Christopher Charles Cantwell (born November 12, 1980), also known as the Crying Nazi,[1][2][3] is an American white supremacist, neo-Nazi, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, and federal informant.

[1][5][13] A member of the broader alt-right movement, Cantwell earned attention during and immediately after his participation in the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

[17][18] Cantwell was featured prominently in a Vice News Tonight documentary about the rally and its participants, in which he is shown threatening to kill protesters, wielding rifles and a handgun, and joining fellow antisemitic conspiracy theorists in marching with tiki torches, chanting "Jews will not replace us!

[24] In July 2018, Cantwell was convicted after pleading guilty to two counts of misdemeanor assault and battery for pepper spraying two people at the rally.

[40] Cantwell writes essays on his personal blog about topics including white supremacy, alt-right politics, libertarianism, and the men's rights movement.

[33] Cantwell co-hosted the anarcho-capitalist radio show Free Talk Live but was suspended in 2015 after tweeting a racial slur against an African American person who criticized him.

[33] Meanwhile, in December 2013, Cantwell began what he originally called Some Garbage Podcast, disseminated through YouTube and elsewhere, and in April 2015 renamed it Radical Agenda, subtitled "a show about common sense extremism".

[33][43] By calling compatriots who recorded the conversations and posted them on his blog, Cantwell continued to broadcast from jail while he was incarcerated in August–December 2017 on charges related to the Unite the Right rally.

[40] On April 9, 2019, Cantwell published a blog post announcing that he had been "neglecting to deal with some serious personal problems for a very long time", and that he needed to "stop, avoid recording devices, and pull [himself] together.

[47] After he was released from prison in December 2022, Cantwell created an online fundraiser on the GiveSendGo crowdfunding website, where he wrote that he was living in a halfway house and had been "left ... impoverished and exhausted" by his legal battles.

"[56] On March 18, 2019, the far-right social network Gab tweeted a statement that they had indefinitely banned an unnamed "controversial user" for making two "inflammatory political posts".

[40] A December 2017 episode of the Radical Agenda podcast featured a conversation between Cantwell and Andrew "weev" Auernheimer, a white supremacist, Internet troll, and the webmaster of The Daily Stormer.

Shortly after, GoDaddy announced that they would no longer host the Radical Agenda website after finding it in violation of their policies against encouraging and promoting violence.

[9][20] He is first pictured marching through the University of Virginia campus among a group of white supremacists carrying tiki torches and chanting "Jews will not replace us.

[74][3] He was indicted on the tear gas charges in December, and paid $25,000 bail with funds donated by supporters on the white supremacist and neo-Nazi crowdfunding websites Hatreon and GoyFundMe.

[82] In November 2017, at the preliminary hearing for the felony assault case, the unlawful bodily injury charge was dismissed,[75] with the court ruling that "so many people had pepper spray that night that some attacks could not be definitively attributed to Cantwell.

"[83] In July 2018, Cantwell entered into a plea agreement with prosecutors in which he pleaded guilty to two counts of misdemeanor assault and battery for pepper spraying two people at the rally.

[21] In October 2017, Cantwell was listed as a defendant in Sines v. Kessler, the federal civil lawsuit against various organizers, promoters, and participants of the Unite the Right rally.

In January 2020, he wrote and filed a plea which included a long quote from Adolf Hitler, whom Cantwell described only as a "famous 20th century statesman".

[87][88] Cantwell and all other defendants were found liable for civil conspiracy under Virginia state law, and ordered to pay $500,000 in punitive damages.

[31] Cantwell filed a pro se appeal on March 20, 2023, arguing that the jury held "improper passion and prejudice", and that he couldn't adequately prepare his defense as he was imprisoned on unrelated extortion charges.

In June 2019, Cantwell threatened a member of the Bowl Patrol who went by the pseudonym "CheddarMane", saying he would rape his wife in front of his children and contact child protective services (CPS) about CheddarMane's alleged drug use if he did not provide Cantwell with information on the identity of "Vic Mackey", another pseudonymous Bowl Patrol member.

[29] Court filings also alleged that several days before his arrest, Cantwell used Telegram to threaten an attorney working on a lawsuit against him and others involved with the Unite the Right rally.

[40] Cantwell remained in jail from the time of his January arrest until trial, after the judge sided with prosecutors who argued that he was a risk to public safety.