‘Crying Nazi’ arrested, accused of threats of rape on message app
In this photo from Aug. 11, 2017, Christopher Cantwell attends a white nationalist rally in Virginia. (Vice News Tonight via AP)
Christopher Cantwell, a New Hampshire white nationalist who became infamous during the 2017 Charlottesville riots, was arrested Thursday on federal charges that he threatened to rape the wife of someone he had issues with, the FBI said.
Cantwell faces charges of extortion and sending interstate threats. He is scheduled to be arraigned at 3 p.m. Thursday in a Concord courtroom.
According to prosecutors, Cantwell sent an instant message through the Telegram Messenger app to an unnamed victim stating, «So if you don’t want me to come and f–k your wife in front of your kids, then you should make yourself scarce.»
WHO IS CHRISTOPHER CANTWELL, THE WHITE NATIONALIST ARRESTED AFTER CHARLOTTESVILLE RALLY?
Cantwell first gained notoriety when he was accused of pepper-spraying two counterprotesters during a Charlottesville rally. In 2018 he pleaded guilty to assault.
Cantwell is no stranger to hate and has a long history of posting threatening messages to people over social media.
In March, he wrote that he thought the Gab social media platform had banned him for a post after the deadly New Zealand mosque shootings in which he wrote, “I’m pretty sure it would be against the rules for me to say that would be mass shooters should find left-wing activists and gun them down instead of random people in mosques and synagogues. So I won’t do that.”
Last year, attorneys who filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in connection with the Charlottesville rally asked a judge to order Cantwell to stop making «unlawful threats» against the plaintiffs and their lead attorney.
Christopher Cantwell is helped by police after being overcome with tear gas in the summer of 2017 during a parade through the University of Virginia campus. (Photo by Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)
In a motion filed in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville, lawyers for 10 people who were hurt during the two days of violence in August 2017 said Cantwell had recently focused «his hateful rhetoric» on attorney Roberta Kaplan.
They allege that Cantwell, responding to an article about Kaplan in a Jewish publication, used an anti-Semitic slur on a social media website when referring to Kaplan and wrote that after she “loses this fraudulent lawsuit, we’re going to have a lot of (expletive) fun with her.”
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Cantwell, responding to an email seeking comment on the motion to order him to stop making threats, used an anti-Semitic slur when referring to Kaplan and called the lawsuit a “(expletive) fraud.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
