Entertainment

Jennifer Lawrence Wants You To Help Identify The Charlottesville Protesters

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Actors and other celebrities wield a tremendous amount of influence over their millions of fans, and they can sometimes use that power for good. Like Jennifer Lawrence, who is trying to identify Charlottesville protesters who took part in the city's white supremacist rally on Saturday, August 12. The "Unite the Right" rally turned violent and resulted in numerous injuries and the death of one woman when an alleged white supremacist drove a car into a crowd of counter-protesters. That suspect has been arrested and charged with murder, but Lawrence is looking for help in finding others who helped spread hate in Charlottesville this weekend.

In a post to her Facebook page on Monday, August 14, the actor reached out to her 16.5 million fans on the site to see if they could identify some of the people taking part in the neo-Nazi rally. "These are the faces of hate. Look closely and post anyone you find. You can't hide with the internet you pathetic cowards!" she wrote in the post. Alongside her message, Lawrence included four chilling photos that were taken at the rally; photos that show angry white men and women carrying torches, bearing Nazi and Confederate flags, and making "Heil Hitler" salutes.

Lawrence is joined by others who have taken similar steps to try and identify the white supremacists, including the Twitter account @YesYoureRacist, which has successfully identified a number of the participants. But Lawrence's involvement may be a particular thorn in the side of the alt-right since she herself recently became a target of theirs.

The X-Men star is on the cover of the September issue of Vogue, posing with the Statue of Liberty in the background. Some Donald Trump supporters have taken this innocent and wholesomely American image as an attack on their beliefs, since they now consider the Statue of Liberty to have been co-opted as a symbol for the left. Breitbart finance editor and Trump supporter John Carney wrote on Twitter in response to the cover, "We're going to have to create a full #MAGA shadow cultural industry because the Opposition Media can't even do fashion without attacking us."

The white supremacist-led rally was quickly met with widespread condemnation from across the political spectrum on Saturday, but President Donald Trump's initial response on that day blamed "many sides" for the violence and terror — a statement that was praised by the neo-Nazi website, The Daily Stormer. On Monday, after waves of intense pressure from the media and members of congress from both parties, the president issued a new statement where he finally condemned the white supremacist hate groups specifically.

Lawrence herself is no fan of Trump, and has spoken out in the past about his Muslim ban and how his election affected her, so it's no surprise she's taking this important stand right now.