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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Let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.
Well, that’s good for the ladies wherever he was living.
I was already aware of both of these but hadn’t thought about them in a while. Yet again, the right wing is incapable of humor.
I am not a lawyer, but I imagine this is not recommended legal advice.
A couple other people likely to report on this are Molly Conger, on Twitter as @socialistdogmom; and Emily Gorcenski.
This brought a smile to my face
This website is generally about mockery, but yikes! There is not much that is funny in that article, even for those that appreciate the blackest of black humour, but I did laugh that Cantwell was too extreme even for Gab.
When a Nazi is in court against another Nazi I can only hope they both lose.
I definitely wish for justice to give him a sentence that make him no more of a threat. If it can rehabilitate him all the better but I am not holding my breath.
Looks like it’s a lot more likely that our government will put this Nazi away.
https://www.informant.news/p/how-christopher-cantwell-crumbled
Looks as though our government is likely to put Cantwell away for a long time. No Nazi money, newspapers, or other corruption will save him. His time as a free man is short.
I wonder why he’s fighting these charges. Being put in jail is the ultimate permaban, which I thought was the goal all successful trolls aspire to. ?
@ ariblester
Indeed; and then, as he likes citing Hitler, he can use the Beer Hall Putsch quote.
“Pronounce us guilty a thousand times over: the goddess of the eternal court of history will smile and tear to pieces the State Prosecutor’s submissions and the court’s verdict; for she acquits us.”
Judge: “Yeah, well I don’t.”
@ Alan Robertshaw. Unfortunately, the sympathetic court handled handled Hitler most gently, declining to send him back to Austria and giving him fortress detention rather than actual prison. The judge lauded his patriotic motives and held that while he was undeniably guilty of Hochverat, high treason against the government, he was certainly not guilty of Landesverat, betraying the nation.
@Ariblester
I’ve always found it a bit funny that they think getting banned is such a victory anyway. All it shows is that you’ve annoyed someone, which is usually easy. It’s the digital equivalent of stomping on someone’s foot.
@Ohlmann
Same. I rather expect the opposite though – he’ll infect others while inside. Being radicalised whilst in prison is a bit of a common occurance.
@Threp
Indeed, in the United States a very significant chunk of white supremacists are radicalized while in prison. Yet another reason for criminal justice reform.
Just finished the Hilary Sargent article, which I highly recommend. My takeaway: while Christopher Cantwell may not be the worst human being who ever lived, he’s got to be in the bottom thousand. My responses to Cantwell’s greatest hits:
But it’s the peaceful protesters who are the real problem.
Bullies are cowards.
To the surprise of no one who follows this site.
“Save me! I hate you and want to kill you all, but save me anyway!”
Always projection with these clowns. Always.
As if begging the cops he despised to bail him out wasn’t pathetic enough. Like his favorite president, Cantwell has no loyalty to anyone or anything but himself.
So this jagoff has an arsenal, but calls the cops he hates to protect him whenever he gets a taste of his own medicine. JFC.
@personalpest
So just like every US libertarian? “Don’t tread on me, just tread on those other people’s freedoms!”
Um … what? What sort of completely feckless fool does that?!
The answer is “any American right-wing gun aficionado”, of course.
He had a whole array of weapons and not just firearms. What kind of a toxic mess of fear and anger do these guys live with to have a need for such things?
And then there’s the weaponization of media (such as it was after all the banning) and law enforcement and the hair-trigger willingness to use it on any perceived enemy. Even allies!
That’s a lot of fear and anger right there.
To be clear, I don’t feel sorry for him or his fellow travelers, I’m just kind of marveling at something I cannot even.
@Surplus
Fair point. Never understood those types. Gun’s a tool (albeit an unforgiving one), far as I’m concerned, and should be treated accordingly.
Good to see you, BTW.
@Hambeast
One of his own making, in this dolt’s case.
It’s amazing how many people get shot by unloaded guns.
@Threp
This is the perspective of most of the more responsible gun owners I’ve known. I don’t know too many people who own guns because they’re hard to buy where I live, but I do know a few people who have them and are on the left. They’re usually pretty annoyed with the right wing gun obsessives.
I’m not sure that ‘too extreme for Gab’ is necessarily the issue… he could have just annoyed enough of the regulars. And, honestly, the ‘Crying Nazi’ bit probably put him in trouble with the uber-macho types that make up so much of Gab to start with. My understanding is that Gab is a small enough space that many of the people there know each other, and all those egos have trouble fitting in the same place. (I mean, heck, Vox Day of all people ended up leaving the platform after a feud with Andrew Anglin of the Daily Stormer… and lawsuits… and it was a whole thing. But Day wasn’t thrown off for being too extreme so much as he angered people by telling them they should put a better gloss over their blatant Nazi leanings.)
I wonder if Jordan Peterson’s social media platform ‘Thinkspot’ ever actually got out of beta. Honestly, it was more going for the edgelords who think they’re clever academics. (Which explains why people like Michael Shermer were amongst his beta testers.)
With regards to gun safety… there’s been a noted increase of men literally shooting themselves in the crotch lately as the result of some sort of macho posing. (Cryp Dyke just posted Man Shows Off Gun In Grocery Store Checkout, Shoots Self In Dick earlier.) This is what you get when gun enthusiasts go full ‘You can’t tell ME what to do!’ It’s happened enough times that it has become its own thing, and as commenters there have noted, these are people who literally seem to consider gun safety as emasculating ‘political correctness’.
(I’m Canadian. I still grew up in a small town, learned how to use a .177 pellet pistol when I was about 8, and went to a high school that had its own shooting range. Believe me, I got taught gun safety early on.)
@Jenora
It appears to still be in public beta. Searching news, it appears there was a spike of articles about it in December 2019, then nothing, then another bunch in June 2020.
Sounds like a perfect place for Skimmingway.
AFAICT the main alt-right platform is Parler, which got a boost after a bunch of GOP senators and other office holders joined. The thing that I found funny about Parler is that the founder claimed that if all the conservatives left Twitter, leftists would come to Parler because we’d miss them. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I really wouldn’t miss having Pepe avatars screaming at me about how I should kill myself. Though that statement does reveal one of the reasons why sites like Parler and Gab don’t work well: without any leftists to troll, right wingers have to start attacking each other because they’re incapable of constructive discourse.
Re: shorting self in the dick
There was a trend back in June (I think? Time feels weird these days) of conservatives posting photos pointing loaded guns at their genitals with the safety off. I think they thought it would “own the libs,” but every leftist I know, myself included, was just making fun of it. It helps that I also don’t really care whether conservatives point guns at their junk, I just feel sorry for the healthcare workers who will have to deal with them after.
Yes, the “own the lib” attitude is often self destructive for no apparent reason. I mean, there’s being suicidal, and then there’s thoses guys, who are perfectly willing to die or be maimed to “own the lib” without showing any sign of being suicidal. That’s rather jarring. How dense one must be to not realize its own mortality ?
Being expulsed from Gab or thoses other fetid trash can of the far right don’t strike me as too hard. They love their purity tests and cabals, and won’t mind pushing out anyone who either fail one of thoses tests or just is in the wrong cabal.
Saying he was expulsed from Gab because he was too extreme for it is similar to say that Trotsky was exiled because he was too communist : maybe it contributed, but it wasn’t the main reason.