Jason Kessler, organizer of deadly Charlottesville demonstration, seeks a sequel Sunday. Prominent racists don’t agree with him.

His own father condemns his racism. Eric Kessler said that when he learned the identity of the woman who had been killed at Jason’s rally, the name instantly clicked. Heather Heyer was in the church youth group he volunteered for 20 years ago.

• By Ian Shapira @ WashingtonPost.com, Aug. 11

[.....] In the year since Kessler, 34, organized the rally that flooded his hometown with hundreds of white supremacists and neo-Nazis and ended in bloodshed, the University of Virginia graduate has faced crushing criticism from within and outside his movement.

Prominent racists have broken ties with him. Friends have also parted ways, saying they don’t recognize the man they once knew as an Obama supporter. His father, in his first interview, told The Washington Post that he vehemently disapproves of Kessler’s actions and has tried to persuade him to stop. Many of his private messages planning the rallies have been leaked online. And Charlottesville residents have filed numerous lawsuits against him.

Wherever he goes in town, the man who bills himself as a “white civil rights” leader is often shouted at.

“I’ve been turned into an avatar of hate,” Kessler told The Post in a telephone interview. “I’ve made some powerful enemies, and I’ve gotten involved in some things that I didn’t know I was getting involved in. I think the alt-right thinks I am a cuck and not extreme enough and [liberals] think I am a white supremacist. None are true.”

It’s a deceptive statement for someone who touts his anti-Semitism on Stormfront Action and once told a crowd of white nationalists aligned with Richard Spencer, “I don’t give an g-d--- about being called a racist.”

'Exchange your pride for fame'

Kessler didn’t seem destined for a career in uniting the right.

A decade ago, he worked the phones at night for Secrest Strategic Services, the now-defunct Democratic polling outfit. He voted for Barack Obama in 2008. He spent time at the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Charlottesville in 2011, until he was kicked out for trying to register homeless people, according to Luis Oyola, a fellow Occupy activist. He lived for a time in government-subsidized housing in Charlottesville with a roommate who was African and Muslim, [.....]