A South Carolina middle school teacher has been placed on leave after he was accused in a social media post of being a Nazi who coordinated travel for protesters at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va.
A Twitter user on Wednesday alleged that Pleasant Hill Middle School social studies teacher Tim Manning Jr., 42, was responsible for helping protesters secure lodging for the deadly rally, according to The Post and Courier.
Mary Beth Hill, a spokeswoman for Lexington County School District One, where Manning Jr. teaches, said the district is “thoroughly investigating” the allegations, the newspaper reported.
The Post and Courier said the school district did not name Manning, but his family’s lawyer, Elizabeth Millender, confirmed his identity in a statement. The attorney denied the allegations against Manning Jr. and his wife, Melissa Manning.
“They have absolutely nothing to do with the repugnant Twitter account referenced in recent blog articles and on social media,” Millender said, according to the newspaper. “They are not members of, nor do they sympathize in any way with, fringe or otherwise prejudicial groups or associations.”
Melissa Manning also denied the allegations when The Post and Courier reached out for comment.
The Twitter account referenced by Millender is reportedly @IdentifyDixie, a profile created last month that purports to name and shame alleged white nationalists and Nazis.
The account said that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) identified “Tim Manning” as someone who posted organizational plans for the Charlottesville rally under the username “SCNazi” that was also used for accounts on Twitter and a white supremacist group’s website.
“We identified ‘Tim Manning’ as ‘SCNazi’ and they [@IdentifyDixie] took that information and did an open-source investigation on an individual named Tim Manning that fit that description and they identified ‘Tim Manning Jr.’ of Columbia, S.C.,” SPLC senior research analyst Howard Graves told The Hill.
Graves said that the SPLC was not affiliated with the Identify Dixie account and did not know who operated it.
“Today I’d like to introduce you to the Nazi who gloriously f—ed up the Airbnb accommodations for the #UniteTheRight white supremacist rally in Charlottesville,” the account tweeted before alleging Tim Manning Jr. made Airbnb arrangements for protesters.
The school district said he was placed on leave shortly after the district was notified of the online allegations.
“The district takes any incident like this seriously,” Hill said.
Updated: 4:50 p.m.