OKCupid bans white supremacist featured in Vice video

by Taylor Lorenz - 08/17/17 3:13 PM ET

Dating site OKCupid has revoked the membership of Chris Cantwell, a prominent white supremacist who participated in the “Unite the Right” rally this past weekend in Charlottesville, Va.

The dating app tweeted about revoking Cantwell’s account on Thursday morning, saying that “if any OkCupid members come across people involved in hate groups, please report it immediately.”

Cantwell was pictured in tears yesterday after discovering that there was a potential warrant out for his arrest. “We’ve followed the law every step of the way,” he said.

Cantwell was the subject of a Vice documentary video about the Charlottesville rally and subsequent violence. In the video he makes hateful comments about blacks and Jews, saying that the fact that President Trump would “give his daughter to a Jew” — referring to Ivanka’s marriage to Jared Kushner — was “disgusting.”

He also said that the rally, which left 19 people injured and one woman dead after a car was driven into a crowd of counterprotesters, was a “win” for his side. A man with white supremacist ties has been charged with second-degree murder in the case.

“People die every day. The fact that nobody on our side died … and none of our people killed anyone unjustly, I think is a plus for us,” he said in the video. “’I think a lot more people are going to die before we’re done here.”

OKCupid is not the first internet company to take a hard stance against white supremacy after the Charlottesville violence.

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Neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer was forced to move to the dark web earlier this week after GoDaddy and Google both refused to host its content. Airbnb also said it would refuse to host Nazi sympathizers on its platform.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich resigned from Trump’s manufacturing council after the president’s controversial statements following the tragedy, in which he said “both sides” were to blame for the violence, while several CEOs resigned from Trump’s business advisory board in protest of the president before it was disbanded.

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