White nationalist James Alex Fields Jr. on Tuesday was sentenced to life in prison, plus 419 years, after being convicted of murdering anti-racism protester Heather Heyer during the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville.
Fields, a 21-year-old Ohio native, received his life sentence just days after being convicted of first-degree murder for the vehicular rampage, which killed Heyer, 32, and injured dozens of other people protesting against the white-nationalist rally.
In total, Fields was convicted Friday on ten charges, including five counts of aggravated malicious wounding, three counts of malicious wounding, and one count of failing to stop at an accident involving a death. Six of those counts had a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Earlier this week we reported that James Fields, the 21 year old self-proclaimed Nazi who rammed his car into a group of people and killed one woman and injured others protesting the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville was using the “Snowflake Defense” at his trial in which claimed that he acted in self-defense because he felt afraid, threatened, and endangered by the counter-protesters.
An avowed supporter of neo-Nazi beliefs who took part in the violent and chaotic white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in this city last year was found guilty Friday of first-degree murder for killing a woman by ramming his car through a crowd of counterprotesters.
A jury of seven women and five men began deliberating Friday morning and took just over seven hours to reach its decision that James Alex Fields Jr., 21, of Maumee, Ohio, acted with premeditation when he backed up his 2010 Dodge Challenger and then roared it down a narrow downtown street crowded with counter protesters, slamming into them and another car. Heather D. Heyer, 32, was killed and 35 others injured, many grievously.
In her final address to the jury Thursday, Senior-Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina-Alice Antony showed a close-up of Fields in his car to rebut the idea that he was frightened when he acted.
“This is not the face of someone who is scared,” Antony said. “This is the face of anger, of hatred. It’s the face of malice.”
Fields still faces a federal trial on hate crimes that carries the possibility of the death penalty.
James Fields, the 21 year old self-proclaimed Nazi who rammed his car into a group of people and killed one woman and injured others protesting the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in August trial began Wednesday in Virginia with testimony to back up his “Snowflake Defense” which claimes that he acted in self-defense because he felt afraid, threatened, and endangered by the counter-protesters.
The first defense witness, Hayden Calhoun, told the jury he had attended the rally with his girlfriend. He said he met Fields for the first time the night before the car incident, when men with torches marched in a park, chanting anti-Semitic slogans.
“The area had erupted in violence,” Calhoun said. “There was a brawl going on. Tear gas had been deployed.”
Calhoun said he and his girlfriend feared being attacked by counterprotesters.
After meeting Fields and a fourth rally attendee, Calhoun said he and his girlfriend, seeing safety in numbers, decided to walk with them. He described Field’s demeanor the night before he drove into the crowd as “calm, tired.”
In cross-examination, Calhoun told prosecutors that, despite their fears, there were “no physical attacks” on Calhoun or the other people with him
Earlier this week, jurors heard that the day before going to Charlottesville, Fields exchanged cellphone text messages with his mother suggesting the counter-protesters would “need to be careful,” and sent her an image of Adolf Hitler.
Fields, faces 10 charges for his role in the violence, including murder, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison if he is convicted.
Fields also faces separate federal hate crime charges, which carry a potential death sentence. He has pleaded not guilty in that case as well..
A tiki-torch bearing crowd of about 50 white supremacist led by Richard Spencer reappeared on Saturday night in Charlottesville, VA gathering around a statue of Robert E. Lee in Emancipation Park chanting, “You will not replace us,” singing “Dixie,” and alternating between “Russia is our friend” and “the South will rise again.”
The Lee statue was covered with black tarps as it has been since shortly after an Aug. 11 rally of hundreds of white supremacists and the Aug. 12 killing of protester Heather Heyer, by Ohio white supremacist James Fields.
“We are here to represent white America’s interest,” Spencer shouted through a bull horn during a brief speech . The gathering lasted less than 20 minutes.
“It was a planned flash mob,” Spencer said. “It was a great success. We’ve been planning this for a long time.”
They promised to keep returning to Charlottesville, which they argued had become symbolic of their right to speak and also had come to symbolize the tearing down of symbols of the nation’s history.
“You will not erase us.”
“We are about our heritage. Not just us Virginians. Not just as Southerners. But as white people . . . we’ll take a stand.”
One Charlottesville city councilor is calling for the white supremacists to be arrested, saying, “When White Supremacists Make odes to White Power, and clearly use torches to send a message to our community that they are the superior race while trying to strike fear and intimidate others, they are breaking the law.”
Christopher Cantwell the disgusting neo-Nazi that was profiled in the Vice.com expose of Charlottesville and who was later arrested for his participation has the major sadz that he is being mocked and labeled “the weeping/crying Nazi.”
Cantwell turned himself in last Wednesday after two citizen activists swore e that he attacked them. The subsequent felony warrants for illegal use of gasses and injury by caustic agent were issued by a court.
“When I come down here for a permitted demonstration, championed by the ACLU, where the police are supposed to be clearing our enemies from our path, and then I find myself involved in a riot facing 20 years in prison, I got emotional, shockingly enough,” Cantwell told The Daily Beast.
“One minute I’m a fucking white supremacist terrorist and the next minute I’m a fucking crybaby?” he asks. “I’m a goddamn human being.”
Cantwell is blaming the police, saying they forced him into counter-protesters and that he was just acting in self-defense.
“They pushed hundreds of armed white nationalists into a crowd of communist rioters who threw rocks and piss and shit and bleach and pepper spray and hit us with clubs and did everything they could to provoke us into shooting them.”
One of the two people who swore out the warrants against him, Emily Gorcenski, calls Cantwell’s self-defense claim laughable.
“It was 300 against 30, and they had us surrounded,” Gorcenski said.
Cantwell counters that Gorcenski isn’t qualified to testify in court because she’s a “fucking tranny” and blames “kikes” for for orchestrating the counter-protesters.
“All of these people [statue removers] are taking their talking points from Jews,” he said.
Officials at the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office of Albemarle County in Charlottesville said on Monday morning that four warrants had been issued for Mr. Cantwell’s arrest. The office referred questions about the nature of the charges to the University of Virginia Police Department. A spokesman at the department did not respond to requests for comment on Friday, Saturday and Monday.
The Boston Globe reported on that the warrants were related to the “illegal use of gases, and injury by caustic agent or explosive.” In interviews on Friday and Saturday, Mr. Cantwell said that if he were to face such charges, he believed they are connected to an episode he said was photographed by a journalist, the team from preszlerlaw-ns.com, is already working on the case. The image, he said, shows “that I’m pepper-spraying a guy straight in his face as he’s coming toward me.”
Mr. Cantwell rose to prominence days later when Vice News aired its report recapping what happened. The reporter, Elle Reeve, was embedded with white nationalists, and the documentary allowed viewers to see things from their perspectives. Mr. Cantwell was featured prominently in the report.
After the rally, he dumped at least four firearms and a knife onto a bed, the video shows. Several times throughout the Vice report, he made it clear that he and other members of the alt-right were capable of violence, saying during the rally that they would kill their opponents “if we have to.”
It was Saturday, and the police had finally called for everyone to clear the park. As I filmed officers opening up a blocked street, a young man ran into view, screaming for help. He wore the khaki-and-white uniform of the white nationalist group Vanguard America. He had been separated from them and was being chased by at least one protester. He ripped off his shirt and begged the crowd for mercy. He wasn’t actually into white power, you see.
Barely,” he clarified to me. As he shoved his polo shirt into a plastic bag, the fear on his face settled into a smirk. “It’s kind of a fun idea,” he explained. “Just being able to say ‘white power,’ you know?” I didn’t know. But by the look of things, the fun of shouting “white power” stopped as soon as he was threatened with the same violence his group brought to bear on others. Cut off from the pack, forced to face the consequences of his inflammatory behavior, he found escape in a costume change. – via GQ
You know, Milhouse, you are getting a little doughy.
A screencap of a CNN broadcast is making the rounds on social media, showing one of the neo-nazi “security team” at the protest in Charlottesville, VA on Saturday wearing a Marvel comic’s evil HYDRA organization t-shirt
For those of you who need a Clift’s Notes crash course on Marvel Comic’s evil HYDRA organization:
Before the evolution of mankind, a cabal of immortal hooded reptoids came to Earth, planning to start a legacy of evil. Millions of years later, they corrupted an Asian secret society of geniuses known as the Brotherhood of the Spear, which resulted in that group being called “the Beast” by the Brotherhood of the Shield. The corrupted Brotherhood of the Spear spread out, ingraining itself like a multi-headed serpent into all facets of human society, from science to magic and politics. As time wore on, the organization’s name changed and it included the Cathari sect as well as the Thule Society.The Nazi sub group, funded by the Thule Society, was brought into the main Hydra fold after the end of World War II.
One of the Nazi members, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, quickly seized control of the Hydra organization and restructured it to be dedicated to world domination through terrorist and subversive activities on various fronts, resulting in a global neo-fascist New Order. To this end, Baron von Strucker used his personal fortune, based on his recovered hoard of Nazi plunder from World War II, and funds established by the original leaders of the Japanese secret society that became part of the old Hydra. However, after von Strucker’s first death, Hydra broke into factions (such as A.I.M., Secret Empire, Them, etc.) that each adopted its own reorganized modus operandi. Eventually, this fragmentation would lead to a Hydra civil war, even after von Strucker’s resurrection.
The shirt was noticed as part of the footage provided to CNN by Vice from a profile on the now crying neo-Nazi leader Chris Cantwell
The real-life Nazi seems to be wearing this t-shirt:
I called the Charlottesville Police Department, and said, ‘I have been told there’s a warrant out for my arrest.’ They said they wouldn’t confirm it but that I could find this out I could go to a magistrate or whatever.
With everything that’s happening, I don’t think it’s very wise for me to go anywhere. There’s a state of emergency, the National Guard is here!
Stopping to wipe away his tears, the Neo Nazi leader cried:
I don’t know what to do. I need guidance.
Our enemies will not stop, they’ve been threatening us all over the place…
I’m terrified!
Previously, Cantwell was featured in a short documentary by Vice.com on the racist white nationalist movement inspired and emboldened by President Donald Trump. When asked if his organization was non-violent, the once tough-talking racist thug declared:
We’re not non-violent. We’ll fuckng kill these people if we have to.
The once tough-talking racist thug who bragged about going to the gym to make himself “more ready for violence” is now crying like a little baby.
President Trump on Tuesday insisted that he did nothing wrong on Saturday when he declined to specifically condemn Nazi and white supremacist groups, asserting that “before I make a statement, I like to know the facts.”
In a long, combative exchange with reporters at Trump Tower, the president repeatedly rejected a torrent of bipartisan criticism for waiting several days before naming the right-wing groups and placing blame on “many sides” for the violence that ended with the deaths of a young woman after a car crashed into a crowd.
Mr. Trump repeated that assertion on Tuesday, criticizing “alt-left” groups that he claimed were “very, very violent” when they sought to confront the nationalist and Nazi groups that had gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from a park. He said there is “blame on both sides.”
Mr. Trump defended those gathered in the Charlottesville park to protest the statue’s removal, saying, “I’ve condemned neo-Nazis. I’ve condemned many different groups. Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch.”
Mr. Trump unleashed a torrent of frustration at the news media, saying they were being “fake” because they did not acknowledge that his initial statement about the Charlottesville protest was “very nice.”
Again and again, Mr. Trump said that the portrayal of nationalist protesters in the city were not all Nazis or white supremacists, and he said it was unfair to suggest that they were. – The New York Times
David Duke responded:
Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa https://t.co/tTESdV4LP0
