Christopher Cantwell

Cantwell began as a men's rights activist and has contributed to the A Voice for Men website. In 2014 he wrote for CopBlock.org, a police-critical organization. In the same year he was presented as one of three "Difference Makers" (for "fighting for their constitutional right to be total shitstains") on the Colbert Report which documented the "Free Keene Squad" harassing meter maids. He also co-hosted the anarcho-capitalist radio show Free Talk Live but was suspended in May 2015, in his words, "for calling a social justice warrior a nigger on Twitter" and, after a reinstatement, again in September 2015, also on accusations of racism.

Meanwhile, in December 2013, Cantwell started what he called Some Garbage Podcast, disseminated through YouTube and elsewhere, and in April 2015 renamed it Radical Agenda ("a show about common sense extremism").. In 2017, he deleted most of the episodes from YouTube after receiving warnings about community standards violations. He increasingly moved from libertarian anarchist to white-supremacist ideas, to the point that in 2017 he introduced a weekly "What Would Hitler Do?" segment by "Hadding," a frequent caller to the show who also runs a Holocaust-denying site called National-Socialist Worldview. What he described as his "sorry excuse for a studio in Keene, New Hampshire" included a Donald Trump "God-Emperor" poster, a "Don't tread on me" flag, a sign saying "White Lives Matter," as well as multiple guns lying on his desk.

Cantwell has self-identified as a member of the alt-right. The Anti-Defamation League includes Cantwell in its list of people on the alt-right. The Southern Poverty Law Center has a profile of Cantwell, where it says that he advocates white nationalism with a libertarian spin.

Cantwell has identified as a libertarian. By his own account, he was originally radicalized in 2009 after listening to a presentation by former Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik. He announced as a Libertarian Party candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 1st District in 2009 but failed to collect enough signatures to get on the ballot.

In 2013, police accountability activist Antonio Buehler confronted Cantwell over rape jokes and his increasingly racist and sexist rhetoric, thus beginning a long social media war between the two. Buehler launched a campaign to get notable libertarians to formally reject Christopher Cantwell's ideas and influence on the "liberty movement" that Cantwell was trying to make his name off of. He called out Thomas Woods, Adam Kokesh, Jordan Page, and others. Cantwell responded by launching a fake website under Buehler's name and produced numerous racist memes directed at Buehler. When Buehler finally tired of the war, Cantwell identified other libertarian "social justice warriors" to go after, particularly Cathy Reisenwitz. The conflict between Buehler and Cantwell ultimately reignited a discussion of "thin" versus "thick" libertarianism.

In 2013, he was expelled from the libertarian Free State Project for promoting violence against the government.

Cantwell is an admirer of right-wing anarchist philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe, who wrote: "There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and removed from society." This is the basis for Cantwell's frequent reference to "physical removal" - often made specific as "helicopter rides" in the manner of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who had leftist opponents thrown out of helicopters over the sea.

Although he endorsed Donald Trump for president in January 2016, he said that Trump was not up to his standards because he wanted a president who was, in Cantwell's own words, "a lot more racist than Donald Trump" and "does not give his daughter to a Jew." The latter comment referred to Trump's daughter Ivanka's marriage to Jared Kushner. Scholars Lisa Guenther and Abigail Levin explained that the comment posited that women are the property of men and also denied Kushner's whiteness on the basis of his being a Jew.

Cantwell has also expressed admiration for political commentator Tucker Carlson, who, Cantwell says, "is basically telling white America to prepare for war as directly as he can get away with while remaining on Fox News. I couldn't agree with him more, and if he tells me to pick up a gun, I'm doing it."

Cantwell participated in the Unite the Right rally held in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11–12, 2017. He was featured by Vice News in a video about the rally, where he said: “I'm carrying a pistol, I go to the gym all the time, I'm trying to make myself more capable of violence.” He then follows up with "we are not the aggressors, but we're not nonviolent. We'll (expletive) kill these people if we have to."

On August 16, 2017, Facebook said it had shut down Cantwell's Facebook and Instagram profiles due to statements he made in connection with the rally. On August 17, it was reported that Cantwell had been banned from online dating service OKCupid after a woman reported receiving a message from him after watching his Vice News video.

A video of Cantwell choking back tears and weeping after hearing that an arrest warrant for him was out was published on August 16, 2017. This earned him the nickname of "The Crying Nazi".

On August 17, 2017, Cantwell wrote on his blog that he was preparing to turn himself in to the University of Virginia Police. He also said that PayPal had blocked him from withdrawing money for six months, and that he had removed it as a payment method; additionally, he said that he had been completely banned from YouTube, and that Blubrry, the podcast service he used, had canceled his account so his podcasts were no longer available. In another blog post, he wrote that Venmo, Dwolla, and Stripe had also disabled his accounts, as had Twitter, MailChimp, Match.com, and Tinder. On August 24, Cantwell turned himself in to police and was transported to Charlottesville, where he was wanted on felony assault charges stemming from the August 11 torchlit march. On August 31, 2017, Cantwell was denied bond by a Virginia court.