ExtremismSines v. Kessler: Reckoning and Weaponization
On 23 November 2021, a jury returned guilty verdicts against the organizers of the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. But while the trial put the defendants’ bigotry, antisemitism and racism on full display, it also provided them a stage to share their bigotry and hate with a large, captive audience, while aggressively harassing their critics.
On 23 November 2021, a jury returned its verdicts in the civil lawsuit against the organizers of the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. All defendants were found guilty of Virginia state civil conspiracy charges, and the jury agreed to award the plaintiffs more than $25 million in damages. Jurors were unable to reach a decision on federal conspiracy charges.
Sines v. Kessler, the civil suit filed by Integrity First for America, was a groundbreaking effort to hold accountable more than two dozen organizers of and participants in the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, putting them under the Klieg lights of public scrutiny and demonstrating the months-long planning, communication and conspiracy leading up to the largest event of racially motivated extremists in recent memory.
But while the trial put the defendants’ bigotry, antisemitism and racism on full display, it also provided them a stage to share their bigotry and hate with a large, captive audience, while aggressively harassing their critics. Just as the 2017 Unite the Right rally unified extremist racist of all stripes around one event, so too has the Sines v. Kessler trial.
A number of defendants, including Matthew Parrott, Michael Hill, Jason Kessler, Matthew Heimbach and Richard Spencer, used their time in the courtroom to hurl racial slurs, rant about antifa or “Jewish-led” conspiracies, show anti-Semitic and racist propaganda videos, praise Adolf Hitler and his autobiography Mein Kampf and in many ways attempt to make a mockery of a federal court proceeding. The trial, which was a critical step for holding the extremist accountable for their actions, simultaneously provided them with an opportunity to broadcast their ideology.
Defendant Christopher Cantwell, who represented himself during the trial after being unable to find an attorney willing to represent him, managed to harness the power of the trial for his own purposes.
In the years since the Unite the Right rally, Cantwell, best known for his “Radical Agenda” podcast and as “the crying Nazi,” a term coined when footage emerged of Cantwell crying after learning there was a warrant for his arrest, has been embroiled in legal trouble. Most recently, in February 2021, a federal judge sentenced Cantwell to 41 months in prison on extortion and threat charges stemming from a series of 2019 Telegram messages, including one in which he threatened to rape the wife of a Missouri-basedextremist.
