Matthew Heimbach, who admits to being one of several people violently pushing and shoving a young black woman at a Louisville rally for Donald Trump, didn’t just happen upon the scene Tuesday night. He’s been around for a minute.
Back in 2013, he accompanied Scott Terry to a session sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots at a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) designed to help white racist conservatives circumvent the white racist label. At the event the moderator, a black conservative named K. Carl Smith, attempted to give an example using Frederick Douglass, saying how after escaping from slavery Douglass wrote a letter forgiving his master for the way he treated Douglass. Terry replied to this by asking, “For giving him shelter and food, all those years?” Video of that exchange, courtesy of The Young Turks, can be viewed below the fold. As Terry makes his remarks, the camera pans to the right and you can see a young, shaven but spectacled Matthew Heimbach. According to Talking Points Memo, the two attended the event together and Heimbach is wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt.
Just prior to the CPAC event, Heimbach founded the White Student Union at Towson State University in Maryland. No one is saying that white people/students cannot form organizations for themselves; it’s just that when that happens, it’s usually a bad sign for other groups of people. Additionally, the notion that “every other group can advocate on its own behalf” is rife with false equivalencies. Most reputable, credible organizations—legal, social, cultural and political—made up of people of color are advocating for equal access and a fair share. The problem is that historically, access to resources and privileges have been doled out and maintained based on white skin privilege. So yeah, you could say something is being taken away: something that needs to be.
A leisurely stroll through Heimbach’s Facebook photos from his time at Towson, currently set to public, show the Confederate flag prominently and lovingly displayed. A travelogue of Confederate battle re-enactments also awaits the leisurely glance.
More recently, other than assaulting protestors at Donald Trump rallies, Heimbach has been banned from traveling to the United Kingdom because of his views.
He received notice of his banishment earlier this week in a letter citing his southern nationalism, along with several speeches containing “White Supremacist, anti-Semitic, racist, and homophobic rhetoric and imagery.”
The letter, issued on behalf of Theresa May, the home secretary for the UK’s Home Department, explains Britain’s Unacceptable Behavior Policy regarding extremists. Using Heimbach’s own words as evidence, the letter highlights his reference to homosexuality as a “deviant lifestyle” and multiple anti-Semitic declarations that the “enemy is the ‘international Jew…. Because they want to destroy us all.”
If the United States is being destroyed it is because it is reaping what it has sown. Its chickens have come home to roost. The rot is from within, clearly.
And here is video of Matthew Heimbach, wearing the red baseball cap, as he pushes, shoves and yells at protestors during Donald Trump’s Tuesday rally in Louisville:
Here’s that video of Scott Terry at CPAC, with a younger Matthew Heimbach sitting to his right.