Heimbach poses with others under a burning swastika. According to the Huffington Post, Heimbach has confirmed that it is him in the photo. (Photo: Huffington Post)

The upcoming gathering in Kentucky hits close to home for residents of Southern Indiana, where Traditionalist Worker Party leaders Matthew Heimbach and Matthew Parrott live. For the past few years, they, along with others, have been attempting to establish a white separatist colony in Paoli, Indiana, where Parrott owns land.

The Traditionalist Worker Party also has a branch in Madisonville, Kentucky just south of Evansville.

Traditionalist Worker Party “Anti-Homosexual” Demonstration, Madisonville, Kentucky, Aug. 2016. This photo has since been taken down, probably to conceal the identity of someone pictured. (Photo: Traditionalist Youth Network)

Heimbach believes that Southern Indiana will welcome his racist views. He told Bloomington, Indiana’s Harold Times, “Southern Indiana’s a natural home for our politics…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.”

One way to combat white nationalism is to expose it. According to Anti-Fascist News, “the growth of the Alt Right has rested solely on the ability to have a voice while remaining anonymous.” They go on to cite numerous examples of Alt-Right leaders being fired from their jobs and disowned by their families after being exposed to the public as white nationalists.

Unintentionally highlighting this vulnerability, Heimbach writes in a recent post on the Traditionalist Youth Network blog, “…we chose Pikeville in part because of (discreet) local support,” indicating that there are white nationalist sympathizers in the Pikeville area who would prefer to remain in hiding. Thus far they have been able to do so—safely welcoming other white nationalists to the region as a result.

Since Trump’s election, Southern Indiana has seen an increase in attacks by white supremacists who have been able to avoid exposure. Following Trump’s election, a church in Bean Bottom, Indiana, was spray-painted with a swastika, and the words “Fag Church” and “Heil Trump.” Weeks later, a predominantly black church in Evansville was spray-painted with the words “Kill all Koons.”

Recently in Evansville, someone fired a shot through the window of a Jewish temple, an attack that coincided with a wave of bomb threats against Jewish community centers and attacks on Jewish cemeteries across the country. It also came the day after hate crime legislation failed again in Indiana’s legislature, making it one of only five states without such laws.