Even aside from the whole Nazi business, Christopher Cantwell is not what you’d call a nice person. He’s spent the better part of a decade engaging in his own brand of activism, first as a libertarian, then a Men’s Rights Activist and finally as the neo-Nazi he is today, harassing and threatening his assorted ideological and personal enemies.
But despite all the threats he made towards assorted leftist activists and journalists over the years he’s now facing the prospect of as much as 27 years in prison … for cyberstalking, threatening and attempting to extort one of his fellow white supremacists, a member of a far right group called “the bowl patrol,” named after the decidedly unfashionable haircut of racist mass shooter Dylann Roof.
Opening arguments in the case begin Tuesday. And while the trial — expected to last for two weeks — doesn’t seem likely to make much of a splash in the mass media, journalist and former Cantwell harassee Hilary Sargent will be reporting on the whole thing for The Informant. She’s started the week off with a long and very revealing account of Cantwell’s sordid history and his various legal entanglements over the years.
It’s well worth reading. Among other intriguing factoids, we learn that Cantwell is banned not only from Twitter ad YouTube and assorted other social media sites but that he’s also banned from OkCupid, Match.com and Tinder. We also learn that he raised bail money (for a previous case) on the far-right funding sites Hatreon and GoyFundMe. And that he pasted a lengthy quote from Hitler in one of his court filings.
Oh, and that he owns 17 guns, including two AR-15s.
I’m eagerly looking forward to Sargent’s reports from the courtroom.
For more on Cantwell, see the SPLC profile of him here. Or take a look through the We Hunted the Mammoth archives.
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@Ohlmann
I think they’ve been brainwashed into the cult. They are convinced that their cult is the one true way, and that any opposition is bad, so hurting the opposition at all costs is good to them. Fascism isn’t about the individual, it’s about groupthink.
There is a bright side to those idiot conservatives’ latest gun fetish: a noticeable percentage of them will never breed.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5923255/Trumps-female-Supreme-Court-favorite-belongs-group-helped-inspire-Handmaids-Tale.html
“Trump’s female Supreme Court favorite belongs to a Christian group which helped inspire The Handmaid’s Tale”
Because of course she does.
*sigh*
Honestly, from some of what I’ve seen, that trend with guns wasn’t even strictly ‘own the libs’ so much as pure unadulterated ‘you can’t tell me what to do!’ or ‘don’t talk down to me!’ They’re less interested in ‘owning the libs’ so much as they’re interested in ‘owning’ the actual responsible gun owners who talk about how trigger discipline is important.
@Naglfar, Ohlmann:
Yes, that’s pretty much what I was thinking… places like Gab tend to become places where only the loudest of harassers and those friendly with the moderators hang out. And there is lots of history of what happens when reactionary groups finally ‘win’ a place of their own and start turning on the allies that got them there.
@Surplus to Requirements:
I was thinking of it as ‘wanting to survive to receive your Darwin award’.
Though, as others have pointed out in the past, there’s a large and very important blood vessel not far from there, the femoral artery, and puncturing that is a good way to bleed to death while waiting for medical assistance.
@Surplus
Are Darwin Awards still a thing? I remember at least a few of those awards being given to men who blew their bits off with a gun, so it wouldn’t be new.
I will admit, this is the most literally I’ve seen someone take the term “ammosexual.”
The fulls story of Cantwell’s breakdown into the racism character:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190505162626/https://cognitame.com/blog.php?id=46
Sort of like The Screwfly Solution, but self-selecting?
The boundless self-confidence of the dumb!
So, a few weeks of reading in jail and he’s an expert, generously imparting his wisdom to the world. Incidentally, why do Virginia jails let inmates read Mein Kampf?
Perhaps because it was written in jail? There’s a certain symmetry to that.
Maybe also because prison guards and the like tend toward white supremacy, much as cops do.
An update on Cantwell’s trial:
https://www.informant.news/p/cantwell-trial-day-2-bowl-patrol
Cantwell found guilty.
To which he will not be sentenced, I’m sure.