It isn’t considered to be in good taste to celebrate someone’s passing. In this instance, however, the world is slightly better off by having one less Neo-Nazi nationalist and white supremacist amongst us.
An article in the Independent (UK) newspaper describes what happened.
Teddy Joseph Von Nukem was photographed at the white supremacist rally holding a tiki torch
A far-right Missouri man who featured prominently during the 2017 Charlottesville white supremacist rally has reportedly died by suicide ahead of a trial in which he stood accused of drug trafficking.
Teddy Joseph Von Nukem, 35, took his own life after skipping the first day of his criminal trial for a drug trafficking charge in Arizona on 30 January. He died in his hometown of Missouri as a federal judge was issuing a warrant for his arrest, The Daily Beast reported, citing court documents and an autopsy report.
Suicide notes left for law enforcement and his children were found at the scene, according to the coroner’s report, which also stated that the handwriting on the notes “was somewhat inconsistent”.
Attribution for the above photograph: CNN
As the Daily Beast pointed out, his death was first reported by Molly Conger, an independent journalist.
Von Nukem gained notoriety for attending the Aug. 12, 2017 hate speech rally that aggressively revived a nativist movement in the United States. He glorified the violence, and researchers of domestic extremism suspect he was a key figure in a brutal beating of a black man that day.
Von Nukem’s sudden death was initially reported by Molly Conger, an independent journalist in Charlottesville who has become a key anti-fascism researcher in the years since the rally shook the city.
The Washington Post (subscription required) goes a bit more in-depth with this story.
A man wielding a tiki torch with neo-Nazis and white supremacists in a photo that became one of the most haunting images of the deadly Unite the Right rally in 2017 killed himself on the same day that his trial for a federal drug trafficking charge was set to begin.
Von Nukem’s image went viral after he was photographed wearing a black shirt, carrying a tiki torch and yelling racist chants at the front of a far-right group that gathered in Charlottesville to protest the removal of Confederate statues. Photos of Von Nukem, who was accused of participating in the beating of counterprotester DeAndre Harris, were taken the day before 32-year-old Heather Heyer was killed and dozens of other counterprotesters were injured on Aug. 12, 2017…
Teddy Joseph Von Nukem, 35, died on Jan. 30 at his home in southwest Missouri when he was supposed to go to trial in Arizona on charges of trafficking fentanyl across the Mexico border. He was arrested in March 2021 for allegedly having more than 33 pounds of fentanyl pills in his vehicle, according to court records.
I wonder if Donald Trump will issue a statement. Was Von Nukem one of the “good people” Trump referred to after the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, VA?
To refresh your memory, here’s what Trump said after that deadly 2017 rally courtesy of the Atlantic magazine.
President Trump defended the white nationalists who protested in Charlottesville on Tuesday, saying they included “some very fine people,” while expressing sympathy for their demonstration against the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee…
Speaking in the lobby of Trump Tower at what had been billed as a statement on infrastructure, a combative Trump defended his slowness to condemn white nationalists and neo-Nazis after the melee in central Virginia, which ended in the death of one woman and injuries to dozens of others, and compared the tearing down of Confederate monuments to the hypothetical removal of monuments to the Founding Fathers.
He also said that counterprotesters deserve an equal amount of blame for the violence.