'Crying Nazi' Christopher Cantwell Doesn't Want To Be Called 'Crybaby'

The white supremacist who posted a video of himself tearfully claiming that he feared for his safety following the “United the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, commented on the viral meme in a new interview. Christopher Cantwell — who first gained notoriety for his volatile interview with Vice News and having since been dubbed the “crying Nazi”— said in this week that he no longer wants to be identified with the moniker.

Cantwell, 36, spoke with the Daily Beast for an interview published Tuesday and conducted from the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail in Virginia, where the New Hampshire resident is being held. A warrant was previously issued for his arrest after he was caught on video pepper-spraying counter-protesters during the rally in Charlottesville at which one person was killed.

“When I come down here for a permitted demonstration, championed by the ACLU, where the police are supposed to be clearing our enemies from our path, and then I find myself involved in a riot facing 20 years in prison, I got emotional, shockingly enough,” Cantwell told the Daily Beast.

“One minute I'm a f------ white supremacist terrorist and the next minute I'm a f------ crybaby?” he added. “I’m a god---- human being.”

Cantwell told the Daily Beast that he’s being held in solitary confinement at the jail for his own safety, though it was not clear what threats were made that warranted the precaution.

Cantwell maintained that he attacked protesters in an act of self-defense and claimed that fellow demonstrators at the rally — who included white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan — had been wounded by counter-protesters, thereby eliciting violence.

“That guy is coming directly at me, and I'm spraying him directly in the face,” he said. “I used the least amount of force possible to prevent that man from harming me in a brawl that my enemies started.”

Cantwell previously spoke about the warrant for his arrest after it was observed that he had attacked counter-protesters with pepper spray. He told NBC News last week that he intended to turn himself in “without delay” and did so shortly thereafter.

While Cantwell is currently awaiting his sentencing for three felony charges — each of which carries a five-year sentence — he has refused to curb racist, transphobic and anti-Semitic language both heard in his interview with Vice, as well as elsewhere.