[Editor’s Note: This story is part of a package on local hate groups, which also includes articles about the prevalence of hate groups in Kentucky and a resister’s warning. Also, we at LEO expected that publishing a package of stories on hate groups might generate controversy, so we talked with an ethicist from the Poynter Institute for his take. To read the full Editor’s Note, go here.]
PAOLI, Indiana A burly young man pulls into the parking lot of a Wal-Mart on a weekday afternoon. He leans out the window of his beat-up white sedan and grins.
Yall looking for some neo-Nazis?
Meet Matthew Heimbach, the white nationalist who has set up shop in this small town an hour northwest of Louisville. From Paoli, he controls the Traditionalist Worker Party, a small but growing white nationalist organization.
Heimbach, 26, gained national profile when a viral video circulated showing him pushing a protester and screaming at her during a Donald Trump rally in Louisville in March 2016. He pleaded guilty to an amended charge of second-degree disorderly conduct and was given a suspended, 90-day jail sentence.
Heimbach has emerged as a leader for the alt-right, a movement that espouses racist, anti-semitic and nationalist ideologies. He has played a key role in uniting the fractious movement, an effort that coalesced with the deadly rally in Charlottesville in August.
Heimbach is a well-known figure in the white supremacist community, said Marilyn Mayo, who tracks hate groups for the Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on Extremism. He bridges the gap between what I call the academic racists and the hardcore neo-Nazis.
The Traditionalist Worker Party is a white rights advocacy group that is anti-capitalist, anti-semitic and anti-diversity. The groups ultimate goal is the creation of an all-white ethno-state that people of other races would need a visa to visit.
Heimbachs ethnocentric rallying cry is garnering support from other nationalists and disaffected whites in the dark corners of the internet. In the wake of Charlottesville, Heimbach says his group grew by 50 percent, from about 500 to 750 members nationally, though the Southern Poverty Law Center says those numbers are often exaggerated.
Now, Heimbach says he has a grand scheme, spawned in Paoli and intended to spread across Kentucky, through Appalachia and the Midwest, to grow his membership rolls faster than ever before.
On this late August day, Heimbach opens his playbook, offering a window into his recruitment tactics and to-do list. He plans to capitalize on the regions economic woes, mimic growth strategies of terrorist organizations and win political power, one local election at a time.
Academics who study these kinds of movements say his chances are dim. Experts on hate groups say hes more talk than action. But his actions, at least in the last year, have earned him a degree of notoriety that he plans to build on, and those same experts are watching closely.
While his 2-year-old son named after Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia plays on a nearby jungle gym, Heimbach lays out his worldview.
Theres an incongruity between his words and his demeanor. He laughs jovially while denying the Holocaust. He grins in the face of direct contradictions of his claims. He said his wife doesnt want reporters in their trailer compound, quipping, if mama aint happy, aint nobody happy.
Though his membership hasnt even reached four figures, he speaks with the surety of a man who believes his cause is being elevated by the White House, in the media, on alt-right websites and every time he returns to nationalist message boards.
Despite national attention, Heimbachs Traditionalist Worker Party has made limited inroads locally. Heimbach said Kentucky a state with a history of harboring hate groups has the largest offline chapter with 100 members. He boasts about the Indianapolis group growing by 15-fold from two members to 30.
At times they can roil communities, said Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. They can have rallies that are upsetting and some of their ideas can lead to people like a Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine people in a black church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Your Future Is Our Future
In late April, the Traditionalist Worker Party zeroed in on Pikeville, the largest city in the Eastern Kentucky Coalfield.
The rally for white working families was the closing act of a white nationalist retreat Heimbach led nearby. But he was less interested in the groups that had come to hear him speak. This was an opportunity to canvass the community, a key facet of his plan to grow support.
Eastern Kentucky has some of the lowest rates of high school education in the country. Unemployment is nearly double the national average. Disability rates are staggering. Its also overwhelmingly white.
Its a far cry from the wealthy, diverse county outside Washington, D.C., where Heimbach grew up.
To the people of Pike County and the surrounding region, weve heard you. We know youve been left behind, economically and socially, Heimbach said in a video appeal before the rally. We are here to stand for you and to stand with you. Because your future is our future.
The strength of that shared future was tested. The retreat had to move from a state park to private property. Local organizers printed t-shirts that read No Hate in My Holler. Anti-fascist groups planned a counter-protest. The city passed a last-minute prohibition on wearing hoods and masks.
The rally itself was brief but loud. Planned speeches on white rights were, at points, drowned out by chants, screams and whistles from the opposition.
And then, silence. Both sides packed up and went home. In the end, the Lexington Herald-Leader estimated that, at its peak, Heimbachs big, Appalachian coming-out party had about 125 supporters. He called this a victory, but across the street, counter-protesters numbered closer to 200.
Inside The White Nationalist Playbook
Heimbachs plan to appeal to white working class voters focuses less on Confederate statues and rallies, and more on grassroots community organizing. He said TWP plans to start health clinics, support small businesses, combat food insecurity and work with those affected by the opioid crisis in underserved communities.
Their recruitment approach, Heimbach said, is modeled after Hamas, Hezbollah, [and] traditionally, the Irish Republican movement.
The U.S. State Department considers these groups terrorist organizations. They have used bombings, assassinations and violent uprisings to advance their nationalist goals in Palestine, Lebanon and Ireland, respectively. Theyve also gained local influence by offering community services, building schools and providing food to families.
The community building is the part Heimbach hopes to emulate. TWP bills itself as nonviolent, except when provoked, and the group has been involved in rallies that turned violent.
Explaining why he shoved a protester in Louisville, Heimbach said protesters were being disruptive, Trump sought removals, and police werent taking action. When Mr. Trump says get them out of here, he had the right to ask for that. At that point, the police werent doing anything, he said.
The protesters have said they were not being disruptive, but rather were at the rally to protest peacefully.
TWP held a canned food drive before the Pikeville rally. Heimbach said a few members in Texas helped out with Hurricane Harvey relief. But beyond that, the group has not built any social service infrastructure.
When the system is unable or unwilling to fulfill the needs of the community, the nationalists step up, Heimbach said.
The terrorists groups cited by Heimbach also legitimized themselves by winning elections. In 2016, the Traditionalist Worker Party endorsed a candidate in a Tennessee congressional race. Rick Tylers Make America White Again campaign garnered only 1.9 percent of the vote. In Heimbachs version of events, he recalled it being closer to 5 percent.
If we can go from 5 percent of the vote and in the next election cycle get 9 percent of the vote and then 12 percent of the vote, thats the snowball starting to go down the mountain, said Heimbach.
He said he has lined up TWP candidates to run in 2018 for an Indiana county council seat and several local, nonpartisan races in Texas, North Carolina and Tennessee.
Voters wont hear claims of Make America White Again or see TWP logos on any campaign mailers. Instead, theyre likely to hear Heimbach catchphrases like securing a future for our children, advocating for the silent majority or appeals to those left behind by globalism. No one will use the word white.
Heimbach said TWP doesnt shy away from discussing race, but candidates are looking to avoid what he calls the media firestorm of voting TWP.
I think in 2018 were going to win at least several of these races and its not going to be a big media spectacle, because theyre not having to identify with a party, they just identify with their ideas, said Heimbach.
In Paoli, theres already a group preparing to block Heimbachs dog-whistle politics.
I think [Heimbach] forgot that poor doesnt mean ignorant, said Dessica Albertson, one of the founders of the Progressive Women of Orange County. There are a lot of intelligent people in this community and they arent necessarily looking for a place to blame for jobs not coming here.
Her group, which has about 350 members on Facebook, hopes to vet candidates and identify Heimbach supporters on the ballot. Albertson believes voters wont side with the white nationalists so long as they know which candidates are the white nationalists.
Heimbach is encouraged by the far-right, nationalist parties gaining power in Europe and the recent Brexit decision. These movements relied on economic anxiety and a cultural sense of being left behind, rather than terroristic measures, to achieve their goals.
Can Heimbachs Party Pull It Off?
This community organizing playbook and the comparison to terrorist organizations is a new angle for alt-right groups.
It concerns me, said Marilyn Mayo, with the Anti-Defamation League, but only if I really believe that he had the funds to do that. The question really becomes whether Traditionalist Worker Party can really carry out their plans.
Mayo has been tracking Heimbachs white nationalist activism since his college days. She said providing health clinics and food banks is the latest in a long line of his grand plans that fall apart due to a lack of funding or interest.
The difference now, Heimbach said, is his growing stable of supporters. But Heimbach will need more than a few converts to gain any real momentum.
I dont think any voluntary effort by anybody is going to make much of a difference in the scale of need were talking about, said Jason Bailey, executive director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy. Without the public dollars that come in from these programs youre not going to be able to make a big difference.
Just a few days after Heimbach outlined his plan to fix the social safety net across Appalachia, the Louisville judge handling his criminal case deemed him indigent and waived court fees associated with his conviction for shoving the woman at the Trump rally.
But if Heimbach found some neo-Nazi angel investor, could his grand plan take root?
Mayo said its unlikely.
He has this idea that disaffected whites are so angry or so needy that they would really accept the help of anyone who comes in, said Mayo. I think that people are aware of when people are trying to use them to promote some kind of ideology.
While Appalachia voted overwhelmingly for Trump, Mayo said its hard to believe working-class whites would latch onto a socialist, fascist, anti-American group operating under the Nazi banner. The question is whether theyll have to declare themselves as such.
For all his big talk about Americas downfall and the success of the fatal Charlottesville rally, Heimbach knows white nationalism is still a fringe movement. Without offline support from real working-class white voters, he said, Im just a crazy guy with a cardboard sign on a street corner.
There are signs on street corners all over his adopted hometown of Paoli. But they have a very different message. On front lawns and in store windows, in bright colors and big fonts, they all read, No matter what color your skin, no matter where you are from, no matter what you believe, were glad youre our neighbor.
Eleanor Klibanoff can be reached at eklibanoff@kycir.org and (502) 814-6544.
This article was produced by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit newsroom from Louisville Public Media. Read more at kycir.org.
This article appears in September 27, 2017.