Christopher Cantwell must have been riding high when Vice news filmed him during the Nazi/KKK rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. I can imagine him thinking, as he vomited sickening white supremacist nonsense into the video camera, that, “This is my time. Now I will be king of the neo-Nazi’s!”
Please Google the phrase “Crying Nazi,” to see how that worked out for him.
Let me be clear that there’s nothing wrong with crying. Crying is an important way to release emotion, especially if you were to suffer a loss. However, when you are someone who says murdering a young woman using terrorist tactics was justified - and then you cry because you are about to be held accountable for your own alleged violent act - then you are weak and you are a coward.
No punch, no thrown bottle, no act of force could have done more damage to the American Nazi movement than Cantwell, who, at the height of his arrogance and disdain, was reduced to a frightened blubbering mess.
Cantwell’s gift to us is that he showed that, beneath all the bluster and rage of the neo-Nazi movement, there are a cadre of fear-filled weaklings so desperate for love and attention that they attack others to feel better about themselves.
“White Power?” More like “White Powder,” because just like a bottle of talc, inside their cold plastic shell these Nazi posers are all so soft and crumbly.
The tragedy for America is that our President is not so different than these same lost souls who commit acts of hate just to get someone, anyone, to like them. On the day I began to write this, Trump not only signed a directive to ban transgender citizens from being recruited to serve in our armed forces, but he pardoned former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was found guilty of criminal contempt for illegal profiling latinos.
Trump had no legitimate reason for banning transgender people who want to defend our country, just as he didn’t have one for pardoning a political supporter (another in a long line of conflicts of interests) loved by the far-right. He did it because he’s been bleeding so much support that only a third of Americans still support him and he needed a hug from those who equate hate with love.
That’s why Trump equivocated on Charlottesville and blamed the “alt-left" for what happened; he needed to send a message to the racists that he had their backs. Even though there is no rational weighing of what the Nazi movement and the anti-facists do, the end result of ANTIFA violence is that it gives apologists like Trump just enough verbal opiate to ease the minds of his followers by creating this false “many sides” argument.
Let Trump and his sycophants defend the Nazi’s and their ilk in the clean light of day, where there is no cover for their repugnant speech to hide under. This is a double victory for it exposes the apologists as well.
When Trump made openly racist claims during the election he bent and gave members of the hate community his hand, offering comfort and a rallying point for their diseased ideology. This is why the KKK and Nazis were so brazen in Charlottesville, as they put voice to their detestable thoughts and then praised Trump when he winked at their offenses.
The thing is, there have always been Nazi sympathizers and racists in our country. Before Trump, however, they kept hoods on their heads, their swastikas in their closets and they embraced the shadows where their hate festered and slowly bred. If one good thing is to come from the rise of Trump and pro-racists forces, it is that we now see that they exist. To fight an enemy, you must know who your enemy is.
We who do not hate others for who they are, who are appalled at bigotry when it is focused on anyone, needed a serious wake up call. We didn’t think that Nazism would ever be an issue in 2017 America, and we were wrong.
We must stand and fight, but do so with non-violence, for non-violence is not passive, but is strong and relentless and if wielded properly you can conquer your enemies without ever laying a finger on them.
Christopher Cantwell wasn’t taken down by an act of violence. He was taken down when his ideology and cowardice were exposed for the entire world to see. Let us work toward the day when all who feed on such enmity and malice face a similarly dishonorable fate.