Christopher Charles Cantwell, a white supremacist who was labeled the “crying Nazi” after he posted a video of himself sobbing in fear of being arrested for assault at last year’s deadly rally in Charlottesville, will no longer be allowed to step foot in Virginia.
Cantwell, 37, pleaded guilty to two counts of assault and battery on Friday, NBC 29 reported. The charges came after he used pepper spray on counterprotesters near the University of Virginia on Aug. 11 during a “Unite the Right” march in which he and other white supremacists chanted slogans including “Jews will not replace us.”
As part of his plea agreement, Cantwell was told to leave Virginia within eight hours and not to return for five years. While he was sentenced to two terms of 12 months in prison, seven months were suspended and he received 107 days credit for jail time.
The white nationalist gained notoriety after he was featured in a Vice News documentary of the march, in which he bragged about “trying to make myself more capable of violence.” During that same march, 32-year-old counterprotester Heather Heyer was fatally struck by a car driven by a white supremacist.
“We’re not nonviolent,” Cantwell says at one point in the documentary. “We’ll fucking kill these people if we have to.”
For all his chest-pounding, Cantwell crumpled quickly when he found out days after the rally that there was a warrant out for his arrest. In a video released by Cantwell, the neo-Nazi whines about his impending arrest.
“We have done everything in our power to keep this peaceful,” Cantwell sobs in the video. “I know we talk a lot of shit on the internet, right ... we are trying to be law-abiding and our enemies will not stop.”
Perhaps his criminal record will give him something new to cry about.