Tag: Crying Nazi

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In brief: “Crying Nazi” faces prison time, neo-Nazi stickers spotted downtown, and more

PC: Eze Amos

Locked up

The “Crying Nazi” faces up to 22 years in prison. You have to make a lot of bad decisions in life for the local newspaper to write that sentence about you—and that’s exactly what Chris Cantwell has done.

The New Hampshire far-right radio host came to Charlottesville for the 2017 Unite the Right rally, where he was filmed by Vice chanting “Jews will not replace us” as he marched down the UVA Lawn with a tiki-torch wielding mob. Later that night, he pepper sprayed protesters at the base of the Jefferson statue, which eventually earned him two misdemeanor assault and battery charges and a five-year ban from the state of Virginia.

Soon after the rally, Cantwell uploaded a video of himself tearily proclaiming his innocence, earning him the above-mentioned nickname.

This time around, he’s been found guilty of extortion and interstate threats. In 2019, Cantwell sent online messages in which he threatened to rape another neo-Nazi’s wife if that neo-Nazi didn’t reveal the identity of a third neo-Nazi who had remained anonymous at the time.

In an interview with C-VILLE in 2017—conducted from his cell at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail—Cantwell offered a comment that looks positively prophetic in hindsight. “I’m a shock jock. I offend people professionally,” he said. “If we’re going to talk about all the nasty things I said on the internet, we’re going to be here for a while.”

Justice for Breonna

After several months of investigation, a grand jury indicted former Louisville police detective Brett Hankison last Wednesday for endangering the neighbors of Breonna Taylor during a botched no-knock raid—but did not charge the two officers who shot and killed the 26-year-old Black emergency-room technician in her own home.

Just hours after the announcement, more than 100 Charlottesville residents gathered on the Belmont Bridge in solidarity with Louisville, demanding justice for Taylor through the defunding and abolishing of police.

The crowd toted homemade signs and joined in chants led by organizer Ang Conn, as passing cars honked in support. A few protesters blocked the bridge with cars and cones, allowing everyone to move off the sidewalk and into the road for more chants and speeches from Black attendees.

Protesters marched down Market Street to the front of the Charlottesville Police Department, which had its doors locked and appeared to be empty, with no cops in sight.

“Say her name—Breonna Taylor,” chanted the crowd. “No justice, no peace—abolish the police.”

_________________

Quote of the week

“We have to do something. It’s not creating more data we already know. It’s not providing more funding to the police department. It’s not waiting to see how it plays out in court. …It’s rare for police to be held accountable.”

—community organizer Ang Conn calling for justice for Breonna Taylor during a protest held by Defund Cville Police

__________________

In brief

Fascist threat

In recent weeks, anti-racist activists have spotted dozens of stickers promoting the white supremacist, neo-Nazi group Patriot Front on or near the Downtown Mall and the Corner, as well as near the Lee and Jackson statues, reports Showing Up for Racial Justice. The activists urge anyone who sees a sticker to document its location, use a sharp object to remove it, and tell others where they saw it. If, however, you see someone putting up a sticker, the group advises against approaching the person if you are alone—instead, discreetly take a photo and alert others of the incident.

PC: Charlottesville Showing Up for Racial Justice

Jumped the gun

In case it wasn’t already clear what kind of operation Republican congressional candidate Bob Good was running, last weekend the Liberty University administrator held a “God, Guns, and a Good time” rally in Fluvanna County. Fliers for the event advertised a raffle with an AR-15 as the top prize. Good’s campaign now denies any affiliation with the raffle, reports NBC29, as holding a raffle to benefit a political campaign violates Virginia gambling and election laws.

Board bothers

The Charlottesville Police Civilian Review Board continues to meet obstacles in its years-long quest to provide oversight for local policing. Last week, just three months after the first meeting, board member Stuart Evans resigned. In his resignation letter, Evans declared the body was “fundamentally flawed,” and that the city’s refusal to give the board any real power led to his resignation. “I refuse to help the City clean up its image by peddling fictions of progress,” he wrote.

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Federal judge to rule on motions to dismiss in August 12 victims’ case

Jim Kolenich, who represents Jason Kessler, "Crying Nazi" Chris Cantwell, Elliott Kline and multiple others in Sines v. Kessler, addresses the media outside the federal courthouse while his co-counsel Elmer Woodard gives a rare interview to a Washington Post reporter in the background. Staff photo

In a lawsuit filed on behalf of 10 alleged victims of last summer’s deadly August weekend in which hundreds of white supremacists and neo-Nazis descended upon Charlottesville, a federal judge is now considering whether to grant several of the defendants’ motions to dismiss the case.

Attorneys Roberta Kaplan and Karen Dunn claim that 25 individuals and groups named as defendants in the suit premeditatedly conspired to commit violence at the August 12 Unite the Right rally.

Plaintiffs include victims of the Fourth Street car attack, other white supremacist violence and extreme emotional distress, including Elizabeth Sines, Marcus Martin, Marissa Blair, the Reverend Seth Wispelwey and Tyler Magill, who suffered a stroke after being beaten on August 11.

“There is one thing about this case that should be made crystal clear at the outset—the violence in Charlottesville was no accident,” the lawsuit states. “Defendants spent months carefully coordinating their efforts, on the internet and in person.”

The document quotes Unite the Right promotions that stated, “If you want to defend the South and Western civilization from the Jew and his dark-skinned allies, be at Charlottesville on 12 August,” and “Next stop: Charlottesville, VA. Final stop: Auschwitz.”

The suit further quotes one rally organizer Elliott Kline (aka Eli Mosley), who allegedly declared, “We are going to Charlottesville. Our birthright will be ashes and they’ll have to pry it from our cold hands if they want it. They will not replace us without a fight.”

Ohio-based defense attorney Jim Kolenich, who represents Kline and nearly a dozen other high-profile Unite the Righters, including Jason Kessler and “Crying Nazi” Chris Cantwell, argued in United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia today that Kaplan and Dunn failed to prove that his clients conspired to be violent at the rally.

“There is no specific allegation in those paragraphs,” he said, adding that the only conspiracy was one “to come to Charlottesville and be provocative with their political speech.”

“Yes, they are provocative people,” Kolenich said, and noted that defendant Jeff Schoep, the neo-Nazi at the helm of the National Socialist Movement, has said if he could meet Adolf Hitler today, he’d thank him, as also referenced in the complaint.

Northern Virginia-based John DiNucci, who as of yesterday is representing Richard Spencer in the suit, made the same claim that no specific evidence pointed to Spencer’s premeditated conspiracy for violence. As did Brian Jones, a local lawyer who’s representing Michael Hill, Michael Tubbs and the League of the South.

Mike “Enoch” Peinovich,  the New Yorker who founded The Right Stuff, a right-wing media hub, and podcast The Daily Shoah, is the only defendant representing himself in the case.

“I have many opinions that people may find shocking,” he told Judge Norman Moon, but he also said there’s no evidence that he was planning to be violent at Unite the Right, and though the lawsuit points out that he announced the rally on his podcast and his name appeared on rally fliers, Peinovich said that’s “just First Amendment stuff.”

To combat the claims that the suit’s defendants weren’t the ones who conspired to do harm, Kaplan told the judge, “We carefully chose the 25 defendants we did. …We went after the leaders.”

She said her team is still gathering evidence from sites that alt-right leaders used to plan for the rally, such as Discord, where they often use screen names to conceal their identities.

When she gave the real-life screen name example of “Chef Goyardee,” Peinovich shook with laughter. She also referred to internet conversation about running counterprotesters over with vehicles, which she said the alt-right has since denounced as an “edgy joke.”

“We believe that what we have here is just the tip of the iceberg,” she said.

Kolenich, who admitted during the hearing that he doesn’t know which Confederate general’s statue is causing such a ruckus in Charlottesville, said outside the courthouse that the judge should have a ruling within 30 days.

Beside him, his co-counsel gave a rare interview with Washington Post reporter Ian Shapira.

Said Elmer Woodard, the Blairs, Virginia, attorney who’s recently spent quite a bit of time in Charlottesville defending white supremacists at the state level, “I represent murderers, drug dealers and perverts, but I’m not one of them.”

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Guilty: First August 12 parking garage beater convicted

Jacob Goodwin, one of four men charged in the beating of DeAndre Harris August 12, was found guilty of malicious wounding. Charlottesville police

 

A Charlottesville jury decided May 1 that a man from Ward, Arkansas, who took part in a brutal beatdown of a local black man in the Market Street Parking Garage on August 12, was guilty of malicious wounding, potentially setting the bar for three other assailants accused of the same crime in the same incident, and who are set to go on trial in the very near future.

In videos from the Unite the Right rally that have since been viewed tens of thousands of times, Jacob Goodwin can be seen wearing all black tactical gear, a helmet, goggles, and two pins—one that said “88,” or code for “Heil Hitler,” and one with the logo of the Traditionalist Worker Party—and carrying a shield when kicking DeAndre Harris multiple times among a gaggle of other white supremacists.

Jurors were visibly disturbed while watching.

“He has yet to express any regret for his actions that day,” said Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania, when asking the jury to consider a jail sentence recommendation. “And I would submit he has none.”

The man identified as a self-described white rights activist in an NBC documentary sat in court wearing a suit and tie and with a long, brown braided ponytail. During his testimony, he said he thought he was being attacked by Harris, and he was using his feet to defend himself.

“To be honest, I was terrified,” he said, adding that he thought he’d be sent to the hospital “terribly hurt,” or that he might even “perish.”

The jury of nine women and three men didn’t buy it, and they recommended giving Goodwin a 10-year sentence with perhaps some time suspended, a $25,000 fine and empathy training. Judge Rick Moore set an official sentencing for August 23.

Goodwin’s mother had her head in her hands when defense attorney Elmer Woodard wrapped up his closing argument, in which he insisted that Goodwin was legally allowed to defend himself from a perceived threat, which protects the Arkansas man from being convicted of malicious wounding. For that specific charge, a prosecutor must show an attempt to kill, maim or disable, or evidence of ill will or spite, according to the attorneys.

“They want you to convict this man because he’s a white man and DeAndre’s a black man,” Woodard said to the jury. The white man’s parents and a handful of other supporters, including Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler, were present for the two-day trial.

So were community members who have aggressively praised Harris for his fight against white supremacy that day in August, and who demanded that Platania drop a malicious wounding charge that Harris was initially given from the event, when he allegedly bashed a man in the head with a Maglite moments before he was beaten to the ground.

Harris’ charge was amended to assault and he was acquitted in Charlottesville General District Court in March.

Woodard argued that while his client was wearing armor, the Maglite and towel Harris carried were the real weapons, and that the man beaten by white supremacists was the true aggressor.

“Body armor’s a defensive thing,” said Woodard. “Nobody ever got beaten to death with body armor.”

And while the defense attorney argued several times that Harris’ most significant injuries, such as the head laceration that required eight stitches, were a result of the other men involved and not Goodwin, Nina-Alice Antony, an assistant commonwealth’s attorney, said they were acting in concert.

“Each person is responsible, not just for his specific action, but the action of the group,” she said, adding that concert of action can happen in an instant, even between people who are unknown to each other. “You don’t have to have a handshake agreement before that.”

The three other men charged with malicious wounding in the parking garage beatdown are Alex Ramos, Daniel Borden and Tyler Watkins Davis. Ramos goes on trial today.

Woodardisms

Attorney Elmer Woodard. Photo Natalie Jacobsen

This Blairs, Virginia, attorney was largely unknown in the Charlottesville area until he began representing a bevy of white supremacists with Unite the Right-related charges, including Jacob Goodwin, “Crying Nazi” Chris Cantwell and Richard Preston, the KKK leader charged with firing his gun on August 12. Now he’s one of the most talked about defenders in town. Here’s what he had to say at Goodwin’s May 1 trial:

”Gravity applies to DeAndre just like it applies to you and me.”

—on why Harris didn’t fall back down, but rather stood up after the prosecutor argued that Goodwin kicked him so hard that he lifted off the ground

“Why DeAndre, you have upset me.”

—on what Goodwin would have said if he truly felt anger, and was acting out of malice

“Is it concert of action to stand in the Hardee’s line together?”

—on how people who don’t know each other can act together and share similar views

”If it’s raining, you put on a raincoat. If there’s fighting, you put on a helmet.”

—on why Goodwin was wearing tactical gear and a helmet

 

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In brief: Bad prank, bad parking, bad practices and more

Staff photo

Meter’s not running

Crews are set to start ripping meters out of the ground this week after City Council voted at its January 2 meeting to indefinitely suspend the parking meter pilot that began on streets surrounding the Downtown Mall in September.

“It seemed pointless to try to convince the manufacturer to continue to loan us this equipment,” says parking manager Rick Siebert, who was initially hired to implement the program. “We obviously didn’t want to pay rent with no revenue coming in.”

With no reimplementation date in sight, Siebert says he’s disappointed that the city seems to have permanently pumped the brakes on the pilot, and he’ll continue to work toward a solution to Charlottesville’s well-documented parking problem.

“We had some issues with parking before that led to hiring Nelson\Nygaard to do the study, which led to the initiation of the meter pilot,” he says. “Those issues haven’t just evaporated.”

By the numbers

  • 28 meters
  • 13 pay stations
  • 71 days in service
  • $51,490 generated in revenue
  • $42,995 paid in rent
  • $20,000 for a 2016 parking meter pilot implementation plan by Nelson\Nygaard
  • $500,000 for startup funds allocated by City Council in 2016 for personnel and initial equipment costs, including a $73,000 salary for hiring a parking manager

“Voting is the civic sacrament of democracy.”—James Alcorn, chair of Virginia Board of Elections, before a random drawing to determine the winner of House District 94 and control of the House of Delegates

Not funny

A teen hoaxer who on social media advised Monticello High students to not go to school January 8 underneath a photo of guns was charged with a Class 5 felony for making threats to harm people on school property. The post alarmed other schools around the country with MHS initials, and at least one in Pennsylvania canceled classes.

Malpractice

Mark Hormuz Dean. Photo Albemarle County Police

Police arrested Mark Hormuz Dean, 50, a physician at the Albemarle Pain Management Associates Clinic, on January 5 for two counts of rape, two counts of object sexual penetration and one count of forcible sodomy, which he has allegedly committed on the job since 2011. Dean has worked in pain management in Charlottesville since 2003, and performed more than 10,000 interventional pain procedures, according to the clinic’s website.

 

 

It’s about time

At the January 4 Board of Supervisors meeting, Governor Terry McAuliffe signed a 99-year lease that gives Albemarle County control of the 1,200-acre Biscuit Run Park, which the state has owned since 2010 and agreed to help open to the public.

Town crier

Photo Eze Amos

Christopher Cantwell has filed a lawsuit against anti-racist activists Emily Gorcenski and Kristopher Goad, who accused the “Crying Nazi” of spraying them with a caustic substance at UVA on August 11. Cantwell’s complaint claims the activists “framed” him in the alleged attack by spraying themselves with mace.

 

 

 

 

New county leadership

File photo

While perhaps not as monumental as Charlottesville’s election of its first African-American female mayor, Albemarle County’s Board of Supervisors has also picked new leaders. Ann Mallek has been named chair for the fifth nonconsecutive year and Norman Dill will serve as vice chair.

 

 

 

Trial date set

A three-week jury trial is scheduled to begin November 26 for James Alex Fields, the man who plowed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters on August 12. Fields is charged with first-degree murder, five counts of malicious wounding, three counts of aggravated malicious wounding and failing to stop at the scene of a crash.

 

 

 

Another missing person found dead

Three days after missing woman Molly Meghan Miller was found dead in her home on January 1, police found Arthur Mills, the Fluvanna County man who was reported missing January 3, dead on the side of Oliver Creek Road. His cause of death is unknown.

 

Downtown loses some sparkle

Submitted photo

Frances Gibson Loose, longtime owner of Tuel Jewelers, died January 5 at age 86. For 65 years, she showed up for work, always professionally dressed, until about a week before she passed away.

When Loose bought the store in 1975, she was the only female business owner downtown, and according to her daughter, Mary Loose DeViney, she told another woman in a male-dominated field, “I’m going to do it my way and you will, too.”

She was a member of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce, which named her Small Business Person of the Year in 2009.

Loose was well-known and well-liked and was often called “Mom” by her many friends, says DeViney. “She extended credit to people that others wouldn’t have—and they paid her. She just believed in people.”

People from all walks of life came to the store just to talk to Loose. “I’ve got to talk to Momma,” DeViney heard regularly. “I shared my mom with all kinds of people.”

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Candid Cantwell: An afternoon with the ‘Crying Nazi’

Christopher Cantwell calls himself a political prisoner. Staff photo

In a minuscule, stagnant holding room just feet away from a barely bigger solitary confinement cell where he’s been housed since he turned himself in to police August 23, “Crying Nazi” Christopher Cantwell, a self-proclaimed racist and alt-right radio shock jock, says he wishes he never came to Charlottesville.

Perhaps most notable for his appearance in VICE News Tonight’s segment on the events of August 11 and 12 called “Charlottesville: Race and Terror,” Cantwell is also the host of right-wing radio show “Radical Agenda,” and was billed as a speaker for the Unite the Right rally.

Jailed and denied bond for three felony counts related to allegedly pepper spraying two people during an August 11 tiki-torch march on Grounds at the University of Virginia, Cantwell denies those claims and says the only person he pepper sprayed that weekend didn’t file charges. He says his status as a “political prisoner” hasn’t kept him from preaching his doctrine.

That’s right. Cantwell is “LIVE from Seg!,” as in segregated from the general prison population. And though he can’t measure his analytics from a jail cell, he expects that more than 10,000 people have been tuning in to each episode to hear him gab with buddies Jared Howe, Mike Enoch and Jason Kessler.

The latter might come as a surprise. Kessler, the local champion of western heritage who organized the deadly rally and lambasted victim Heather Heyer on Twitter afterward, has since been given the ax by a lot of the whites righters he invited to his highly anticipated melee that some have called the largest gathering of white supremacists in recent history.

“Jason is a guy who picks up the goddamn phone when I call him, which I cannot say for everybody else,” says Cantwell. “A lot of people don’t want to talk to me, either, and so they might be a little more vocal about severing ties with Jason, but I pay attention to who picks up the goddamn phone when I call them. Jason picks up the phone. Jason records the calls. Jason sends them to the guy who’s running my website, so Jason is helpful to me in that he insists on my voice being heard.”

That being said, Cantwell criticizes Kessler for organizing the rally here: “If I had known what Charlottesville was, I wouldn’t have come here. And I gotta think there’s something wrong with a person who fucking thinks this is a good place to do what he did.”

He continues, “This city is run by the goddamn Red Army…and the idea that we’re going to fucking pull this off is crazy and he should have known that.” Mayor Mike Signer did coin Charlottesville as the “capital of the resistance” last January, after all.

Cantwell currently resides in solitary confinement in the intake department of the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, where alleged murderer James Alex Fields, who is accused of plowing into a crowd of counterprotesters with his Dodge Challenger at Unite the Right, killing one and injuring many, was a few cells over when the radio host first arrived. Fields has since been moved.

The guy who’s now looking at as much as 60 years in prison says, “you better believe I need a few bucks,” and has a couple of fundraisers linked to his website. Booted off the popular crowdfunding site GoFundMe, he has turned to alternative platform GOYFUNDME.

He’s faced harsh criticism for a remark in his interview with VICE’s Elle Reeve, where he said Fields’ actions that day, which many have called an act of domestic terrorism, were “more than justified.”

Now, wearing a black-and-white-striped jumpsuit and bright orange slip-on shoes, and sucking on a hard candy, he says he may have second thoughts about that statement. After the VICE documentary aired, Cantwell says he had a conversation with someone claiming to be an FBI agent, who told him Fields drove through two blocks of clear roads with no foot traffic, and that he could have turned his car away from the crime scene at any time instead of mowing down more than 20 people.

“That gives me a second to pause and say ‘what the hell was he doing there?’” Cantwell says. “What I saw was a video of his car surrounded by communist rioters who had just pepper sprayed me twice in as many days and hit his car with a baseball bat. I knew these people were dangerous. So when he’s in that position and they attack him and he has no idea what to do and he just hits the gas, from that information, that looks reasonable to me.”

But Cantwell insists he never wanted trouble when he came to Charlottesville toting three pistols and two assault rifles.

“We didn’t come down here to start a riot,” he says. “We didn’t come down here to kill nobody. And we had a permit. I was invited to speak by a demonstration that had a permit and was championed by the ACLU, and in return for my trouble, I got maced.”

He says the idea that the white nationalists came to town to start a race riot or to terrorize people is “complete nonsense,” and that they came to defend white rights.

“I think that we have civil rights like everybody else, and so when people say that we’re racists and terrorists for standing up for ourselves, our country and our history, well then do not act surprised when we get pissed off about that,” he says. And with hundreds of his comrades packing heat, he calls it “a miracle that only one person died.”

Cantwell was dubbed the “Crying Nazi” when he posted a tearful video of himself on the web before turning himself into police in Lynchburg. He says he’s not a fan of the title.

“Well, first of all, I’m not a Nazi,” he says. “I came down here because I think that I fucking have rights and that I don’t deserve my fucking race to be exterminated from the planet,” he says, and adds that not everyone who’s “skeptical of Jews” is a Nazi. “I came down here because I feel like my country is going to shit. I came down here because the rule of law is going out the window and you get prosecuted for felonies because people disagree with your politics in America. That’s worth crying about.”

Regardless, he says he has a lot of time on his hands and he’s been reading a copy of Mein Kampf sent courtesy of an anonymous friend—or foe.

When Cantwell was originally thrown in the hole, he said it was his personal request to stay in solitary confinement. But now that he’s been denied bail and jailed for longer than he expected, he’s been advised that “the guy who kills [him] becomes a celebrity,” so joining the general population would not be a good idea.

“I’m not particularly happy about it,” Cantwell says. “But, after all, I’m in here for a false accusation that stems from me defending myself. The last thing I need to do is get put into a cage full of fine, upstanding, young black gentlemen who decide they’re going to beat up the Nazi and then I gotta defend myself. And if I put someone in the fucking ICU, that’s probably going to come up in court.”

Cantwell is scheduled to appear November 9 with attorney Elmer Woodard in Albemarle County General District Court, where if it goes anything like his last appearance, Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci will try to use some of the inmate’s own comments to keep him locked up.

“Well, you know, I’m a shock jock. I offend people professionally,” Cantwell says. “If we’re going to talk about all the nasty things I said on the internet, we’re going to be here for a while.”

Corrected September 26 at 10am. The original version identified Jason Kessler as a Proud Boy. The Colorado Proud Boys reached out and said his only involvement was participating in a meet up and being disavowed.