The organizer of the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville said he is going into hiding after receiving death threats.
Nationalist blogger Jason Kessler told Fox News on Thursday that he plans to lay low because of the death threats he has received since the rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12.
The rally turned deadly Saturday when a car rammed into a group of people protesting against white supremacy.
Jason Kessler, (pictured Sunday) who organized the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last Saturday, said he is going into hiding after he has received a number of death threats
The rally turned deadly Saturday when a car rammed into a group of people protesting against white supremacy. One woman was killed and 19 others were injured. Pictured are members from Neo-Nazi, alt-right and white supremacist groups surrounding a statue of Thomas Jefferson in Charlottesville
One woman was killed and 19 others were injured. A police helicopter monitoring the event later crashed, killing two troopers on board.
Kessler told Fox that he has ‘never met’ the suspected driver of the car, James Alex Fields, Jr.
When he was asked about the woman who was killed, Heather Heyer, Kessler said: ‘No comment.’
Kessler said he leads a ‘civil rights group’, not white supremacists.
He said his objections are with identity politics including ‘discriminatory policies of affirmative action, college admissions, history books being rewritten, blaming American whites for slavery’.
He told the outlet ‘every culture had slavery’, not only white Americans and he also blamed the ‘existential crisis of immigration, mass immigration from third world countries’.
Kessler said he has ‘never met’ the suspected driver of the car, James Alex Fields, Jr. (left). When Kessler was asked about the woman who was killed, Heather Heyer (right), he did not comment
The day after the protest, Kessler (pictured Sunday) was chased away from a press conference he tried to hold in front of Charlottesville’s City Hall
Kessler said he met with Charlottesville police multiple times ahead of the rally on Saturday and went over the city’s safety plan with a police liaison.
He also told the outlet that the captain ‘let slip’ that officials ‘did not use government servers because they did not want to get FOIA’d’, in reference to the Freedom of Information Act.
‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ he said, adding that authorities have not contacted him since the rally.
Kessler said that even though officials had given Kessler’s group a specific entry way into the park, it was blocked by police when they got there Saturday.
That meant Kessler’s group had to walk in close quarters to counter-protesters from Antifa, Black Lives Matter and others.
He told Fox that the clubs, helmets and body armor his group wore were ‘for our own safety’.
The day after the protest, Kessler was chased away from a press conference he tried to hold in front of Charlottesville’s City Hall.
He was punched in the face and tackled to the ground before he was escorted to safety by police.
Kessler was punched in the face and tackled to the ground before he was escorted to safety by police
Kessler said he has done nothing wrong and authorities have not contacted him since the rally. He is pictured Sunday being escorted by police after his press conference Sunday
Kessler’s profile has risen in the self-described ‘alt-right’ community – an offshoot of conservatism mixing racism, white nationalism and populism – as he publicized his fight to prevent the city from moving a statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee from a city park.
In May, he was one of three people arrested after scuffles broke out by the statue. Police said Kessler wouldn’t obey an officer’s commands to leave and was inciting others with a bullhorn.
Later that month, he applied for a permit for Saturday’s rally, which he told The Associated Press was partly over the statue removal decision but also because an ‘anti-white climate’.
Kessler said he does not identify as a white nationalist but told the AP he is concerned about immigration creating an ‘ethnic cleansing’ of white people.
Kessler said on his webpage that he’s a graduate of the University of Virginia and the author of a novel and a book on poetry.
His novel, Badland Blues, is about a homeless dwarf who wins the lottery and his poetry is a rumination on ‘debauchery, madness loneliness and death,’ according to descriptions on Amazon.