Well, we originally planned to write an entry on antivaxxer and COVID-19 denialist Kelly Canon, but it turns out she died in 2022 – of COVID. Christopher Cantwell is still around, sort of, and is a figure of some note in the altright movement; we probably need to give him a note, although we can’t be bothered to go into mich detail.
Cantwell first drew attention to himself as a free stater activist who advocated for killing police officers – officially in “self-defense”, but he has a rather broad understanding of what self-defense involves (“it is my honest opinion that this driver would be morally justified in shooting that police officer at the moment the [police car’s] lights go on”). He has since distanced himself from mainstream libertarianism in favor of white supremacism (“I have become convinced that our problems are a lot more racial than anything … the police are not my biggest problem right now”) and anti-semitic conspiracy theories, and in 2017 he got himself arrested, not for the last time, for his involvement – he was a scheduled speaker – in the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally. He featured prominently in the Vice News Tonight documentary about the rally, in which he was shown threatening to kill protesters and chanting “Jews will not replace us!” He earned himself his nickname for an … emotional video he published upon learning that there was a warrant for his arrest after the release of the Vice documentary. It’s not the only time he’s gotten emotional, and he tends to blame his lapses into sentimentality somehow on “the Jews”. (Another party to blame is Antifa, a largely mythical bogeyman – a bunch of “communists” that “ought to be put through a wood chipper” – that resides under Cantwell’s bed and that Cantwell complains the police doesn’t arrest.) Although he endorsed Donald Trump for president in 2016, Cantwell noted that he hoped for a leader who was “a lot more racist than Donald Trump”, one who who “does not give his daughter to a Jew”.
Cantwell has spread his views through various youtube videos, radio shows, blogs and video games, in particular the video games Angry Goy and Angry Goy II.
Diagnosis: Proud and unrepentant Nazi and generally pitiful and laughable (but not harmless) moron and clown. It’s easy to think of Cantwell and his fellow white supremacists as having failed miserably at the irony and cynicism often associated with his generation; at least failure seems to be a general characteristic of everything Cantwell.
No defense of Cantwell who is clearly a grade-A jerk, but Antifa is not "mostly mythical" and not "hiding under [anyone's] bed...." Anyone who has been physically attacked by one or more of these masked-up assholes in cities like Portland or Seattle will tell you otherwise. If you want to have a rationalist site, fine, but drop the left wing propaganda or you lose your credibility with those of us who really are rational.
ReplyDeleteA more accurate description of Antifa is that it's not an organized movement, but rather a collection of individuals and cells who act on their own. Admittedly, some do not act like responsible adults.
DeleteWhat is the difference between this Nazi crap and those below him? Skin color? Not at all! They are from the same tribe of potential Auschwitz perpetrators.
ReplyDelete