Heimbach resurfaces after jail time, saying he wants to ‘retake Southern Tennessee for traditional Democratic values’

Okay, so let’s see where THIS goes!

Neo-fascist Matthew Heimbach of the imploded Traditionalist Workers’ Party (TWP) has resurfaced in Southeastern Tennessee, meeting with local Democratic Party members there, following his 38 days in jail.

Heimbach reached out to the local Democrats without revealing his white supremacist, patriarchal politics — offering to volunteer to organize around working class issues. Heimbach, 27, said he wanted to “retake Southern Tennessee for traditional Democratic values” when he met with the party members.

Public records indicate that Heimbach is registered to vote in Bradley County, Tenn., with a home address listing him in the small town of Charleston. He is spending time in nearby Polk County — home of white supremacist Rick Tyler, infamous for his failed “Make America White Again” bid for Tennessee’s 3rd Congressional seat in 2016. Tyler is running for the same seat this year.

Heimbach and Tyler have worked together in the past. Both claim to be Christians who twist their faith with “traditional values” that imbue their religion with racism, the subjugation of women and anti-Semitism.

In March, Heimbach saw TWP dismantled after he was arrested for assaulting his wife and father-in-law Matt Parrott, a co-founder of TWP. The assault is alleged to have occurred immediately after Parrott caught Heimbach having an affair with Parrot’s wife. Heimbach was charged in Orange County, Ind. with misdemeanor battery and felony domestic battery in the presence of a child younger than 16.

As a result of that arrest, Heimbach was sentenced to 38 days in jail for violating his probation, stemming from attacking a Black woman at a 2016 rally for then-presidential-candidate Donald Trump. In July 2017, Heimbach was fined $145, ordered to attend anger management classes and sentenced to 90 days in jail for pushing and shoving University of Louisville student Kashiya Nwanguma in an attempt to make her leave the Kentucky International Convention Center, where the Trump rally was being held.

That jail sentence was suspended and the judge allowed Heimbach to be discharged on probation on the conditions of the anger management classes and that he have no additional criminal issues for two years.

Following the domestic violence incident in Indiana, Heimbach served 38 days of the 90-day sentence at Louisville Metro Department of Corrections. Heimbach can still could serve the remaining 52 days of his 90-day sentence if upon release he again violates his probation.

Heimbach was trying to gain a foothold in East Tennessee before the  domestic violence charges derailed his organizing.

On Feb. 17, 2018, large portions of the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville were shut down by police to allow Heimbach to safely deliver a lecture about his racist politics. A large group of protesters, made up mostly of UT students, were forced by police  into “free speech” areas where they were pinned in cold rain without access to food, water or restrooms while TWP used the rented facilities on the campus.

Six protesters, including clergy members, affiliated with Mercy Junction Justice & Peace Center were arrested after attempting to block the street at the time Heimbach’s lecture began. They carried a large banner that read, “God Condemns White Supremacy.”  

Calling his white separatist followers to Knoxville on Sunday, Jan. 21, Heimbach wrote on tradworker.com that the Traditionalist Worker Party would protest the “feminist march,” referring to the Knoxville Women’s March, and then join the anti-choice march that was happening in the same area. The Traditionalist Workers’ Party’s history in Tennessee before that incident had included an assault on an interracial couple at a Brentwood restaurant in October following a failed white supremacist rally in Murfreesboro.

Heimbach was also one of the organizers of the deadly and violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. He cited that day, a day that left three people dead and several with severe injuries, in his call for Traditionalist Workers’ Party member to come to Knoxville.

In the blog post, titled “Pussy Hats and Pitchforks, he wrote: “With just over a thousand men in Charlottesville, we changed the world. We made such a huge impact on American culture because our mobilization of men was backed by an ideology that cannot be defeated.”