What we know about Matthew Heimbach, white nationalist who helped promote Charlottesville rally

Allison Carter and Robert King | The Indianapolis Star

Show Caption Hide Caption Scenes from Charlottesville, David Duke talks Trump Scenes from the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville with Matt Heimbach and David Duke interviews.

INDIANAPOLIS — An Indiana man who worked for weeks to help promote the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., has risen quickly to prominence in white supremacist circles.

Matthew Heimbach, 26, of Paoli, Ind., was born in Maryland but married into an Indiana family. His home now is a town of about 3.500 people in the middle of southern Indiana about 90 miles south of here where the Census Bureau in 2010 recorded that almost 99% of residents identified as white and not Latino.

Here is what we know:

Why are we talking about him?

Because Heimbach played an important role in a key event that has garnered international attention and resulted in the death of Heather Heyer, 32, of Charlottesville, who was killed when a car driven by James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of the Toledo suburb of Maumee, Ohio, sped into a crowd of counter protesters.

Two Virginia State Police officers who were monitoring the protest died when the helicopter they were flying in crashed.

Is he affiliated with some group?

He's chairman of the Traditionalist Worker Party, which he founded as the White Student Union before he graduated in spring 2013 from Towson University in the Baltimore suburbs. The university never sanctioned his White Student Union, denying approval for it in 2012, Towson spokesman Ray Feldmann said Thursday.

The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the Traditionalist Worker Party as a hate group.

What does he believe?

He believes "white genocide" is danger of occurring in the United States. He sees America's diversity as a threat and believes that the country should be carved into "ethnostates" with each race receiving its own autonomous region.

He and his group are also anti-Semitic and believe a "Jewish power structure" controls the world. They deny the Holocaust, admire Adolf Hitler and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and look up to strongmen such as Russia's Vladimir Putin and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

What are his goals?

The cornerstone: A white homeland, an idea the white nationalist repeatedly has espoused in rallies and interviews

“We want to be able to put forward the interests of white Americans to be able to not only give us this political voice, but to be able to support our heritage, and support our culture, and be able to have a future where we're in control of our own future nation," he told WHAS-TV, Louisville, late last year.

► Profile: Meet the man in the middle of the 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville

► Lexington, Ky.: White nationalists planning a rally to oppose removal of statue

Heimbach lives on a two-acre plot of land near Paoli's town square. The property is home to others who share his beliefs, including his father-in-law, Matt Parrott, 35, who bought the bank-owned property a few years ago after it had been repossessed.

Heimbach met his wife, Parrott's step-daughter, through Parrott, and the Heimbachs have a young child.

To make Heimbach's ideas a reality, the Traditionalist Worker Party — with three chapters in Kentucky, two in Ohio and one in Indiana — plans to run five candidates on the state and local level in 2018, he said.

Why was he at the rally?

The stated purpose of the rally was to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, which Heimbach believes is an erasure of white history. But he acknowledged that the rally was equally about uniting a variety of far-right groups, many of which are racist.

“The biggest thing is a show of strength,” Heimbach said ahead of the rally. “To show that our organizations that have been divided on class, been divided on religious issues, divided on ideological grounds, can put 14 words — ‘We must secure the existence of our people and the future for white children’ — as our primary motivating factor.”

The Anti-Defamation League calls the "14 Words" Heimbach references "the most popular white supremacist slogan in the world."

What did he do at the rally?

The event descended into chaos before it officially began.

Heimbach was pepper-sprayed in the face. As protesters and counter protesters yelled insults and threw objects at each other, Heimbach ordered his followers to push down barricades.

Police ended the gathering shortly thereafter.

Why does he matter?

Heimbach has become increasingly radicalized in recent years, said Marilyn Mayo, a senior research fellow with the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

“He is definitely someone who has been a rising young leader in the white supremacist movement,” Mayo said. “The way I see him is he kind of bridges the gap between intellectual racists and the neo-Nazis, and he’s done that for some time.”

Heimbach is "considered by many to be the face of a new generation of white nationalists," the the Southern Poverty Law Center said.

How does this play into national politics?

Of President Donald Trump, Heimbach said, “He himself didn’t create anything, but he did show where white politics are going in the United States.”

At a March 2016 Donald Trump rally in Louisville, Heimbach screamed at and repeatedly pushed an anti-Trump protester, an incident captured on video.

► Pineville, Ky.: Residents in April told to avoid town over white nationalist rally

► Louisville: Judge rejects motion to dismiss protesters’ lawsuit against Trump

He later pleaded guilty to second-degree disorderly conduct and was sentenced to anger management classes and a $145 fine. He also was sentenced to 90 days in jail, but the judge waived that requirement as long as he did not re-offend within two years.

"It seems pretty clear to me based on the other rallies and the rallies afterward that Mr. Trump had an expectation of deputizing the crowd to be able to help provide security as these disruptions were happening where there was violence against Trump supporters," Heimbach said at a hearing in June.

► Twitter: Company's alt-right purge could backfire

► Fayetteville, N.C.: Trump protester sucker-punched at rally

► Sacramento: At least 10 hurt in white supremacist melee

After initially condemning violence "from many sides," Trump said Monday that "racism is evil."

On Tuesday, Trump walked back his Monday comments by saying counter protesters were just as violent as the white supremacists.

Contributing: Shay McAlister, WHAS-TV, Louisville; Thomas Novelly and Matthew Glowicki, The (Louisville) Courier-Journal. Follow Allison Carter on Twitter: @AllisonLCarter and @RbtKing