claim: A man who was either the organizer of the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia or the driver of the car that ran down protesters, killing one, is a Democrat who was photographed meeting President Obama in the Oval Office.
origin: On 15 August 2017, the â€œsatiricalâ€ web site Our Land of the Free published an article with a headline stating that the white supremacist accused of killing a protester days earlier at a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, is a Democrat who visited President Obama in the White House. The author misidentifies the man accused of a fatal vehicular attack in the body of the article, however, confusing him with the rallyâ€™s organizer, Jason Kessler: < Conservative author Dinesh Dâ€™Souza uncovered something that blows the Leftâ€™s whole narrative to bits. While they have been throwing around claims that the white supremacist who ran over a protester who was blocking the road is a Republican, Dâ€™Souza discovered he actually an Obama-supporting Democrat. Well, well. The white supremacist organizer of #Charlottesville was an Obama supporter & Occupy Wall Street activist https://t.co/hI5PxNUmb7 â€” Dinesh Dâ€™Souza (@DineshDSouza) August 15, 2017 â€œRumors abound on white nationalist forums that Kesslerâ€™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,â€ the Southern Poverty Law Center notes in their profile of Kessler. > To be perfectly clear, the aforementioned Jason Kessler isÂ not the man who drove a car into a group of counter-protesters at the rally, killing one. The person chargedÂ with that crime is James Alex Fields, Jr., 20, of Maumee, Ohio. Kessler was the primary organizer of what he described as the â€œpro-white demonstrationâ€ in Charlottesville. Moreover, the photo presented by Our Land of the Free as evidence that Kessler is a Democrat is one of the more ludicrous digital manipulation jobs weâ€™ve encountered in awhile: < Kessler didnâ€™t just support Obama; he visited the Oval Office in 2016. Hereâ€™s a photo of the two of them having a fun chat: > As best we can tell, that is accused Charlottesville killer James Fieldsâ€™ face (not Jason Kesslerâ€™s) lamely pasted into the image, but the body doesnâ€™t belong to either of them. We located a copy of the original, unaltered photo, taken by official Obama White House photographer Pete Souza, and found that it documented an Oval Office encounter between President Obama, comedian Will Ferrell, and Ferrellâ€™s wife, Viveca in October 2011: As we observed earlier, Our Land of the Free is a â€œsatireâ€ web site, per this disclaimer found at the bottom of every page of the site: < We believe in the right to be free. No matter what, the freedom to do what we want, say what we want and publish what we want comes first. Therefore we make no guarantee that what you read here is true. In fact, it most definitely is not. Our Land Of The Free is here to entertain you with the kind of whimsical satire conservatives enjoy. > Potentially confusing for inattentive readers will be the fact that some of the untrustworthy sites reposting the article (Patriot USA and News Feed Observer, to name two) carry no such disclaimer. Regardless of where you read it, the story is false.