Neo-Nazi cult leader Michail Chkhikvishvili — whose propaganda inspired real-world bloodshed, including a deadly Nashville school shooting — was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison by a New York federal judge who called his crimes “extraordinarily serious.”
The 22-year-old Georgian national, known online as “Commander Butcher,” appeared gaunt and pale in green jail scrubs, fighting back tears as US District Judge Carol Bagley Amon handed down the sentence in Brooklyn Federal Court.
“The defendant is not being sentenced for his warped views,” Amon said. “He’s being sentenced for his calls to action.”
Chkhikvishvili led the Maniac Murder Cult, or MKY, an international neo-Nazi extremist group that used Telegram and other encrypted platforms to recruit followers and encourage acts of racist violence, according to federal prosecutors.
He distributed bomb-making instructions, poison recipes and ‘The Hater’s Handbook,’ a manifesto praising Hitler, Timothy McVeigh and Satan while encouraging school shootings and attacks on minorities and Jews.
Assistant US Attorney Andrew Reich urged the court to come down hard on Chkhikvishvili, telling the judge, “This is not a case about abstract rhetoric or internet trolling. This is about a systemic, deliberate solicitation of real-world violence.
“The defendant didn’t just glorify violence,” Reich said. “He instructed people on how to carry it out.”
According to prosecutors, Chkhikvishvili repeatedly urged an undercover FBI agent to poison Jewish children in Brooklyn by handing out ricin-laced candy on New Year’s Eve while dressed as Santa Claus. Prosecutors said he explicitly called for “dead Jewish kids.”
Authorities also linked his propaganda to multiple violent incidents, including the January 2025 shooting at Antioch High School in Nashville, where a student killed a classmate before taking his own life. Prosecutors said the shooter referenced MKY and Chkhikvishvili in writings posted online.
An Antioch student addressed the court by speakerphone Wednesday, describing lingering trauma from the shooting. “Before the shooting, school was a place where I felt safe,” the student said. “That sense of safety was taken from me and has not returned.”
Reich also read from a teacher’s victim statement describing watching a wounded student die in the cafeteria as blood splattered across the walls.
“This man manipulated a vulnerable and impressionable boy and turned him into a self-hating murderer,” the teacher wrote.
Defense attorney Zachary Taylor urged leniency, arguing his client was radicalized online as a depressed, bullied teenager whose “prefrontal cerebral cortex” was not fully developed.
“The defendant’s conduct in this case is horrible, disgusting, harmful,” Taylor acknowledged. “Michail would not disagree in any way with that statement.”
Taylor said his client had changed during nearly two years in custody, reading the Bible, Greek literature and Nelson Mandela’s “Long Walk to Freedom.”
Chkhikvishvili himself told the court he had been consumed by online extremism. “I was filling my brain with garbage,” he said. “The internet was dragging me down like a swamp. It was a honey pot.”
He said he hoped his case would serve as a warning to young people vulnerable to radicalization.
“I wish I could express to these young kids what I went through so they don’t fall into this pathway,” he said, adding that even at his most radicalized, he sometimes felt pangs of conscience over the fact that his paternal grandfather was Jewish.
“I look back on myself as a foolish coward,” he said.
Amon appeared unconvinced by parts of the defendant’s statement. “Is his remorse genuine?” the judge asked at one point. “The defendant claims to have found God, which I suppose means he rejected his savior Satan.”
