Tweet insulting slain protester renounced
Charlottesville rally organizer says he was heavily medicated.
A tweet from the account of the far-right activist who organized the Charlottesville, Va., “Unite the Right” rally insulted the counterprotester who was killed at the event, saying late Friday night that her death was “payback time.”
“Heather Heyer was a fat, disgusting Communist,” stated the tweet on an account belonging to Jason Kessler. “Communists have killed 94 million. Looks like it was payback time.”
The tweet linked to a story on the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer that also insulted Heyer in crude terms and appeared gleeful over her death.
Kessler did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Police say Heyer was killed when a rally attendee, James A. Fields, 20, drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters at the Aug. 12 event, which drew white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other far-right figures from around the U.S. Fields has been charged with murder.
Kessler had blamed city officials for not providing sufficient security for the rally, which originally was organized to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a Charlottesville park.
Kessler’s tweet sparked denunciations from other rally attendees, who quickly distanced themselves, accelerating a spiral of recriminations among far-right leaders over who was to blame for the chaos at last weekend’s “Unite the Right” rally.
By Saturday morning, the tweet had been deleted from Kessler’s account, which initially indicated he’d been hacked but then backtracked and said he’d been on a mixture of drugs.
“I repudiate the heinous tweet that was sent from my account last night. I’ve been under a crushing amount of stress & death threats,” the tweet stated. “I’m taking ambien, xanax and I had been drinking last night. I sometimes wake up having done strange things I can’t remember.”
Kessler’s tweets then were switched to “private” mode before his account was deleted.
“I will no longer associate w/ Jason Kessler; no one should,” tweeted Richard Spencer, a white nationalist who was scheduled to speak at Kessler’s event. “Heyer’s death was deeply saddening. ‘Payback’ is a morally reprehensible idea.”
Another far-right figure who attended the event, Tim Gionet, who goes by the name “Baked Alaska,” also criticized the remarks.
“This is terribly wrong and vile,” Gionet tweeted. “We should not rejoice at the people who died in Charlottesville just because we disagree with them.”
Also killed were two Virginia state troopers, whose helicopter crashed outside the city after they flew over the melee to monitor it.
“Why. Would You. Tweet This,” another popular farright account, @FaustianNation, tweeted at Kessler. “This tweet makes it impossible to defend you, and now the entire rally as you were the main organizer.”
Adding to the confusion, a user purporting to be Daily Stormer staffer Andrew Auernheimer, also known as “weev,” said on the social media service Gab that he had hacked Kessler’s account, though his claim could not be confirmed.
Auernheimer had his own ax to grind: He posted his suspicions that other white supremacist organizers, including Spencer, had sought to block a neo-Nazi contingent with the Daily Stormer from attending the event.
White nationalists and others who attended the event have been subject to a public crackdown after last
‘Heather Heyer was a fat, disgusting Communist. Communists have killed 94 million. Looks like it was payback time.’ — from Kessler’s Twitter account