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Jul 19, 17
Filed under: Action, Anti-fascist, Community Organizing, Southeast
Matthew Heimbach was in court today after assaulting a young African-American female protester at a Trump rally in Kentucky last year. Heimbach has stated he was not to blame and was only following orders from Donald Trump who encouraged rally goers to remove protesters. Protesters from the Trump rally also contend that they were called racial slurs. Heimbach ended up receiving only a slap on the wrist: two years unsupervised probation and anger management classes. Only days before, a member of the neo-Nazi group that Heimbach leads was arrested for vandalizing a synagogue and charges stemming from a neo-Nazi rally in Sacramento in 2016.
Today Matthew Heimbach, Nazi organizer and leader of the Traditionalist Worker Party, is facing charges for his assault on protesters at the March 1st, 2016 Trump rally in Louisville. Heimbach is a white supremacist who began his career with the creation of the White Student Union at Towson University in order to bring racist, far-right speakers to campus. He went on to start the Traditionalist Youth Network, and formed the Traditionalist Worker Party to run white supremacist candidates for office.
Matthew Heimbach leaves court.
While attempting to soften the image of the white nationalist in a bid for mainstream appeal, Heimbach has a long standing history of murderous rhetoric directed against marginalized groups. In his own words “Our enemies are sick animals and we need to treat them as such.” He may try to paint himself as fighter for freedom, but when it comes to those who oppose his violent racist ideals he believes “Freedom of assembly and freedom of speech need not apply.” He actively glorifies the idea of bloodshed at his political actions and has a pathological aversion to deescalating conflict. In this context, it is clear that Heimbach punching a protester was not the case of a man caught up in the heat of the moment, but of a Nazi thug putting his rhetoric into action.
Dangerous rhetoric left unchecked will lead to violence in our communities.
Heimbach’s assault is not an isolated event.
If we do not stand up to defend our community, we can expect to see stories like this in our news with increasing frequency.
We as Louisville Anti-Racist Action refuse to stand idly by while white supremacists organize in our community. We are here to help build, defend, educate and create an effective culture of resistance to fascism.
