A white supremacist who is being sued for participating in the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, reportedly prepped for his day in court by watching Fox New host Tucker Carlson.
According to BuzzFeed News, Christopher ‘Crying Nazi’ Cantwell, one of two dozen white supremacists and their organizations charged in connection with the rally, is forced to represent himself for the remainder of the trial since his lawyers dumped him because of his behavior.
Cantwell got his nickname from posting a video of himself crying after learning he was going to be arrested on charges relating to the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally.
“Mr. Cantwell has rendered Attorney’s continued representation of him unreasonably difficult, has created a conflict of interest between himself and Attorney’s other clients, and has engaged in conduct Attorneys consider ‘repugnant or imprudent,’” two of his former attorneys said before dropping him as client, BuzzFeed reports.
But, he’s not going at it alone.
Jarrett William Smith, a man who shared a prison unit with Cantwell told BuzzFeed News that a group of “the whites” would regularly gather to watch Tucker Carlson’s show in the evenings together.
‘The whites’ learned about what is happening outside the prison walls by watching Carlson’s show. According to Smith, Cantwell feels a kinship with the far-right host and finds his diatribe emboldening since they echoed some of the same views he promoted and that helped fuel the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017.
In a 2019 filing in the Charlottesville case, Cantwell specifically identified Carlson as someone who shares his beliefs. He wrote that the case “is motivated by a desire to silence not only me and my associates, but anyone who might dare to agree with us even on peripheral issues. This is evidenced by the President of the United States, and the 2nd most popular show in cable news (Tucker Carlson) being branded as ‘White Nationalists’ on account of sharing a small number of our views on the pressing issues of our time.”
In addition to Carlson, Cantwell is also receiving legal advice from two other incarcerated white supremacists at the Illinois prison where he is serving time for threatening rape and attempting to extort another neo-Nazi’s wife.
One of the men is Matthew Hale. He is known for founding “one of the largest neo-Nazi groups in America,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Hale has a law degree and successfully passed the bar exam, but, “the Illinois State Bar Association deemed Hale unfit for practice due to his racial activism,” according SPLC.
Cantwell is being sued by the nonprofit Integrity First for America and nine victims killed or injured in the violent rally. If successful, Cantwell, the other defendants and their organizations will go bankrupt.
