First, they came for the NAZIs: Cantwell Convicted, First Amendment Attacked

by Ian | Sep 28, 2020 | 24 comments

Chris in Simpler Times, Acting as Security for the Hallowkeene Dance Party in 2014.

Today a jury at Federal district church in Concord, NH returned two guilty verdicts for “Crying Nazi” Christopher Cantwell. He’s facing up to 20 years in prison for felony interstate extortion and threat charges for telling another despicable Nazi over the Telegram chat app that Cantwell was going to fuck his wife in front of their children if the “victim” didn’t cough up information about another white supremacist. No doubt, it’s easy to hate Christopher Cantwell. He himself is a hater. He judges and hates other people for the color of their skin, their belief systems, among other things. He also hates himself. Cantwell is aware of his various faults and failures and he despises himself, punishing himself with drug abuse and distracting himself by hating others. How do I know this about him?

I know Cantwell – I don’t know whether he’d admit it, but I’m basically his minister. I try to minister a message of peace to a man whose name literally speaks to who he is – a man who Can’t-be-Well. He and I have spent countless hours together prior to and since him becoming a racist and Nazi. I have chronicled his story here on this blog from as far back as his early days. Before becoming a racist, he was a controversial cop-hating libertarian comedian that escaped from New York to move here to Keene, New Hampshire.

At one point, Chris admitted that his formula in life for financial success was the more people hated him, the more money he made. At another time, he publicly stated that Christopher Cantwell was a “character”. I’m not sure where the real Chris was in relation to the “character” of Cantwell, but I do know his fall has been tragic and also entirely preventable. The government gang deserves plenty of blame as well, and I’ll get to that, but for now let’s focus on three of Cantwell’s biggest mistakes:

1. Racism is stupid and inhumane. – When Cantwell was a libertarian, he would have judged people by their individual actions and character rather than by their circumstances of birth.  Sadly, around 2015 Cantwell started to become a racist as he was following an apparently similar arc by one of his prime influencers, Stefan Molyneux.  Cantwell likely believed that he’d be so hated if he became a racist that he’d make way more money than being a less-hated libertarian comedian.  He dove in deep to racism, destroying a ton of productive relationships.  For instance, I fired him from my radio show, Free Talk Live.  Cantwell had been one of our best hosts, before his fall to racism – he was really entertaining on-air.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t long after he became a racist until Cantwell completely abandoned any semblance of libertarian thought and totally embraced statism. This turn towards statism also left him with the delusional belief that the police could be a helpful tool.

2. Don’t talk to the police! – When he moved here as a cop-hating, crass libertarian comedian, Cantwell was likely being watched by the FBI for his public statements that skirted the line of advocating violence against the police. After he moved back to Keene in 2015, he had an encounter in downtown Keene which altered his views about the police.  In the encounter, KPD officers didn’t shoot Cantwell who had drawn his gun to defend a young woman from an attack by a drunken man. While it was good for Cantwell to stop hating and collectivizing the humans behind the inhumane role of “law enforcement officer”, it went bad for him because he went too far and actually started to embrace and trust the police. When he became a racist, he saw them as his future ally and tool of force to use to create his fantasy white paradise.

First they came for the racist assholes…

So, he started talking to them regularly, from a local KPD sergeant to FBI agents including Phil Christiana, the longtime investigator of various libertarian activists in Keene. Ultimately, Cantwell’s habit of chatting with cops led to him being charged and convicted as a political prisoner. Based on testimony I witnessed during a federal bail hearing and further testimony at trial – which was covered in detail by Hilary Sargent – it’s clear Cantwell sunk his own case. First, by admitting to the FBI that he was the person behind the account-in-question on Telegram and then further by using the term “threat” to describe the obviously hyperbolic chat in an email to his “friend” at Keene Police. Without claiming the account in his talks with the FBI, there may have been no way to prove it was Cantwell behind the account.  As one agent admitted under oath at the bail hearing, Telegram is not operating servers in the United States and the agents can’t subpoena them for information like IP addresses for its users. Cantwell’s own admissions to police likely were factors that sealed his fate in this case. Speaking to police is a grave danger to your freedom.

3. Don’t make haters your hobby. Ignore them as best you can. – With publicity comes haters, it’s just part of life. Per his life plan, Cantwell relished every opportunity to engage his haters in the hopes they would hate him even more, and spread his product around. At one time his product was a libertarian radio show and various blog posts. He had his haters in his libertarian days, but it wasn’t until after he became a racist that he met haters willing to sink even lower than Cantwell himself. Always a divisive figure, but intelligent and well-spoken, Cantwell quickly rose to prominence in the white nationalist community.  True to his form, he got into internet conflict with various racist people and groups including the “Bowl Patrol”, a group of Nazis that were even more detestable in their opinions than Cantwell, if that’s possible. The group took its name from the haircut of Dylan Roof, the mass murderer at a church in South Carolina some years ago. Originally Cantwell fans, their honeymoon with Cantwell ended and they turned on each other. Bowl Patrol raided Cantwell’s phone lines incessantly with awful prank calls during his online radio show, among other online targetings. The point is, Cantwell became obsessed with them, trying to identify who the members were and spending time telling the police all about his issues with them. At one point Cantwell even called Child Protective Services on “CheddarMane” aka Benjamin Lambert, the supposed “victim” in the case in which Cantwell was convicted today. Had Cantwell just ignored and blocked the haters rather than engage them, none of this would ever have happened. (more…)