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White supremacist Nick Fuentes charged over Chicago pepper-spray incident

Far-right influencer allegedly attacked woman outside his house after he tweeted misogynistic statement

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The notorious white supremacist Nick Fuentes is facing battery charges in Illinois because authorities say he pepper-sprayed a woman who had knocked on his front door after he enraged many on the internet by tweeting the misogynistic slogan “your body, my choice” following Donald Trump’s victory in the recent presidential election.

Fuentes, 26, was arrested on 27 November on a count of misdemeanor battery and released the same day, according to documents filed on Wednesday in the Cook county circuit court that were reported on by the Chicago Sun-Times. He is tentatively scheduled to appear in court on 19 December.

The far-right, avowedly antisemitic influencer seemingly sought to make light of his legal predicament on Friday on social media, publishing a post on X that contained a thinly disguised racial slur as well as the words “Free me”.

Meanwhile, the Jewish feminist activist pressing the case against Fuentes, 57-year-old Marla Rose, also commented on social media, writing on Facebook: “It. Is. On.” She added “civil case pending” to the post that displayed three fire emojis.

Fuentes invited the digital sphere’s fury by celebrating Trump’s return to the presidency at the expense of Kamala Harris on 6 November with a barb tweeted on X reading: “Your body, my choice. Forever.”

The post taunting the concept of women’s bodily autonomy – along with the 2022 elimination of federal abortion rights at the hands of a US supreme court dominated by judges either appointed by or aligned with Trump – had gained more than 99.7m views as of Saturday. And some of Fuentes’s political opponents retaliated by publishing his home address on social media while declaring: “Your house, our choice.”

Rose ultimately told police that she had gone to record the outside of Fuentes’s home in the Chicago-area suburb of Berwyn on 10 November. He soon allegedly pepper-sprayed her, pushed her on to the concrete and broke her cellphone.

Video of the encounter that Rose later released showed Fuentes open his front door as she reached up to ring the doorbell. He extended his left arm while holding a bottle of pepper spray, which prompted Rose to say: “Oh my God, what are you doing?” The phone was then seen falling while Fuentes could be heard saying: “Get the fuck out of here.” Fuentes then seemingly used his foot to drag the phone inside his house before closing the door and locking it.

A police report filed on 11 November said another woman driving by Fuentes’s house at the time called officers. That witness described seeing a man shove a woman outside a home, the report recounted.

Rose was still at the scene when police arrived, and officers reportedly spoke with her as well as Fuentes separately.

The report added that Fuentes claimed to police that he had received death threats as well as “people showing up to his house unannounced” after posting “a political joke online” had left him “in fear for his life”. He eventually “became uncooperative” and refused to further address the confrontation with Rose, as NBC News reported.

Rose had “watery” eyes but listed no other visible physical injuries, the report said.

Possible punishments for misdemeanor battery under Illinois law include relatively short jail sentences, probation and fines.

Some of the earliest news media headlines given to Fuentes came when he withdrew from Boston University after participating in the 2017 white supremacist rally objecting to the removal of a statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia. A demonstrator protesting the white supremacists was murdered by a neo-Nazi sympathizer who intentionally drove a car into her as well as others.

Trump then ignited a scandal by hosting Fuentes as a dinner guest at his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022 as he geared up to run for a second presidency. Another guest at that dinner was the rapper previously known as Kanye West, who had propagated antisemitic remarks that – among other consequences – cost him a business partnership with the sportswear company Adidas.