustly, I think is a plus for us. And I think that we showed our rivals we won’t be cowed.
When Vice News reporter Elle Reeve gently suggested that the ISIS-style car attack that left Heather Heyer dead was “unprovoked,” Cantwell was indignant.
“That’s not true and you know that’s not true,” he tells her. After accusing antifa “animals” of attacking the car, Cantwell declares that the driver had no other option but to “hit the gas.” (In fact, videos show the driver “hitting the gas” when he was more than a block away from protesters, then speeding into the crowd.)
“And sadly,” Cantwell continued,
because our rivals are a bunch of stupid animals who don’t pay attention, they couldn’t just get out of the way of his car and some people got hurt. …
I think it was more than justified. The amount of restraint our people showed out there, I think was astounding. …
I think a lot more people are going to die before we’re done here, frankly.
Cantwell is now singing a rather different tune. In a new video, a tearful Cantwell — who plainly admits he engaged in violence at the rally — laments that a warrant has apparently been issued for his arrest, and that he’s terrified that if he is arrested the police will kill him.
He also fears for his life at the hands of “our enemies, [who’ve] been threatening us all over the place,” taking exception especially to a tweet from Chelsea Manning promising to “curb stomp” fascists. (A somewhat ironic complaint from a guy who used to harass feminists on Twitter with graphic suggestions as to how they might best kill themselves.)
He insists that he and his fellow white supremacists — many of whom, I need not remind you, showed up to their Charlottesville marches heavily armed and armored — have done their best to be peaceful and follow all the rules.
Quite a change from the fellow who only a few days earlier was talking so confidently about the necessity of a white “ethnostate” and coldly predicting that “a lot more people are going to die before we’re done here.”
Before taking up arms as a would-be warrior for a white ethnostate, as I noted in a post yesterday, Cantwell was a race- and gun-obsessed Men’s Rights Activist — and a regular contributor to A Voice for Men.
Here’s the Vice News video; it’s a tough watch but, I think, a necessary one for anyone who reads this blog regularly. While Cantwell is featured throughout the video — spouting an assortment of truly awful things — his sit-down interview with Reeve begins roughly 19 minutes in.
Here’s a mirror of Cantwell’s new video:
EDITED TO ADD: And here’s a brief clip from CAFE that contrasts the two videos.
https://twitter.com/cafedotcom/status/897934439963021313
H/T — Raw Story
He’s doing this “crying Nazi video” to further a narrative. We’re not the audience. It’s people who’ve not seen him before that he wants to reach.
“I’m scared of what the police will do to me” is not aimed at us. It’s at the not-yet-radical rightist, who might come upon that video and think, “Hey, he’s being persecuted, maybe I should help”.
He’s trying to work in a “Hero’s story” into the narrative, where he realizes he has to get ready for this supposed ‘persecution by police’. And he needs your help! Won’t you help?
Just to nerdsplain a bit, unless EJ is from Slovakia, the .sk registry probably didn’t have presence requirements at the time. According to Wikipedia, they do now, much like Canada’s .ca does. So you can’t literally get any URL you like; every registry has restrictions as to who can register certain extensions, and a lot of the country codes (all two-character domain extensions are country codes like .me, .tv, .cn, .de, .fr etc) require you to either be a citizen of that country or maintain a business there.
Domain names are fun!
Huh, that’s cool. Thanks Gussie Jives. You make the internet a better place.
@Axecalibur:
Huh. That’s not what the ACLU statement/press release thingy I read was saying, or perhaps I was reading it poorly.
Hi, PeeVee!
@Falconer
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/16/politics/aclu-free-speech-white-supremacy/index.html
^Mentions it a few times. And googling ‘aclu downtown moved’ gets a buncha results from news pieces saying the same. It was to be relocated to a park away from the city center, ACLUVA sued and stopped the relocation
@ Troubelle;
Dormitory breakfast… cold pizza and warm beer….
@Axecalibur:
Okay, guess I was reading poorly. Thanks!
Well that went sour more quickly than Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
uh, oh, terror attack in Spain. Someone drove a van into a crowd. It’ll be interesting to see if the toddler-in-chief condemns “violence on all sides… on all sides….”
Toddler-in-chief probably won’t even notice for 3 days.
I’ll just leave this here:
http://i.imgur.com/zF1YfYd.jpg
I have to wonder why vehicular terrorism seems so popular nowadays. It’s almost like the whole concept didn’t occur to anyone until 2016.
Is it just that the media wasn’t paying attention to these attacks until one lucky strike in France managed to kill far more people than is usually possible with this method?
from a CNN interview with a historian…
Hehe, thanks. 😀 I realize that domains involve a lot of jargon and this is all very inside baseball, but I’ve talked my fair share of folks through DNS updates and zone file edits, so I’ve tried to hone a vocabulary for cutting through all that and make it easy on folks. If the topic’s domains, I’m your guy. 😉
I guess it’s because it doesn’t require special know-how or chemistry (like bomb-building) and it isn’t something a metal detector or bomb-sniffing dog can detect. All it takes is a skill that an average person often has….the ability to drive a vehicle.
Now; We need to think of new ways to prevent vehicular-crowd-plowing. Maybe have a lookout who can see the vehicle beginning to speed up and go “LOOK OUT!”
And if you want technical stuff explained so that you get a “deer in the headlights” look in your eyes, I’m here.
The Republican solution to crowd-plowing is apparently… legalize it if they don’t have a permit???
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/898243270169563136
The hypocrisy is astounding. Anime take me away-
http://i.imgur.com/wlwu6hh.png
Oh sweet summer child, if only that were true.
JS:
I suspect you’re right. And there’s an element of “white lives matter” about it: “hey, if this white dude fears the police will kill him, maybe BLM are full of shit?”
“I prefer my Nazis broken, alienated, scared, and sobbing.” — Benjamin Dixon
@JS
He (OP) may be doing it to further his narrative with newbies, but I also think it’s real. He knows what he’d do if he were in the cop’s shoes and assumes the cops are like him.
Others on this site have said it before, and put it better, but MRA’s, Nazis, and MGTOW’s seem to have a pretty crappy worldview; and the worst part is: many seem to think everyone is just like them in thought and behavior. So whatever twisted crap they spew on the internet that they want to do to their ex or imagined ex, they seem to believe it’s justified because said imaginary ex would do the same to them if they were in their shoes.
I really hope it is for good. Part of me wants to set up a service that pings it and sends me an alert if it ever comes back.
“Dormitory breakfast… cold pizza and warm beer….”
Did you meN aren’t full of shit?
Sorry, PeeVee, what I meant was that he probably wants to portrary white supremacists as more victimised than PoC are.
Moggie! Sorry i just want to say sorry if i mention anything to you on the before article that made you upset.
@GrumpyOld SocialJusticeMangina
Thanks for posting that; I love Christine Lavin!
…plus, that gives me the opportunity to post the best song title of all time, ever, seriously:
Regretting What I Said to You When You Called Me 11:00 On a Friday Morning to Tell Me that at 1:00 Friday Afternoon You’re Gonna Leave Your Office, Go Downstairs, Hail a Cab to Go Out to the Airport to Catch a Plane to Go Skiing in the Alps for Two Weeks, Not that I Wanted to Go With You, I Wasn’t Able to Leave Town, I’m Not a Very Good Skier, I Couldn’t Expect You to Pay My Way, But After Going Out With You for Three Years I DON’T Like Surprises!! Subtitled: A Musical Apology
…anyone who hasn’t heard this song really needs to go listen to it on YouTube.
@Weird Eddie and Grumpy, re: dorm breakfast
I have a microwave, at least…plus, Cheerioes and yogurt doesn’t require any heating. (Unless your fridge is too cold and freezes your yogurt. That happened to me Tuesday. I had to thaw it a little to eat it.)
That said, I had a friend whose toaster caught on fire while we were RPing. He didn’t even add OOC marks–just started freaking out in text.
@SpukiKitty, re: vehicular homicide as terrorism and how to abate it
I know not their names, but in front of businesses, you tend to see lines of concrete geometries (usually cylindrical pillars or rectangular prism planters, but sometimes spheres) placed together just closely enough to prevent a car from going through them in one piece and with any semblance of velocity. That said, they’re not too convenient to deploy on roads, but it’s a thing that exists.
@Troubelle
The post-shaped ones are called bollards (probably because they look like the nautical bollards); I don’t know about the other shapes.
@ troubelle
Rather unimaginatively, if you want to order any, they’re just called ‘anti terror blocks’. It’s perhaps a sign of the times that there’s an official rating system for how strong they are.
Apparently the Cheeto-in-Chief thinks Muslim murder drivers should be killed. (in Spanish)
Maybe if they had marched around Barcelona with torches first they would have been “fine people”.
I’m both amused and disgusted that a Spanish newspaper has a section called “Trump Universe”.
Cantwell is now officially banned for life from OK Cupid. 💔
@Jeyne Doe
I don’t know why. He seems like such a nice, well-adjusted man.
/sarcasm on 12
Beware, there is another Christopher Cantwell on twitter, who is not this one.
I believe he may be considering a name change (/s)
JS:
I suggest Chris Canteven.
Valentine:
Relax, you haven’t said anything to upset me!
@JS
After reading this on Twitter last night, I think you’ve nailed it.
Cold pizza’s delish and warm beer is pretty much the norm outside of the U.S.A./Canada.
@ Toubelle, Gaebolga & Alan Robertshaw
That’s cool! Time to perfect it!
(DARN RE-EDIT TIMER! MAKE IT LONGER! YEESH!)
Don’t forget; Said torches must be the “Tiki” variety and give off a wonderful Citronella aroma!
My heart, prayers and good vibes goes out to the victims & survivors of both car attacks.
http://i.imgur.com/Ylyr3AB.jpg
(I like how they even got the local council pallet set right :-D)
Troubelle
I’m pretty sure that – if the cops or councils wanted to use mobile versions – it’d be fairly straightforward to manufacture hollow plastic-ish ones. The same sort of thing that’s often used on longer-term roadworks and some building sites. The ones that are filled with water to provide the weight to keep them heavy, solid and wind & traffic resistant as well as being easy to remove by simply draining out the water.
@Troubelle:
Could be worse. Back when I was in a University dorm, we once had to clean out a refrigerator that was set so low that that cans of Diet Coke had frozen, bloated up, and split open, spilling slushy Diet Coke all over the bottom of the refrigerator.
Interestingly, the cans of normal Coke were just fine at the same temperature, definitely cold, but not about to explode. I think the difference was down to the fact that the more stuff you mix into water the lower its freezing temperature gets (which is why salt works as a de-icer) and most artificial sweeteners are much sweeter than sugar, so you need less of them for the same level of sweetness. Hence, sugary soft drinks freeze at a lower temperature than otherwise similar diet soft drinks.
We did adjust the refrigerator before putting anything new back in it.
@Falconer
Nothing personal, you’ve just got an untenable position here.
Look at places that do have anti-Nazi ordinances. The German authorities are no more likely to deny leftist protesters permits than ours are. And no less likely to then gas and bludgeon them anyway, of course. Given that that’s been the standard of police interaction with people on our side for as long as there’ve been police, I’m not really seeing a slippery slope when we say Nazis and Klansmen should get treated at least as bad as we do. Which will never happen, because most cops have worn a white hood or done a heil hitler in their time too.
@Gr8Dane
A whole lotta Asatru (Norse neopagans) agree with you there; it has come to violence before.
When I watched the first video (not the 2nd, but the documentary) I just flat out cried.
Lover of the site and 1st time commenter .