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
@Valentine
It just everything that ends all these nazi groups have seems to always lead back to Russia. They’re bigots, american made no doubt, but also it’s getting ridiculous how Russiagate is just so intertwined with US politics.
@Valentine : it’s more that right wing reject from America are welcomed in Russia by virtue of being both opponent to the USA *and* ideologically compatible.
I guess Poutine took notice when the whole taliban thing backfired on America to only help like minded people, not just random people who happen to have a common ennemy with you.
Oogly,
Forgive me, i promised not to talk more about ‘Russia gate’ on here…Before people thought i am putin-bot or a troll. But Russia and US always twisted together and trying to make influence with another. But i think about server is actually not about rightwing and just because many unregulated servers.
https://youtu.be/hn1VxaMEjRU
@Valentine
Now that I cooled my head a bit that does make more sense and you’re probably right on this. Chances are it’s probably just one of those coincidences that are just that, coincidences.
Btw the Insane Clown Posse is apparently on our side.
https://mobile.twitter.com/meakoopa/status/897956122295803904?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Clowns vs Nazis, are we in a Fallout Mod or something? Cause I just, I can’t stop laughing at how absurd this timeline is. From fear, joy, other? Yes.
@olhmann
I missed your comment. Not sure if it is true what you said – but this right wing guys like this guy crying on the video. People would laugh at them.
Putin and gvt little bit smart than Trump, he knows how to play. He wishes happy Eid to Muslim on twitter but then ignore that people pay militia in kavkaz to try to get Russian Muslim to leave. But on surface he says right things and before sanctions people like him he improves economy.
Ugh, relatives being racist on Facebook again. Got a family reunion coming up, too, if work lets me have the time off. Still not sure I want to go even if I do get the time. *sighs*
How petty is it that if I had the money atm, I’d put out a Craigslist ad to hire someone black and openly trans from Kentucky to be my date for it?
@Amnesia
Not at all, tbh.
It’s long past time your relatives got over their racism. And recent events make that more imperative than ever.
Consider this: If your relatives were willing to be adult human beings, something so small wouldn’t break their minds.
@Amnesia
Sympathies. Just had the same sitch month and a half ago. Well, no racists, but plenty of other toxicity and expense and travel and bleh…
Didn’t take much for that blubbering coward to collapse in a puddle of self-pity and tears and snot.
@Oogly
Fuckin nazis, how do they work
(and how do you turn them the fuck off)
Oh colour me not surprised.
Their objections to injustice, violence, terrible conditions in prison etc are purely based on whether it happens to them.
When it’s other people, that’s just fine. Indeed they get off on it.
All my sympathy, Orion. It sucks when the fighting happens in your home, because you can’t go home again afterwards.
My best wishes to you and to all the people of Charlotteville
Bannon pretends to dismiss extreme right as “fringe”. Of course he doesn’t actually condemn what they stand for – just faux-condemns them for not being successful enough.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/17/steve-bannon-calls-far-right-losers-trump-warns-china-trade-war-american-prospect
@weirwoodtreehugger
Alaska Thunderfuck has nothing at all to do with Baked Alaska. The former is a drag queen, the latter is an Internet nazi.
Check out this glimpse of what some other neo-Nazis are saying happened. The reality-warping is strong, and it will surprise nobody here to learn that they’ve been trying to sell their version of things on RoK.
https://qz.com/1053220/charlottesville-attack-how-the-violence-unfolded-through-the-eyes-of-the-alt-right/
“hired profesional anarchist”.
Sometime, I wonder if the nazis understand the concept of word, and that you can’t randomly string them together while still having a meaning.
Of course, in response to OP, I have only this to say:
Valentine: the far right in the US fetishizes Putin, and has for a while. That’s why of all countries in the world, the nazis chose Russia to be their nameservers — not Iceland or Tuvalu or whatever, but straight from .com to .ru.
I don’t think Russia chose them exactly, though its propaganda has been consistently building that hard-right manly-man Putin image up for a decade or so.
*snerk*
That’s really the only response I have to this
Numerosis
But there nothing right wing about .ru. my email .Ru…. I think they go to Russian server because American Nazis think Russia is good now, but server is available just because plenty of unregulated servers, not because Russian directly make servers for Nazis.
I agree Nazis like how Russia looks to them now but i think they misunderstood. Propoganda was not for them, was for Russians.
@Valentine: I understand what you’re saying, and I think it’s very helpful of you to give a Russian perspective of what’s going on for those of us here (myself included) who aren’t in or near Russia.
Also, splendid news about the Daily Stormer being gone for good!
Pretty sure it’s mostly the latter; there’s not a whole lotta places with the combined web infrastructure and lack of regulation that Russia has.
Which is exactly what I said. Someone asked if there was a Rupaul’s drag race cast member with a similar name. I answered.
My uncle lives in Bethesda (which is why I was in Washington last month) and took a day trip out to Annapolis. The statehouse is beautiful (evidently the oldest continuously-used government building in the US), but I was struck by the prominent statue of Chief Justice Roger Taney sitting at the rear doors. Maryland seems to have this bizarre love-hate relationship with Taney as one of history’s more well-known Marylanders: they want to praise him for pushing back on Lincoln’s suspension of civil liberties, but they can’t escape the legacy of the Dred Scott decision. To my surprise, there were two signs at the base of the statue outlining both of those legacies, so it’s not like Maryland was hiding the terrible decision Taney made.
Personally, I think the ghosts of Dred Scott are too numerous to justify any monuments to Taney. I think America can better tweak the nose of neo-Confederates by replacing Confederate statues with William T. Sherman monuments with an plaque that reads “Those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.”
Sherman may not have personally had the most progressive views on race, but the man understood the Confederate mind. I find his words still ring clearly to this day.