MELBOURNE, Fla. – A white nationalist who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2016 and was a featured speaker at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia was arrested Monday on charges of kidnapping, domestic violence, and possession of a firearm during a crime of violence.
Augustus Sol Invictus, 36, was arrested at a mall in Brevard County on a warrant issued out of South Carolina. A police report obtained by the Miami Herald described him as an “out of state fugitive.”
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The Daily Beast, citing police records, reports that Invictus on Dec. 12 put a gun to his wife’s head and forced her to travel from South Carolina to Florida with him. She was later able to escape back to South Carolina where she spoke to authorities.
In 2016, Invictus campaigned as a libertarian to unseat U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Invictus ultimately lost the libertarian primary, but not before making headlines over allegations that he wished to start a second American civil war and that he expressed support for a eugenics program.
“He is the absolute exact opposite of a Libertarian. He’s a self-proclaimed fascist. He’s promoting a second civil war,” said former Florida Libertarian Party Chairman Adrian Wyllie in 2015. “It’s absolute insanity. We must explain to people this is the opposite of Libertarians. This guy has no place in the Libertarian Party.”
Invictus had also garnered attention over an admission that he once killed a goat and drank its blood as part of a pagan ritual.
In 2017, Invictus was a headlining speaker at the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally that resulted in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
Invictus has admitted that he is friends with and has many supporters who are white supremacists, but has denied that he himself is a white supremacist. However, he was credited by white nationalist leader Richard Spencer with writing the first draft of the “Charlottesville Statement,” an alt-right manifesto. The statement included several white nationalist tenets, including claims that “Jews are an ethno-religious people distinct from Europeans,” and that “Whites alone defined America as a European society and political order.”
In 2017, Invictus began running the website The Revolutionary Conservative, which brands itself as an alternative to conservative media with a stated goal to “conquer or die.”
Invictus is being held without bond. He is scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 15.