The Insurrectionist Behind Asheville’s Most Inclusive Kava Bar

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Welcome to Moon and Root

By Will Manors · October 16, 2026 · 11 min read

Kava bars have been opening in North Carolina and across America with increasing popularity over the last decade. The beverage, a lightly intoxicating alternative to alcohol, is made by grinding up dried kava root, mixing it with water, and straining the liquid contents into a bowl. It has a bitter taste that numbs the mouth and produces a pleasant euphoric effect.

Moon and Root is a fantasy-themed kava bar in downtown Asheville. The bartenders dress like Game of Thrones characters. The “Kava Names” they adopt add to the immersion of the venue and offer a pseudo-anonymity to its regular patrons. There’s a young goth lady I would see there named Moonraker, for instance. I’m pretty sure that’s not the name on her birth certificate. It’s like club kids in the early 2000s calling themselves DJ so-and-so or Downtown Eric. Elysium is the owner of Moon and Root, but his real name is Lewis Easton Cantwell. I never use his real name. I didn’t even know it until he was doxxed, canceled, and publicly denounced by half the city.

Before opening up Moon and Root, Elysium served five months in a federal prison in Kentucky for his role in the J6 protests.

“It was take the plea or else go away for 28 years,” he tells me. “They said I didn’t have a chance.”

Elysium was 35 years old on January 6, 2021, employed as a network engineer, and the proud owner of a new kava establishment. Though largely apolitical, he had taken a stand against the system when he refused to go “takeout only” during COVID, feeling that, as a veteran, the government had overreached. He kept the place open, and business boomed, much to the chagrin of his competitors, who leaned far to the left.

Elysium’s girlfriend’s dad, a staunch Trump supporter, was on his way to DC to attend the J6 protests. Despite his stand against COVID mandates, Elysium had no desire to overthrow the U.S. government.

“My girlfriend thought it would be a good bonding experience,” recalled Elysium.

“Makes sense,” I said. “What could go wrong?”

“I was there, but I never made it inside the building,” Elysium confesses on a recent afternoon over a cup of chilled kava. He brews it strong and flavorful. We drink it straight from corrugated coffee cups. The earthy flavor of the root makes me grimace ever so slightly with each sip, but challenges me to take another. The way whiskey used to challenge me with its burn to the back of the throat.

After a couple weeks of patiently sipping this stuff without feeling much effect beyond the numbing of the lips, I’m starting to understand why people drink it. A calm buzz. Proof, I figured, that I’d developed the famous “reverse tolerance” kava drinkers always talk about.

Elysium shows me a video from the day of the protest in which he’s visible on the porch of the Capitol building. In the footage, a crowd of protesters push up against a phalanx of riot police. He stands near the front of the scrum, but far enough back to avoid making direct contact with the officers.

“I was trying to get them to calm down and stop pushing because a lady had fallen over and was getting crushed by the door,” he claims. “I never even set foot inside the Capitol building.”

While Elysium never touched the door or engaged in any physical contact with a federal agent, his repeated shouts to “hold the door” that the officers were trying to close resulted in a lengthy list of charges: civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding, entering a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building or grounds, parading/demonstrating/picketing in a Capitol building, and the big one: obstructing or impeding a Capitol Police officer. The final charge is the felony he was sentenced for, alongside the litany of misdemeanors.

“I went to prison for my words,” says Elysium.

Shortly after it all went down in DC, a rival business owner posted videos of Elysium at the Capitol all over Facebook and Twitter. According to Elysium, he inserted the hashtag @FBI in every comments section. Posing as a concerned citizen, he allegedly called the FBI anonymous tip line.

On February 14, just over a month after the protest, Elysium said an armada of 23 U.S. Marshals, FBI agents, and local police showed up in ten vehicles, stormed the kava bar, and arrested him. He surrendered voluntarily and without incident. Wouldn’t you know it, the local news just happened to be present at the time. They plastered his face all over the media along with the long list of charges. That well-publicized fiasco made evicting him and shutting down the kava bar, despite the illegal breach of contract, all the easier. The man’s a deplorable insurrectionist, out on probation for the felony of trying to overthrow the U.S. government. What’s he gonna do, sue you?

After 2 years of pretrial probation, during which time he lost his job, land, business, and was evicted from his home, Elysium faced years in prison before a plea bargain. Because he had no prior criminal record, is a veteran, and was able to pay his attorney $112,000 (with the proceeds from the sale of 17 acres and a liquidated 401(k)), the sentence was reduced to five months in federal prison plus 36 months of work release and probation post-incarceration.

Elysium reported to federal prison in Ashland, Kentucky.

“The prison was a converted basketball arena. It was over a hundred cots lined up next to each other on the court, with the empty seats of the stadium surrounding us. I could reach out my hand from my cot and easily touch over half a dozen other prisoners if I wanted to. That’s illegal, by the way,” recounts Elysium.

There were also the roaches.

“They crawled on you at night,” he said. “They scurried across your face. At first I tried squashing them, but there were too many; you had to make peace with it.”

“How does one make peace with cockroaches?” I asked, glancing around the Moon and Root and taking another sip of kava.

“You just had to close your eyes, keep your mouth closed, and hope they didn’t nest in your ear. One prisoner had a roach crawl into his ear canal, where it died. He said he could hear it chirping even after the nurse removed it with tweezers.”

“How was the food?” I asked.

“Infested with roaches and spiders. The mashed potatoes had maggots. Mostly dead. You learned to eat around them. But occasionally you’d get one that was still alive, slithering around.”

“Did you throw it away or complain?” I asked.

“No, that was the only option. You just ate around it.”

After his release, Elysium started to put his life back together. He distanced himself from politics, founded Moon and Root, and eventually got a girlfriend. For years he stayed busy and kept his head down. Then, years later, on May 15 2026, he was accused of being an antisemite by Citizen Times.

Titled, “Asheville kava bar owner called out for following racist social media,” the piece noted that, “His Instagram account for Moon & Root, @moonandroot.apothecary, at some point followed a racist and antisemitic Instagram page. The profile picture for the account is a racist caricature of a man with a hooked nose, and the account features a wide variety of antisemitic videos that explicitly attack the Jewish people. A personal Instagram account that Cantwell confirmed belonged to him followed right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson, Libs of TikTok and an account that featured videos of protestors being injured.”

Elysium himself had posted nothing antisemitic. The mere fact that he followed three right-wing accounts was apparently newsworthy information. The story appeared all over my social media feed and featured Elysium’s photo alongside the fact that he was a J6 protester who had served time in prison. The message was clear. Get him.

Not long after the story broke, Elysium was dumped by his girlfriend. He describes her as a well-put-together blonde with perfectly coiffed hair, an athletic physique, and an outgoing personality. Like Elysium, she’s a self-employed entrepreneur. As the owner of a successful salon, frequented almost exclusively by liberal women, standing by him would have meant social and financial suicide, he explains.

We’re eventually joined by Shua, a young Jewish guy who serves as Moon and Root’s head bartender. He’s a ladino, meaning a Sephardic Jew whose ancestors were expelled from Spain and Portugal.

“It’s pronounced Ladeeno,” he corrects me.

For such a hardline Nazi, Elysium seems to have a soft spot for the Jews. Or perhaps it’s the other way around. The Jewish clientele that gathers at Moon and Root report feeling unwelcome and unsafe at the other venues. Shua, who spent years living in Israel on a kibbutz, was labeled a “Colonizing Zionist” for his vociferous defense of Israel.

“It’s simple,” says Shua as we sip kava in the darkened lounge. “Do you believe the Jewish people have a right to exist in a country of their own?”

“Sure,” says Elysium.

“Then you’re a Zionist,” says Shua.

“Hell yeah, I’m a Zionist,” says Elysium, who couldn’t care less.

Just then, a customer that I don’t recognize arrives.

“Welcome to our TED Talk on Zionism,” I say to break the ice.

We all chuckle. Elysium has just spent 10 hours on a job with Shua, moving furniture and cleaning out the studio of a wealthy local painter. There’s no way he didn’t hear about the righteousness of Israel and her people for at least eight of those hours.

But it’s not just Shua. Heterodox thinkers of all stripes gather at the bar to discuss topics like Gen Z culture, Silicon Valley, and data centers. On some days, the place is practically a hotbed of intellectual debate. This is exceptionally rare in Asheville, where laughing at the wrong joke can mean immediate excommunication. If politics come up at all, it’s only to affirm that everyone hates Trump before moving on to other topics.

I stumbled upon Moon and Root by accident. I happened to be walking down the street after watching a friend’s band play at the venue next door. It was opening night, and the place was packed with medieval hipsters. The bartender was dressed up like a squire out of Tolkien. There were ladies in studded leather belts. I wasn’t sure if I was at a Renaissance fair or a BDSM club.

“Welcome, Traveller,” Elysium greeted me as I entered the colorful and dimly lit bar.

“Thank you,” I answered as I stepped forward and ordered a libation.

Elysium engaged me in friendly conversation, and I ended up spending several hours hanging out. The crowd was mostly young, thin, and good-looking. Compared to most Asheville establishments, there were so many attractive people I pondered whether or not the owner had hired a modeling agency for opening night. Later, once we became friendly and the bar traffic slowed down, I asked him about it. Elysium laughingly denied doing so.

The place was packed and business was good. The lounge, since it didn’t serve alcohol, benefited from relaxed regulations that allow it to stay open past a regular bar’s closing time. I’d brought friends of all persuasions with me to partake. Black, white, gay, straight. They all stopped coming after the story broke, and I stopped asking.

Still, I felt let down by my friends and their convenient lack of principle. As of now, business has slowed, and Elysium is picking up construction work to cover the overhead.

Elysium has denied supporting or voting for Trump. He has apologized profusely to local and national reporters for attending a protest that, to any reasonably minded person, was less violent than the “fiery but peaceful” protests that preceded it. He’s hung a rainbow flag in the front window, assuring passersby that all are welcome, and he’s paid his “debt” to society. But they still won’t let him be.

The tragic irony, of course, is that Elysium’s business would be fine if he only catered to MAGA Republicans. But he didn’t; that’s not his style, and so he built up a customer base of the very people who would eventually turn on him. If Moon and Root goes under, it will be because he tried to welcome everyone in.