In the middle of August 2017, a bunch of neo-Nazis calling themselves “white nationalists” stormed into Charlottesville, Virginia, under the pretense that participants wanted to show off how organized they were. Over two days, the Unite the Right rally devolved into violence, with one person dead and dozens others injured. The impetus for the rally was the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The devolution didn’t have to go very far to become dangerous. While counterprotester Heather Heyer lost her life after convicted murderer James Fields plowed his car into her section of peaceful protesters, then-President Donald Trump characterized a large swath of the white supremacists there that day as “very fine people.”
In October 2021, a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by the victims in the community who were intimately affected by the white supremacist violence that day began its trial phase. There are 24 defendants in the case, including alt-right racist Richard Spencer and white supremacist podcaster Christopher Cantwell, which has made the jury selection and proceedings thus far a somewhat unbalanced display of antifa conspiracy theories and general white persecution complex gunk. The two snowflakes are seemingly trying to represent themselves in court. It hasn’t gone well, and attorneys who have tried to represent Cantwell in particular have had to drop him, citing “repugnant or imprudent” behavior on his part.
Cantwell, who was known almost exclusively in right-wing white nationalist supremacist circles, is best known as the “crying Nazi.” After at least three attorneys declined to represent him, Cantwell reportedly hired a lawyer who “appeared in court wearing an early-1800s-style red waistcoat with gold buttons, bowtie, white muttonchop whiskers, black velcro shoes, and a 1910s-style straw boater hat.”
Before this civil lawsuit, Cantwell was convicted of extortion and threatening other racists and antisemites he was fighting with in September 2020. When he was arrested, federal officials found “7 guns, a machete and a crossbow in the residence and his car.” Since the pre-trial began a few weeks ago, there have been reports from the courtroom of all kinds of unhinged interruptions, objections, and ...
Buzzfeed News reports that Jarrett William Smith, a man who spent five months in the same medium-security unit with Cantwell in Marion, Illinois, has some insight into how Cantwell has gotten his news, and the articulation of his thoughts during this time. Smith told the media outlet that Cantwell was a part of a group of white supremacists who banded together. How did they stay in touch with what was happening in the world around them? By way of Tucker Carlson, that’s how.
Carlson has been working the ins and outs of white supremacy, with dog whistles as well as right on the nose white supremacist propaganda like “great replacement theory” for some time. He dedicated an entire rant to it at the end of September. The fact that a bigot like Cantwell would look to Carlson as his North Star is no surprise. Carlson and his team of craven cynics have dedicated a lot of programming to defending people like Cantwell.
According to Buzzfeed, besides taking notes on how to be Christopher Cantwell on television and not in a federal prison,* he has been getting some free legal advice from … fellow imprisoned white supremacists.
Matthew Hale is serving a 40-year prison sentence for soliciting the murder of federal Judge Joan Lefkow. William White was convicted and sentenced to 42 months in federal prison back in 2013 “for soliciting violence to the foreman of a federal jury in Chicago that convicted” the aforementioned Hale. White has had more time added to his incarceration after he attempted to extort money from his ex-wife and continued making threats against public officials. Real “fine” people there.
Spencer, who briefly enjoyed some public level of notoriety, has mostly disappeared from public view as he deals with mounting debt for his part in the Unite the Right riots and the carnage it begat. His mounting legal and financial problems are just the tip of the karmic iceberg he deserves.
*Spoiler alert: You need to be born rich!
In October 2021, a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by the victims in the community who were intimately affected by the white supremacist violence that day began its trial phase. There are 24 defendants in the case, including alt-right racist Richard Spencer and white supremacist podcaster Christopher Cantwell, which has made the jury selection and proceedings thus far a somewhat unbalanced display of antifa conspiracy theories and general white persecution complex gunk. The two snowflakes are seemingly trying to represent themselves in court. It hasn’t gone well, and attorneys who have tried to represent Cantwell in particular have had to drop him, citing “repugnant or imprudent” behavior on his part.
Cantwell, who was known almost exclusively in right-wing white nationalist supremacist circles, is best known as the “crying Nazi.” After at least three attorneys declined to represent him, Cantwell reportedly hired a lawyer who “appeared in court wearing an early-1800s-style red waistcoat with gold buttons, bowtie, white muttonchop whiskers, black velcro shoes, and a 1910s-style straw boater hat.”
Before this civil lawsuit, Cantwell was convicted of extortion and threatening other racists and antisemites he was fighting with in September 2020. When he was arrested, federal officials found “7 guns, a machete and a crossbow in the residence and his car.” Since the pre-trial began a few weeks ago, there have been reports from the courtroom of all kinds of unhinged interruptions, objections, and ...
Buzzfeed News reports that Jarrett William Smith, a man who spent five months in the same medium-security unit with Cantwell in Marion, Illinois, has some insight into how Cantwell has gotten his news, and the articulation of his thoughts during this time. Smith told the media outlet that Cantwell was a part of a group of white supremacists who banded together. How did they stay in touch with what was happening in the world around them? By way of Tucker Carlson, that’s how.
Carlson has been working the ins and outs of white supremacy, with dog whistles as well as right on the nose white supremacist propaganda like “great replacement theory” for some time. He dedicated an entire rant to it at the end of September. The fact that a bigot like Cantwell would look to Carlson as his North Star is no surprise. Carlson and his team of craven cynics have dedicated a lot of programming to defending people like Cantwell.
According to Buzzfeed, besides taking notes on how to be Christopher Cantwell on television and not in a federal prison,* he has been getting some free legal advice from … fellow imprisoned white supremacists.
Matthew Hale is serving a 40-year prison sentence for soliciting the murder of federal Judge Joan Lefkow. William White was convicted and sentenced to 42 months in federal prison back in 2013 “for soliciting violence to the foreman of a federal jury in Chicago that convicted” the aforementioned Hale. White has had more time added to his incarceration after he attempted to extort money from his ex-wife and continued making threats against public officials. Real “fine” people there.
Spencer, who briefly enjoyed some public level of notoriety, has mostly disappeared from public view as he deals with mounting debt for his part in the Unite the Right riots and the carnage it begat. His mounting legal and financial problems are just the tip of the karmic iceberg he deserves.
*Spoiler alert: You need to be born rich!