At the White Unity Gathering in KY, Heimbach in brown shirt, pictured on far-right (unsurprisingly)
Buried shallowly within the recent revelations that Matthew Heimbach, former leader of the Youth for Western Civilization/White Student Union chapters at Townson Univeristy, is now committed to attending and to speaking before violent neo-Nazi groups was an important confession.
Heimbach was just last week outed by the Anti-Defamation League for having attended a “White Unity Gathering” hosted by the Aryan Terror Brigade in Kentucky, an event that was “co-hosted” by the Imperial Klans of America (IKA), a drug-peddling KKK organization; the National Socialist Movement, the largest neo-Nazi organization in the USA; and the Knights of the Nordic Order. There, Heimbach was photographed alongside hard-core, sieg-heiling neo-Nazis, with he himself raising what can only be described as the salute of his own organization, the Traditionalist Youth Network (TYN). (The salute is simply a variation on the fascist/Nazi salute.) On the same day that he was outed, Heimbach took to the TYN blog, penning the piece, “Solidarity or Stigma: On My Speaking at an Upcoming NSM Event,” in which he admits he’ll speak at an up-coming neo-Nazi event on November 9th in Kansas City.
As he drives the piece into its conclusion, he admits that “Anyone who supports the 14 Words is an ally of mine in this common struggle.”
In “the 14 words,” Heimbach is directly referencing the epigrammatic slogan of white-racial, neo-Nazi terrorists the world over: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The slogan was made popular by convicted terrorist David Lane, one of the leaders of a neo-Nazi terror-cell called The Order. What Lane, who died in a supermax prison, and The Order meant by “secure” was “rob, murder, and spread the gospel of vitriolic, baseless race-hate.”
Those who Lane and The Order have come to influence, or who Heimbach claims as his allies, have certainly followed his words as much as his actions: Wade Michael Page, who wore a 14 words tattoo on his left shoulder; Charlie Sargent, Will Browning, Thomas Nakaba, and Combat 18; Kevin Harpham; Matt Hale, Benjamin Smith, and the World Church of the Creator; Chris Scott Gilliam; Denis and Daniel Mahon and White Aryan Resistance; Daniel Cowart, Paul Schlesselman, and the Supreme White Alliance; Richard Andrew Poplawski; James von Brunn; Shawn Adolf and Tharin Gartrell; Wayde Lynn Kurt; Derek Mathew Shrout; Marcus Faella and the American Front; etc and so on.
Some of Heimbach’s allies even like to film themselves, all in the spirit of the 14 words, beheading immigrants before large swastika flags far out in the woods.
Heimbach has recently taken to dubbing himself a “Church Militant,” and claiming on the neo-Nazi message board Stormfront that if “[Y]ou hurt ones [sic] of ours, we kill one of yours.” From this, one could with legitimacy also add white Christian terrorists like Eric Rudolf, Scott Roeder, James Michael Kopp, et al Army of God terrorist-group types to his growing list of extremist, murder-promoting allies.
In truth, those who have followed Matthew Heimbach’s rise through the ranks of the extremist far-Right have long noticed his gradual edging further towards those who inspire and are inspired by terror. It seems some of his present (now past) allies in the neo-Confederate movement are taking “offense,” though, as the secessionist League of the South has now ejected him.
Heimbach’s allies are increasingly few-and-far between, it seems-and more-and-more extreme.