Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old activist who was fatally mowed down by a car after violent clashes at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. on August 13, was the subject of an offensive tweet from the account of rally organizer Jason Kessler.
Kessler, the right-wing blogger who organized the now-notorious “Unite the Right” rally, issued the offending tweet late Friday night, and later
“Heather Heyer was a fat, disgusting Communist. Communists have killed 94 million. Looks like it was payback time,” the tweet stated. The tweet has since been removed, with the Twitter account taken down entirely on Saturday afternoon.
In his tweet, Kessler shared a link to an article on the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, which also insulted Heyer in crude language.
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According to Gizmodo, a social media user purporting to be neo-Nazi hacker Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer later claimed that he had hacked Kessler’s account, although the claim hasn’t been verified.
Early Saturday morning, Kessler claimed in a tweet that his Twitter account was hacked, the L.A. Times reported, but that tweet has since been deleted as well.
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He later tweeted that he had been drinking while under the influence of sleep medication, and that “I sometimes wake up having done strange things I don’t remember.”
Kessler’s original tweet drew swift condemnation from several noted white nationalists including alt-right activist Richard Spencer, who was a vocal supporter of the Unite the Right rally.
“I will no longer associate w/ Jason Kessler; no one should. Heyer’s death was deeply saddening. ‘Payback’ is a morally reprehensible idea,” Spencer tweeted.
WATCH: Heather Heyer killed while exercising right to free speech: police
Kessler had earlier denied that he and other far-right demonstrators were culpable for Heyer’s death.
“I don’t want to speculate too much on, obviously, the tragic events that a lot of people are talking about, but look it’s not necessarily known what happened,” he said on August 14, the day after Heyer’s death.
“I didn’t have anything to do with the tragic circumstances that occurred, that was a breakdown of law and order.”
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Twenty-year-old James Alex Fields Jr. was arrested in connection with Heyer’s death.
On Wednesday, Heyer’s mother described her daughter as a courageous, principled woman and a firm believer in justice and equality.
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