By David Futrelle
It’s like a regular Peyton Place, but with Nazis. Violent Alt-Nazi doofus Matthew Heimbach, leader of the so-called Traditionalist Worker Party, has gotten himself into a little bit of trouble with the law, and his followers, and perhaps most of all his extended family after allegedly assaulting his wife and father-in-law after allegedly being caught in flagrante delicto with, er, his mother-in-law.
It’s a novel way to try to fulfill the Traditional Worker Party’s mission of “defending Faith, Family, and Folk,” I’ll grant you that, but Heimbach had apparently been honoring Family pretty enthusiastically with his mother-in-law for several months, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
According to the police report on the incident (which you can find here, courtesy of the Southern Poverty Law Center), Heimbach’s wife and father in law (now ex-TWP spokesman Matt Parrot) discovered the affair last week, and after being confronted with this, young Mr. Heimbach and not-quite-as-young Mrs. Parrott said they had broken it off.
But dad and daughter didn’t believe it, so they decided to spy on the star-crossed couple to see if they could really manage the difficult task of not boinking each other. The amateur spies snuck up on the trailer where the two had gone — did I mention that they all live in the same trailer park? — and peered in a window only to find that, well, the affair wasn’t quite over. Matt Parrott literally watched himself get cucked by the leader of the organization he had sworn loyalty to.
At this point, the police report notes, Heimbach’s wife
got scared and ran away while [Matt Parrot] stayed behind watching the encounter on a box through a window. While doing this the box broke and he ran around the trailer to confront Matthew.
It’s like a fucking Coen brothers movie.
In the scuffle that ensued, the report continues, the lovely lad allegedly choked his father-in-law twice, leaving him briefly unconscious both times. Matthew H. fled to his trailer, where he was later arrested for the alleged assault on Matt Parrott and for allegedly assaulting his wife in front of their young children.
In case you’re having trouble following all this, one Twitterer has prepared a chart:
https://twitter.com/itsadamntragedy/status/973786599556354048
On the police report, all those involved declared that their occupation was “white naitonalist.”
When a reporter at the Southern Poverty Law Center called papa Parrott to ask him about the whole weird thing, the not-so-proud papa-in-law bitterly declared that
I’m done. I’m out. SPLC has won. Matt Parrott is out of the game. Y’all have a nice life.
He’s not the only one quitting, evidently. The TWP web site is currently down and the future of the group (or whatever emerges from all this mishegoss) is in doubt.
Over on Gab — the social media site that Twitter-banned Nazis have made their home — some mourned the TWP implosion.
A few hoped that something could be salvaged from the wreckage FOR THE SAKE OF THE (WHITE) CHILDREN.
Others gloated.
A parody TWP account offered a new slogan for the now apparently non-existent group.
Still others riffed on the same theme.
And of course there were the memes.
This fellow, meanwhile, knows who the real villain in all of this is: WHITE WOMEN.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that the current troubles of the Alt-Right have a lot less to do with female betrayal than they do with the fact that it’s a movement full of macho shithead losers overflowing with hate and rage and bitterness and ego.
Also the fact that people have been standing up to them every time they try to organize anything.
With all the horrific crap that’s going on these days, it’s sort of nice to see some of the world’s worst humans bickering and demoralized.
Mock them for their malice, for their hypocrisy, for their incompetence, for their incuriousity.
Don’t mock them for being depressed, for being poor, for being uneducated.
There are great people in trailer parks. They aren’t trash.
That description of “failson” describes someone who is deeply depressed and not deserving of mockery.
I have no sympathy for Nazis, but I can’t deal with this sort of viciousness. Not towards them, but towards others who don’t deserve to be lumped in with them.
You’re a good person, Scild.
Thank you for saying that, Scildfreja.
@Scildfreya
Keep your sympathies for people who’re actually decent human beings. None of the people remotely deserves even a smidgeon of the kindness you’re offering.
I’m tired of you defending human refuse just because they’re poor or what have you. They deserve every insult we pelt at them.
Matthew Heimbach is a man who started a white students union which had a vigilante wing that existed “because of black terrorism”. This is a man who’s spread anti-semitic conspiracy theories that hurt my community. He’s one of the head honchos of the alt-right, a movement that has devoted itself to denying what my people have gone through.
You’ll excuse me if I politely ignore your request. Stop being such a sweetheart to men who’s only reason for being alive is because it’s illegal to shoot them.
@Female Yid
Scildfreya is saying we shouldn’t do splash damage. There are plenty of poor people who are not fascists. They don’t deserve to be associated with fascists. And i don’t see where she has shown sympathy for Heimbach or any of his ilk. Unwillingness to tar with a broad brush is NOT sympathy for fascists. Try not to confuse the two.
Beginning to wonder why Female Yid is still here.
I think you’re right. I mix up YouTube misogynists a lot.
It’s only a talking point. Whether it’s white nationalists or religious conservatives, the definition of innocent woman is so narrow that very few can live up to it and those who don’t deserve rape and abuse. Hence the yes, benevolent sexism is still misogyny conversation the other day.
Protection is a thin pretext for oppression. Bigots love to say marginalized people need to be oppressed for their own good. Since you’re South African, you probably already know this was often an excuse for restricting the travel of black South Africans.
For someone with such an obviously high opinion of your own intellect and class, you sure like to fail at reading comprehension. She’s not defending them. She’s defending the good people who are poor, live in trailer parks, don’t achieve a lot career wise, etc. Terms like “white trash” and mocking someone for living in a trailer park does a whole lot of splash damage. Heimbach isn’t a philandering racist because he’s poor and lives in a mobile home. Donald Trump is also a philandering racist and he’s spent his life in mansions and had plenty of career success (by a certain metric, the one you’re using anyway).
Just fuck off already.
@Makroth @weirwoodtreehugger
Most poor white people voted Trump. I have no sympathy for any of them.
I’ve been to West Virginia. I was genuinely ostracized for my race.
The soap-opera slapstick details made me laugh (standing on a box to look through a window, falling down…). Oh, yeah, and Moggie’s comment “Heimbach maneuvre.” Heh.
At the same time, the violence Heimbach used is chilling, and entirely representative of his politics – as people said here, too.
I didn’t comment on David’s post starting with “Ethnostate” but I listened to that Nazi group’s audio and it gave me a similar mix of emotions: “That’s silly, you silly people, how can you even think that way?” alternating with “what the fuck, you’re looking for a plausible excuse for mass murder???”
Also, maybe I’m ninja’d by now, but @Female Yid, @Scild meant having sympathy for people who are seen as losers, NOT for Nazis:
ETA: Yes, ninja’d. But I wanted to add that people who are seen as losers in popular culture aren’t all or even mostly cis/white/straight etc, so the issue isn’t poor white people voting for Trump.
@Female Yid
Most poor people actually voted for Hillary.
And keep in mind that more than 50% of the U.S. population did not vote AT ALL in the last election, so i think you’re way off on the “most” part. Granted, people not voting is big reason why Trump won, but i think that’s a different issue.
Fair point, it was a mean-spirited descriptor.
I apologize for posting that link.
@Katamount
*Standing ovation*
People often forget that conservatism is and has always been the norm, despite how damaging it is. Therefore any movement that challenges the current power structure is immediately painted as radical, at best, and terrorist, at worst.
It doesn’t matter if the people currently in power not only rely on these tactics, against vulnerable and discriminated groups, but have gone as far as to institutionalize them; the tactics are bad when the Left uses them. But when it’s the Right wing it is unquestionably necessary, and people who don’t support them are naive (thinking of waterboarding for example).
So long as these people keep on controlling the narrative and flooding the media with what constitutes blatant propaganda, these views and policies reflecting them, will remain. They need to be challenged for this bullshit at every turn.
@Diego Duarte
I keep envisioning the hoodie-wearing Bruce Willis gunning down black and Latino men (portrayed as criminals) in the dark of night from Eli Roth’s Death Wish remake. That kind of vigilantism is meant to be approved of by the audience, yet it’s the hoodied Black Bloc opposing open fascists that terrifies that same audience? Hmm… something’s not tallying.
And stop giving Eli Roth money to make movies! He’s not good at it!
No, they do not. If a poor person is an asshole, insult them for their assholery, not for their poverty
If we throw ad hominem insults at people because we disagree with their politics, how are we different from the MRA/igno-right?
@Katamount
It’s infuriating because Whites like to paint African Americans and Latinos as violent thugs; yet most of the violence in the “hoods” is pretty much fostered by over-policing.
Even worse, they like to whine about Latinos not speaking their language or breaking their laws in the US. Last time I went on a cruise, from Houston to Honduras, we found out they had changed the usual destination because White people were complaining Hondurans didn’t speak English… in their own fucking country. So the cruise line went to an “English friendly” city in Honduras.
Then there’s the White, American douche who brought a dog to Kennedy Park in Peru (a park well known for housing lots and lots of cats) two weeks ago, and proceeded to try and walk down the most cat crowded alley. When the cats reacted hissing and spitting he started aiming kicks left, right and center.
Peruvian police came by to scold him and he flat out told them to “fuck off” or he’d “fuck them up”.
I swear everything they throw at us is nothing more than projection.
Got a cite for that please? Not doubting you, but it’s something I want to read for myself.
@Diego Duarte
I gotta admit, I have been wondering about those articles saying that we should just abolish police entirely. While I can certainly agree from the standpoint of beat cops all but shaking down poor people and a drug war that has only incarcerated a lot of minorities on non-violent charges… a detective force is certainly needed to investigate violent crime, even if they have a poor track record of preventing it. Somebody had to catch Bruce McArthur after all….
I’m curious where the Mammotheers stand on that idea.
@ Shadowplay
Here’s a good one
Abolishing cops entirely?
Dumbest idea since some idiot lit a match in the Library in Alexandria. We need a whole new category of stupid to even begin to classify it.
@Shadowplay
Sure, here are a couple of interesting articles on the subject:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-problem-with-broken-windows-policing/
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/10/08/497123741/race-and-policing-treat-black-men-and-boys-like-victims-too
The second one is especially telling. Over-policed neighborhoods tend to have higher criminality rates, despite the fact that policemen are mostly focusing on minor offenses.
EDIT:
I don’t think we should abolish police, but reform the way the criminal justice system works entirely. Because under the current situation, it’s little more than legalized and targeted discrimination and mass-violation of civil liberties.
@Diego
Thank you! Looking forward to reading them.
American cops do seem to be especially bad, though. You’d be better off with the Ankh-Morpork city watch. Rather than abolishing them, why not learn from policing in other parts of the world?
Right, then. If you’d rather Scildfreja Ulfheðinn than Scildfreja Unnyðnes, I’m happy to accommodate.
I’m willing to shoulder a lot of blame, and in general if someone calls me out on something I take it as a cue to examine myself, to see if they’re right. I’m far from blameless, and one of my flaws is that I tend to give people a lot more credit than they’re due.
People like you.
I don’t take kindly to being called a sympathizer. Point to a single thing I’ve said that grants them safe harbour or excuses their horrible behaviour. One. If you’re so tired of it, there must be plenty of times I’ve said that they aren’t so bad. One. Quote me one.
Before you go trolling the archives for which of my posts you can most easily twist to knots, though, be aware – I and the others here are able to read for comprehension. They can read “don’t mock them for their poverty” and are able to continue with the following sentence of “mock them for their incompetence.” They understand that poverty isn’t a moral failing, and depression shouldn’t be mocked. They understand that these awful people should be mocked for the things that make them awful, because it’s the awful things we should despise.
I don’t shelter fascists, and fuck you for saying I do.
(Oh, and incidentally – It was found that white people who said their economic situation was “poor” or “fair” were 1.7 times more likely to have voted for Clinton over Trump. You’re wrong there too.)
female y*d
kindly change your name so it is not a slur that I and others must read in your comments and every reply. personally i don’t like it. it is not reclaiming. it is unnecessary.
@Ooble, Shadowplay, others; thank you! @Katamount, don’t worry, I understand. It’s easy to think of Heimbach and others like him as basement-dwelling losers. Those insults work because they’re so available in our heads. They’re an unconscious image that connects itself immediately to the idea of these subcutaneous cretins (see? cretin, right there.) And it’s impossible to be mindful of our mistakes all the time. Brains don’t work that way. It’s all practice and reflection. No harm, no foul!