It takes a special kind of coward to organize the country’s biggest hate rally in recent memory and then whine when it all goes bad. But Jason Kessler, one of the lead organizers of Saturday’s “Unite the Right” fiasco in Charlottesville, VA, which culminated in a domestic terrorist attack by a radical, white neo–Nazi (and Trump supporter), is that kind of special.
On Saturday evening, long after police had shut down the rally, and after radical white terrorist James Alex Fields Jr. plowed his car into a street full of peaceful protesters, Kessler posted a pathetic rant on Twitter in which he accepted no responsibility for the violent clashes and, ultimately, the death of 32–year–old Heather Heyer.
Instead, he blamed police and city and state officials. Kessler was right on one point: Virginia State Police and Charlottesville police did stand by as battle–ready Klansmen, neo–Nazis, biker gangs, and others clashed with counterdemonstrators, including members of Black Lives Matter, Antifa, Democratic Socialists of America, and even pacifist clergy in a small area of Emancipation Park where a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s days are numbered.
As ProPublica noted:
The police did little to stop the bloodshed. Several times, a group of assault-rifle-toting militia members from New York State, wearing body armor and desert camo, played a more active role in breaking up fights.
Shortly before noon, authorities shut down the rally and the related demonstrations and marched the white supremacists out of the park and into the streets.
But the ProPublica report also included this important context:
And the white supremacists who showed up in Charlottesville did indeed come prepared for violence. Many wore helmets and carried clubs, medieval-looking round wooden shields, and rectangular plexiglass shields, similar to those used by riot police.
Kessler’s emotional rant, in which he paces around what appears to be his home or apartment, incessantly biting his fingernails and losing himself in nonsensical thought, lacks this proper context and a sense of responsibility. Aside from the observation of police culpability in the initial violence, Kessler’s whining has little else in common with reality. His biggest lie is the denial that he is a white supremacist and a racist. A smaller lie is that the news media refused to talk to him after the melee.
And speaking about his neo–Nazi colleagues, Kessler actually said, “A lot of these people came to Charlottesville in an act of bravery.”
Kessler, who wanted this violence to happen, and who wants his neo–Nazi and Ku Klux Klown colleagues to no longer hide underneath a rock or beneath white sheets, now cowers behind the claims of free speech and constitutionality. He says that city and state officials trampled on his rights by failing to protect the racists who came to Charlottesville armed to do battle, some of them with semi–automatic weapons strapped to their shoulders.
Kessler is lying. And he should now be investigated for his role in a domestic terrorist attack.
Watch Kessler’s entire statement below, if you have the stomach. He also scheduled a press conference for early Sunday afternoon.
Update, 2:05 p.m.: An angry crowd in Charlottesville had no intention on Sunday of letting white nationalist Jason Kessler hold a press conference. As Kessler began to speak, dozens of protesters began shouting, “Shame! Shame! Shame!” Then they rushed him, and Kessler backpedaled like a deer in headlights, stumbling through plants and frantically searching for police to save his ass.
And look at this guy, in the white shirt, really leaning into him:
“Her name is Heather, Jason.”
Meanwhile, this coward plans on holding his own “press conference” later in Washington, D.C.: