According to the Washington Post, the man accused of plowing a car into a crowd of Charlottesville protesters on Saturday and killed Heather Heyer, 32, and injuring 19 others had a history of Nazi views.
“The accused driver, James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Ohio, had espoused extremist ideals at least since high school, according to Derek Weimer, a history teacher.
“Weimer said that he taught Fields during his junior and senior years at Randall K. Cooper High School in Kentucky. In a class called ‘America’s Modern Wars,’ Weimer said Fields wrote a deeply researched paper about the Nazi military during World War II.
“’It was obvious that he had this fascination with Nazism and a big idolatry of Adolf Hitler,’ Weimer said. ‘He had white supremacist views. He really believed in that stuff.’
“Weimer said that Fields’s research project into the Nazi military was well written but appeared to be a ‘big lovefest for the German military and the Waffen-SS.’”
