Charlottesville Racist Leader Was Former Obama Supporter, Activist

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The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that…
By Martin Walsh
on August 15, 2017 at 2:25pm

Jason Kessler, the organizer of Saturday’s “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, has been identified as an Occupy Wall Street activist and supporter of former President Barack Obama, according to The Southern Poverty Law Center.

The SPLC identified Kessler’s involvement in the Occupy Wall Street movement, the group that held a protest in in 2011 in Zuccotti Park, in New York City’s financial district, to push back against economic inequality worldwide and big banks.

“Rumors abound on white nationalist forums that Kessler’s ideological pedigree before 2016 was less than pure and seem to point to involvement in the Occupy movement and past support for President Obama,” the SPLC said in a statement

“At one recent speech in favor of Charlottesville’s status as a sanctuary city, Kessler live-streamed himself as an attendee questioned him and apologized for an undisclosed spat during Kessler’s apparent involvement with Occupy. Kessler appeared visibly perturbed by the woman’s presence and reminders of their past association,” the SPLC statement added.

The Occupy movement was committed to destroying the capitalist system, and often resorted to violent and extremist tactics that waged confrontations with police.
Obama, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and other notable Democrats embraced the Occupy movement.

The SPLC report said Kessler’s transition to more right-wing views became public in November 2016, but he contends his views began to change in December 2013. Kessler said an incident involving a PR executive being publicly excoriated for a joke about AIDS in Africa on social media was the turning point for him.

Kessler’s profile ascended on May 14, when a group of white nationalists held a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia to protest efforts to remove confederate statues of Robert E. Lee and Gen. Thomas Jackson located in city parks.

The event included a torch-lit march to the statue of Lee, which generated a lot of media attention likening the visual similarities to images seen at Ku Klux Klan gatherings. Kessler was arrested at the event in May after he failed to comply with police, just weeks after he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault.

President Donald Trump denounced hate groups Monday during a brief announcement at the White House, using more precision than he had Saturday.

“Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans,” Trump said.

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence,” Trump said. “It has no place in America.”

One person was killed and 19 injured when a car driven by white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. plowed into a crowd of counter protesters. Fields was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a boy and had been prescribed anti-psychotic drugs.

(That doesn’t let him off the hook.)

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