Stick that brought fame could put Trump fan away
Kyle Chapman emerged as a stick-wielding hero for white nationalists after the March 4 clash in Berkeley between the president’s supporters and counterprotesters.
Images and video of Chapman wearing a respirator, shin guards and goggles, and holding a stick and a shield with an American flag sticker, circulated on the Internet.
The stick he appears to strike a counterprotester with earned him the nicknames Based Stickman and Alt Knight — and fawning praise from white supremacists who turned his battlefield exploits into propaganda memes.
Now, the stick that brought Chapman, 41, fame could get him locked away for almost a decade.
On Wednesday, the Alameda County district attorney charged him with a felony count of possessing a leadfilled stick.
Chapman, who lives in Daly City, could face up to eight
years in state prison because of a previous violent felony of committing a robbery in Texas.
His arraignment on the stick charge is scheduled for Aug. 25 — two days before a planned rally — again at Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, the same location as the March 4 clash. This time, it’s being hailed as the “Battle of Berkeley 3.”
I interviewed Chapman on Aug. 14 — two days before he was charged — about the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va.
I wanted to know what he thought of the upcoming Bay Area rallies.
I wanted to know if Chapman supported white supremacists.
“I’ve already spoken about this,” Chapman bristled. “I don’t play the game where I have to sit there and condemn over and over again. I’m not going to buy into that.”
He told me he’s not racist, because he has an Asian wife. That has caused some of the people who celebrated him to condemn him on Internet forums such as Stormfront, an online support group for aggrieved white supremacists.
Chapman added that he lost followers when he previously condemned hate groups.
“I lost 40 percent of my supporters when I came out and did a post,” he said. “I said, ‘Look, you guys need to stop it with the racism, stop it with the violence.’ I’m not about that. I want to bring all people together.”
And yes, at a rally in late April to support Ann Coulter’s hate speech at UC Berkeley, I watched as Chapman pushed back a horde of right-wing soldiers who mistook Berkeley High School students leaving school as their enemy.
Still, Chapman’s actions have shown him aligned with white supremacists. At the April 15 melee in Berkeley, Chapman engaged counterprotesters alongside Nathan Damigo, the founder of the white nationalist group Identity Evropa.
I pushed for clarity: Does he stand by white supremacists?
“I’ve already condemned it, and that’s all I have to do,” Chapman said. “I don’t owe you an explanation when I’ve already given the explanation.”
During our 30-minute conversation, Chapman pinned the blame for the altercations in Berkeley, Charlottesville and elsewhere on the police for, he said, refusing to intervene as masked antifascists and Black Lives Matter advocates attacked demonstrators.
Chapman, who didn’t respond to my request for a second interview, railed against the charge on Twitter, calling it “bogus.” He wrote that he was “ready to go to jail for this movement.”
That’s cool, but if convicted, that’s not what he’d be facing jail for.
Based Stickman would be facing jail for wielding a stick as a weapon.