A vile tweet from the account of the far-right activist who organized the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville insulted the woman who died while protesting the event.
‘Heather Heyer was a fat, disgusting Communist. Communists have killed 94 million,’ the tweet from nationalist blogger Jason Kessler’s account read. ‘Looks like it was payback time.’
The crude tweet linked to a story on the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer that also insulted Heyer, 32, who was killed after suspected driver, James Alex Fields Jr, 20, rammed his Dodge Challenger into a group of protesters last weekend.
Heyer, who was a paralegal, died at the scene and 19 others were injured. A police helicopter monitoring the event later crashed, killing two troopers on board.
A vile tweet from the account of the far-right activist who organized the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville insulted the woman who died while protesting the event
The tweet came from nationalist blogger Jason Kessler’s (left on August 13) Twitter account and called Heather Heyer (right), ‘fat and disgusting’
White nationalist Richard Spencer condemned the tweet from Kessler’s account shortly after it was tweeted out on Friday night.
‘I will no longer associate w/ Jason Kessler; no one should. Heyer’s death was deeply saddening. “Payback” is a morally reprehensible idea,’ Spencer wrote.
Another far-right figure who attended the rally also slammed Kessler for the tweet.
‘This is terribly wrong and vile. We should not rejoice at the people who died in Charlottesville just because we disagree with them,’ wrote Tim Gionet, who goes by the name Baked Alaska on Twitter.
A social media user claiming to be Daily Stormer staffer Andrew Auernheimer said he had hacked Kessler’s account, but that has not been confirmed, according to the Los Angeles Times.
On Saturday morning, Kessler claimed that his Twitter account had been hacked.
‘I was hacked last night. I apologize for the tweet sent out from my account last night,’ he wrote.
White nationalist Richard Spencer condemned the tweet from Kessler’s account shortly after it was tweeted out on Friday night
Another far-right figure who attended the rally also slammed Kessler for the tweet. ‘This is terribly wrong and vile. We should not rejoice at the people who died in Charlottesville just because we disagree with them,’ wrote Tim Gionet, who goes by the name Baked Alaska
On Saturday morning, Kessler claimed that his Twitter account had been hacked. ‘I was hacked last night. I apologize for the tweet sent out from my account last night,’ he wrote
The rally turned deadly Saturday when a car rammed into a group of people protesting against white supremacy. Pictured are members from Neo-Nazi, alt-right and white supremacist groups surrounding a statue of Thomas Jefferson in Charlottesville
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 when a car rammed into a group of people protesting against white supremacy.
Fields, who is accused of killing one person and wounding 19 others, was charged with second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and failure to stop in an accident that resulted in death.
On Friday, five additional charges were added and include two more counts of malicious wounding and three counts of aggravated malicious wounding, police said.
Kessler told Fox that he has ‘never met’ Fields, the suspected driver of the car.
When he was asked about 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’.
James Alex Fields Jr (left and right during the rally), who is accused of killing one person and wounding 19 others, was charged with second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and failure to stop in an accident that resulted in death
The silver Dodge Challenger (pictured) was allegedly driven by Fields through the crowd of protesters last weekend
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
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 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.
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
He was punched in the face and tackled to the ground before he was escorted to safety by police.
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.
He 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.