WN group seeks to form separate community in Paoli

PAOLI — Matthew Heimbach and Matt Parrott say all they want is the opportunity to “opt out.”

To opt out of living in a society in constant conflict caused by years of forced multiculturalism. To opt out of working to benefit the globalist agenda of international corporations. To opt out of a political system they believe has abandoned the white working class, and instead to work as advocates for their people, who they say are at risk of losing their European traditions and culture.

Paoli residents Heimbach and Parrott call themselves white nationalists and want to build a separate society for other like-minded members of their newly formed political group, the Traditionalist Worker Party. Organizations that track the work of hate groups, though, call them white supremacists.

“We see this multicultural experiment, this idea we’re all going to integrate, fundamentally fails because people, at end of day, want to return to their traditions, to their ethnic identity, and that’s a good thing,” 25-year-old Heimbach said.

His words, repeated and put into context by Marilyn Mayo, a research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, have a very different meaning. The Anti-Defamation League began as a Jewish civil rights organization and fights hate, anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry.

“One of the arguments of white nationalists is ‘we don’t think we’re superior to anybody; we believe everyone should have self-determination,’” Mayo said. “Why are they opposed to nonwhites living with whites? I don’t believe it’s just about love for their own people. There’s a lot of hatred there; there’s a lot of rejection of people who are not white.”

Links to violence

White nationalism and “alternative right” ideologies started garnering national attention — and bringing it to southern Indiana — during the presidential election season. In March, Heimbach was videotaped shoving a black woman protesting during a rally in Kentucky for then-Republican presidential candidate, now president-elect, Donald Trump.

Heimbach and two other men at the rally were charged with misdemeanor harassment, said Louisville Metro Police Department spokesman Dwight Mitchell. But because the men live outside of Kentucky, the department has no jurisdiction to summon Heimbach to court.

Violence broke out again at a protest in Sacramento organized by the California chapter of the Traditionalist Worker Party and the self-described white nationalist social club the Golden State Skinheads, which the Southern Poverty Law Center also calls a racist hate group.

“The potential (of violence) is there with the rhetoric,” said Keegan Hankes, an analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that monitors hate groups and extremists in the U.S. “I’m not saying they’re the ones necessarily to do it, but words have consequences; ideas have consequences.”

At least 10 people were hurt, some stabbed, when hundreds of anti-racist and anti-fascist counterprotesters clashed with 30 or so white nationalists who were protesting legally with a permit.

“Heimbach has tried to form alliances throughout his involvement in the white supremacist movement. He’s someone who has ties to the most extreme elements of the white supremacist movement,” Mayo said. “Sometimes you have violence on the other end. A violent reaction is not the answer.”

Police called the scene chaotic, but Heimbach and Parrott, who did not attend the rally, argued that their members were only defending themselves and their beliefs.

“White Americans now have a voice, and we’re going to be part of the discussion,” said Parrott, 34. “And there are people who are so violently opposed to that — that they’re prepared to engage in terrorism to stop us from having a civil conversation. But we’re going to try to have it anyway.”

‘Far beyond politics’

Parrott brought a PBS reporter onto the Paoli property he shares with Heimbach for a PBS NewsHour segment on the growth of white nationalism in the United States. He said the broadcast segment incorrectly portrayed his home as the center of a new and growing white homeland.

“We just happen to live in Paoli. There’s no Craig Cobb-style plan to take over the town,” Parrott said, referring to the white separatist who attempted to build an all-white commune in North Dakota.

“Southern Indiana’s a natural home for our politics,” he said. “You have struggling working-class issues; you have the frustration and alienation from Washington insider politics. We need to be where people are being left behind, and I think there are few places that can compete with Kentucky (and) Indiana.”

Threats to their safety and the safety of their families following the televised report have led the co-founders of the Traditionalist Worker Party to limit their political and advocacy work outside of Orange County.

But it’s still work they see as critically important to the Midwest, Rust Belt and Appalachia regions, where Heimbach said working-class whites and their families have been “left behind” by their political representatives and “left without a voice for going on a generation.”

“It’s the idea of building an infrastructure to be advocates and community organizers that will use politics, but I think it goes far beyond politics,” Heimbach said.

“When it comes to nationalism, we are the future. Globalism has failed. It hurts our people; it takes our ability to govern ourselves and gives it to oligarchs that don’t have our best interests at heart. This is a worldwide movement, and we’re winning.”

Forming the TWP

“For us, to be truly anti-capitalist is to be a nationalist,” Heimbach said over lunch at the Denny’s restaurant in French Lick, roughly a 10-minute drive from the property he shares with Parrott. “Nationalism is a bulwark against capitalist exploitation and globalism.”

It’s a hefty political and economic theory for a group that models itself as the voice for white, working-class families. In coal country, Heimbach elaborated, men working in mines, factories and mills used to be able to provide a stable middle-class life for their families. Heimbach himself works in a warehouse.

Now, following what Heimbach and Parrott see as the intrusion of globalist corporations, poverty rates in Indiana and other Rust Belt and Midwestern states hover between 14 and 18 percent, according to government census data. These communities compound economic failure with public health crises. Heimbach cited, for example, rampant drug abuse in Kentucky and Indiana and high rates of suicide in West Virginia.

“These are people that have been fundamentally left behind and are suffering,” Heimbach said. “The political establishment for decades has told them to sit down, shut up and die.”

Party platform

The Traditionalist Worker Party first registered as a national political committee with the Federal Election Commission in the summer of 2015, according to FEC records. The TWP is designated as a non-qualified, unauthorized party, which means it hasn’t been active long enough or received enough donations to be recognized, and it isn’t affiliated with a qualified candidate or connected to an authorized political party.

Heimbach claims the Traditionalist Worker Party has three dozen active chapters and an estimated 500 members across the country. Hankes and Mayo said they don’t think the numbers could be that high.

The party’s leading philosophy is to fight for “faith, family and folk.” This includes defining marriage as only between a man and a woman and supporting families with male breadwinners and stay-at-home mothers. The party advocates for freedom from the government to conduct business and education in accordance with religious values; and severely limiting immigration in order to maintain the European traditions of white Americans.

“White Americans have hundreds of years of unique history,” Parrott said. “When we travel, it’s a joke; everybody can point us out and spot us rather quickly by our dress and our behavior and customs and our mannerisms.”

The party platform also calls for the federal government to end programs that force communities to accept resettled refugees and those that require neighborhoods to adhere to fair housing standards that prohibit homeowners associations from restricting the ethnic, religious and cultural qualities of an area.

“They believe that whites are different from other groupings of people, and they believe that whites have a more advanced culture, that they’re different socially, they’re different on all sorts of levels,” said Mayo of the Anti-Defamation League.

“The ultimate goal of white nationalists is to have a separate white ethnostate, which would be devoid of minorities, and that’s a form of white supremacy to want that.”

The Traditionalist Worker Party’s values include prohibiting abortion; creating youth mentorship programs that encourage a path toward marriage, starting families and seeking environmentally sustainable employment that stimulates the local economy; and ending birthright citizenship, dual citizenship and working visa programs, as well as limiting immigration into the country to no more than the number of U.S. citizens leaving the country.

The ultimate goal: “peaceful secessionist projects” that give communities and regions full autonomy to govern themselves according to their values.

“Separation doesn’t have to be a hostile thing. It can be a voluntary, constructive thing, like the Native American reservations,” Parrott said.

“Even if we were in favor of multiculturalism, you’d have to be psychotic to enforce it when you ... know it’s creating tension, conflict and mutual distrust. Stop the hate, separate.”

Advocating for white Americans

The Traditionalist Worker Party advocates for white people, Heimbach and Parrott repeated, and they won’t back down from the need for white advocates. Their work does not equate to supremacy, they said.

Hankes, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, doesn’t see that distinction.

“They can sling whatever yarn they want about love, but at end of the day, they believe, for whatever reason, they’re the superior race here,” Hankes said. “I think it’s all pretty much doublespeak. I think hate is at the heart of it.”

There are Trump campaign signs in Parrott and Heimbach’s yard, but that is as political as the Traditionalist Worker Party plans to be in Paoli.

Since the broadcast of the PBS segment on the property Parrott purchased this fall from a bank, the party members say they’ve had cause to fear for their lives beyond the daily threats on social media they are used to, including threats to rape Heimbach’s wife and kill his son.

“We’re not trying to force any of our views on anyone else. We don’t want to make anyone not love Paoli,” Heimbach said. “They can have different political perspectives than us, be of different backgrounds, but we’re just there and trying to build a community in a community.”

The Orange County Sheriff’s Office has not received any reports related to the group — neither threats toward its members nor people feeling threatened by its members and its presence. Nor has the town council received complaints, said Amy Morris, clerk treasurer for the town of Paoli. “We’ve not had anybody call and ask, inquire, complain, nothing,” Morris said. “I don’t think most of the community knows.”

Parrott would agree that Paoli residents may have only seen or heard negative things about his party.

“The responsibility is on us to prove we’re a constructive element,” Parrott said. “Ordinary families, we’re not coming for them. Should the radical leftists in Bloomington be concerned? Absolutely. Not for their personal safety, but ..."

“For the political changes that are happening,” Heimbach finished.

The future of the party

Despite animosity toward the liberal-leaning city, the Traditionalist Worker Party was formed in Bloomington, where Parrott said they still have dozens of active members, including Indiana University students. College activism with the Traditionalist Youth Network was a good first step, but Heimbach and Parrott wanted to create something with a wider reach.

“For every other community, you can go into an office if you’re black or Latino, and they can help you with the paperwork,” Heimbach said. “No one is advocating for us, and people are suffering and people are dying. The system made it racial by explicitly leaving us behind and at the same time saying we have privilege.”

It’s what party member Jason Augustus said he experienced while living and working in New York City. Though he had a well-paying job, Augustus estimates with the high costs of rent, utilities, food and other necessities, he had the same standard of living as his neighbors, some of whom were people of color and immigrants living in government-subsidized housing and utilizing food pantries.

“I don’t have an advocacy group to help me with all those costs,” said Augustus, 32. “These are just basic things, and the only thing standing in our way of that is this illusive privilege. There are a lot of poor white people. Not all white people get nice corporate jobs like I had. But they’re still told they have a leg up.”

Augustus started looking for others who shared his values and found a group with white nationalist leanings, which led him to meet Heimbach. He since has moved to Paoli, where he feels “more at home.”

“He was the dude going in the direction I was thinking,” Augustus said of Heimbach.

“The common narrative is we are evil Nazi racists, that we hate anybody who’s not like us. But this simply isn’t the case. We just want to be around people like ourselves without the government coming in and telling us who we should live next to, who we should do business with.”

Heimbach soon hopes to run for political office, locally, as a candidate who would fight for the white nationalist ideologies he shares with Augustus.

Hankes said he doesn’t see Heimbach as “the next David Duke,” even though a headline in the Washington Post recently likened the chairman of the Traditionalist Worker Party to the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

“We think the more people learn about what we’re actually doing and what we’re actually saying, the less frightened people will be,” Parrott said.

But the Southern Poverty Law Center will continue to monitor the party’s activities, Hankes said, while party members focus on maintaining their “community within the community.”

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