Counter-Currents
2,482 words
If there are two things I write about a lot, it’s Bernie Bros and wignats. And now I get to write about both in the same article!
Several socialist outfits have come together to form a group called March for Medicare for All. On July 24, they plan on staging rallies in over two dozen cities across America in support of universal healthcare. At each rally, different speakers will give speeches in support of universal health care.
One of the scheduled cities was Muncie, Indiana. One of the keynote speakers they had lined up for the Muncie rally was Jim Davis, creator of the Garfield comic strip.
Another scheduled keynote speaker for the Muncie event was a guy billed as Matt H. Bach.
Yes, that is exactly who you think it is. That is none other than Matt Heimbach, former leader of the neo-Nazi outfit Traditionalist Workers Party and current anti-racism activist.
If you don’t know who Matt Heimbach is, you must be new here. Welcome to the Dissident Right. For those who don’t know, I’ll give the Cliff’s Notes. For worse or for even worse, he is a significant figure in the history of our movement. If it weren’t for Matt Heimbach, the Great Optics War of 2017-2018 might never have happened. The word “wignat” was literally invented to describe him and his followers (although it has taken on broader meaning since).
Matt Heimbach first rose to prominence in 2012-2013 when he tried to create a “White Student Union” at his college. It generated a lot of controversy and became a national news story. The college refused to officially recognize the group, but it continued in an unofficial capacity. They once had Jared Taylor speak at one of their events.
After college, Heimbach and his right-hand man Matt Parrot started the Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP). While the Alt-Right was pioneering new and innovative methods on online white activism, Heimbach chose instead to stick to the failed model of 1990s skinheads complete with uniforms, fascistic symbolism, and ostentatious displays of Nazi fetishism, with predictable results.
Heimbach thought online activism was for suckers and that serious white activists need to be out doing things in the real world. So instead of building an online presence, he did lots and lots of talking to the media which resulted in hit piece after hit piece after hit piece. He allowed a journalist to follow him around and write a book about him. He staged street rallies that were one public relations disaster after another. The TWP’s profile was raised considerably after the Wignat Woodstock known as Charlottesville.
In 2017, Richard Spencer was still doing public appearances and needed private security for his events. For a while, Identity Evropa filled this role of rent-a-mob, but after ousting sociopathic pathological liar Eli Mosley from leadership, new leader Patrick Casey cut ties with Spencer. Richard Spencer then turned to Heimbach and the TWP, as they were the only other rent-a-mob that could bring sufficiently large numbers to Spencer’s events. Being allied to the most prominent white identitarian in the country gave Heimbach and TWP a new level of prestige.
The Optics War really began when TRS attempted to add the TWP’s podcast to their roster. This is when Andrew Anglin and Weev of the Daily Stormer, the biggest white nationalist website in the world, stepped in. After Wignat Woodstock, the Stormer did not want the Alt-Right to be associated with costumed neo-Nazism anymore and gave TRS an ultimatum: the Daily Stormer would cease promoting TRS podcasts unless they dropped TWP. TRS relented. This led to a huge online debate over optics, the value of real-world events, and how to tailor the message for a mass audience. In the ensuing Optics War, people were doxed, reputations were ruined, and alliances shifted.
The Optics War ended when Matt Heimbach was caught having an affair with Matt Parrot’s wife (who was also Heimbach’s mother-in-law, as Heimbach was married to Parrot’s step-daughter from a previous marriage). He also assaulted Parrot in front of his children. This was the end of Matt Heimbach’s career in white nationalism.
A couple of years later, he re-emerged as a member of Light Upon Light, an anti-hate organization made up of several prominent “former extremists.” Light Upon Light is a fairly disreputable organization that has been disavowed by Antifa and Christian Picciolini, who consider it a grift and doubt the sincerity of its leaders. For example, Jeff Schoep, former leader of the National Socialist Movement, was a member despite the fact that his girlfriend was still running the NSM website.
For more information, watch Ryan Faulk’s video “Matt Heimbach and the Perils of Wignatism.”
So let’s get back to this March for Medicare for All. Once Matt Heimbach’s picture appeared on March for Medicare for All’s official Instagram page, it took all of two seconds for people to recognize that Matt H. Bach was the notorious neo-Nazi Matt Heimbach.
When I first heard about this Muncie rally, I knew there were three possibilities as to what happened:
- The organizers booked Matt Heimbach without knowing who he was.
- The organizers knew who Matt Heimbach was and thought booking him would be good for the cause.
- The organizers knew who Matt Heimbach was and thought booking him would be bad for the cause (deliberate sabotage).
Immediately, I could think of all sorts of reasons why #1 and #2 were unlikely but I could not think of any reasons to rule out #3. Deliberate sabotage seemed to be Occam’s razor: an attempt to tarnish the reputation of the socialist Left by associating it with Neo-Nazism is the most likely scenario.
There is precedence for this. I have previously written about a Daily Beast article written by ADL and Antifa-affiliated writer Alexander “Reid Siege” Ross where he very disingenuously tried to connect every major figure in the “Dirtbag Left” to Nazism.
I have cautioned people from writing off the socialist Left as controlled opposition. As race-cucked as the socialist Left may be, they are pretty consistently anti-Zionist, and this has got a lot of Jewish organizations worried that the socialist Left is on the verge of going full-blown antisemitic. During the recent Israel-Palestine fiasco, I saw a ton of Jews on Twitter losing their marbles about it.
In the short term, Leftist anti-Zionism is more dangerous to Jews than Rightist antisemitism because the socialist Left has more social respectability and a shred of institutional support. Anti-Zionism is also harder to justify censoring than outright antisemitism, so orchestrating a smear campaign against the Left would be the next best option.
I could believe that Matt Heimbach would want to be a speaker at an event like this. He always had communist tendencies even when he was a white nationalist and he was also an attention whore.
What I couldn’t believe is that the organizers of this rally would have booked him without knowing who he was. How would that work? “Hey, you may not know me, but do you think I can speak at your rally?” “Sure thing, stranger.”
If you are organizing an event like this, there are going to be two things that you will be looking for in your speakers. You want them to be either a) really good at giving speeches or b) capable of getting boots on the ground. Ideally, you would want both. Either way, you’re going to want to see some evidence, like former speeches, or that this person has a following.
An exception might be if someone put in a lot of time or money into the event. In such a case, an organizer might throw them a bone with a few minutes of stage time as a way of saying thanks. Maybe Heimbach did that. If that were the case, that might let the organizers off the hook slightly in the sense that they were not deliberately malicious. Heimbach is enough of a narcissist that he might not have realized or cared about the damage his presence might cause. Or he could be a Fed. He has a criminal record and is facing lawsuits. He could have cut a deal along the way.
I also didn’t believe that someone booked him thinking it would be good for the cause. There exist some Leftists who are open to the idea of working with Right-wingers, but they usually mean someone like Tucker Carlson, or maybe a Pat Buchanan. But even the most “based” Leftist would have considered Matt Heimbach several bridges too far. Even if someone thought it would be a propaganda coup to say “Hey, we stole one of the Alt Right’s guys! He’s on our side now!”, I had a hard time believing that person would not at least run it by the national committee.
There was also the fact that Matt Heimbach was not advertised as “Matt Bach,” but “Matt H. Bach.” Why throw in the “H”? Heimbach’s real middle name is actually Warren. It looks like the saboteur, be it the organizer and/or Heimbach himself, was purposefully trying to make it easier for people to figure out who he really was by making his alias absurdly close to his real name. Only three letters off.
All signs pointed to deliberate sabotage.
But immediately, Antifa started holding up the controversy as evidence of their crackpot theory that class reductionist Leftists were secret Nazis.
A few days later, the first news story about the event came out. It was published by (surprise, surprise) the Daily Beast. It turns out that I was about 80% right. It was deliberate sabotage. However, neither the organizers nor Matt Heimbach (who says he was never contacted) were in on it. That was the part I was wrong about.
Apparently, someone infiltrated the M4M4A’s Slack account using the name Ethan Rae Steele, claiming to be involved with the Muncie event. From there, they sent the pictures to M4M4A’s graphic designer, who then made the flyer. The same person tried to gain access to M4M4A’s social media accounts. Later on, someone tried to join in on one of the M4M4A national committee’s Zoom call. Unfortunately for the infiltrator, the organizer he was trying to impersonate was already on the call.
So who was responsible for this prank? I think we can safely rule out the infiltrator being a Right-winger. If the Right were going to do something like this, they would have used the prank to promote someone who was still within our ranks who could then have capitalized on the publicity. They would not have used Matt Heimbach, who was kicked out of our movement years ago. If Nick Fuentes, Sam Hyde, or Andrew Anglin had appeared on the flyer, I might have said “OK, that was one of our guys.” But there is no reason why someone on our side would have wanted to promote a current anti-racist activist. Whoever did this wanted to harm M4M4A without helping us.
The culprit was most likely either Antifa, establishment Republicans, or the Zionist Democrats. I don’t think establishment Republicans would have had the imagination to pull something like this off nor are most of them aware of the “class reductionists are secret Nazis” meme peddled by Antifa and the ADL. When normie conservatives call the Left “fascists” and “Nazis,” they mean it metaphorically. When Antifa and the ADL say it, they mean it quite literally.
One of the suspects is the Las Vegas chapter of the Green Party. It appears to be a shady operation that is not recognized by the official Nevada Green Party. There had previously been a bit of feuding between the M4M4A organizers and members of the Nevada Green Party.
There is another lesson here that perhaps we already knew but it bears repeating. Our enemies have reached their quota of traitors. They don’t need any more Christian Picciolinis.
Former Breitbart writer Katie McHugh tried to pull a Christian Picciolini. She doxed dozens of people and handed over hundreds of e-mails from people, some of them as prominent as Stephen Miller. Several anti-white hit pieces have been written based on information McHugh provided, and in return, she got next to nothing. The liberal establishment just said “Thanks for the doxes, now fuck off.” She got a couple of fluff pieces written on her, but she did not get the Picciolini-style career of a reformed racist that she was hoping for.
Matt Heimbach’s latest attempt to become a reformed racist has also spectacularly failed to launch. I don’t think he even got any fluff pieces. Now after this episode where he has actively harmed the side he was trying to defect to, I’d say that’s the nail in the coffin of his public life.
Some people have popped up on YouTube in recent years with “I went down the Alt-Right rabbit hole” stories, and a few of them have parlayed that into minor e-celeb careers. Their stories go something like this: “I started watching Molyneux videos and before you know it, I was hanging out in the chat rooms with people using racial slurs. It was changing the way I think and started affecting my social life. My mother was starting to worry about me. But then I watched a Destiny debate and it saved my life. Now I’m a nice anti-racist liberal.”
Those guys can get away with it because they never actually did any pro-white activism or content creation. They just watched some naughty videos and then found the error of their ways. Because they can claim that they were never aggressors, they can portray themselves as pure victims in a way that Heimbach and McHugh can not. They said mean things about minorities and there is no forgiveness for that.
Plus, all these “rabbit hole” YouTube guys also make clear what they never believed. They’ll say “I never believed the stuff about Jews,” or “I wasn’t sure what to think about all the race realism stuff.” Or they’ll stress that it was mostly the anti-feminism stuff they were into. That’s quite a bit different than someone like Matt Heimbach, who is on record calling Hitler a “great guy” and has loads of pictures out there of him getting in fistfights in defense of the self-described ruler of the world Richard Spencer.
If you have ever done pro-white activism, you can always quit, but don’t even think about trying to switch sides. It won’t work.
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23 comments
“There is zero tolerance for hate within our organization” (!!!) avows the M4A rebuke…at the end of an entire paragraph of hating on White Nationalists.
Such entertaining antics.
“I went down the Alt-Right rabbit hole” stories, and a few of them have parlayed that into minor e-celeb careers. Their stories go something like this: “I started watching Molyneux videos and before you know it, I was hanging out in the chat rooms with people using racial slurs. It was changing the way I think and started affecting my social life. My mother was starting to worry about me. But then I watched a Destiny debate and it saved my life. Now I’m a nice anti-racist liberal.”
Eeeeek – it’s the Reformed Dope Fiend Narrative! Anyway, this is the only right way to bail: https://rainbowalbrecht.wordpress.com/2019/10/28/how-to-quit-the-alt-right-and-stop-being-a-right-wing-extremist/
that was an interesting history of the Optics War. I wouldn’t mind reading a more detailed account of that. The other guy seems a bit buffoonish, but I would like Matt Parrot to come back as a writer. I really miss reading him—another unique talent.
Seems like sabotage. I can think of only one group obsessive enough to go after such small actors.
It could be be a mix of theory 2 & 3.
M4M4A purposely books him knowing it will provoke outrage in the libtard press. Then they play it off as if it was some huge mistake but at the same time draw attention the actual event. So they get free press out of it while demonstrating their uncompromising anti-racist bonafides by disavowing and denouncing the fat kid.
The Optics War ended when Matt Heimbach was caught having an affair with Matt Parrot’s wife (who was also Heimbach’s mother-in-law, as Heimbach was married to Parrot’s step-daughter from a previous marriage).
I know the above relationships are not at all complicated, but still, at first glance, it reminds me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VxLQZPqI2M
“Wignat Woodstock”– that’s good
Very good.
Pretty sure “Wignat Altamont” would be more accurate.
Or as I put it: “the Altamont of the Alt Right,” here: https://counter-currents.com/2017/08/the-altamont-of-the-alt-right/
Ha!
AltRight Altamont
Good riddance to bad rubbish I say. These types have poisoned the movement for so long. It is about time we push them out.
Heimbach always failed the aesthetics test which is also critical if we are to succeed.
Well dressed, well built men and women are required in public.
Excellent point. Appearance and behavior demonstrate one’s self respect as well as one’s respect for one’s people and culture and history.
This doesn’t mean you have to be dressed to the nine’s in a suit and tie all the time. Just dress well with the dollar you have. Show you care. (Please cover up the tattoos you got in the 90s!)
I dress well to honor the men in my family. I keep my weight down because I’ve noticed that, generally, men appreciate a woman who cares about her appearance, regardless of whether or not she is a natural beauty (I am no natural beauty). Show you care. (**)
There is so much rage, despair, cynicism in whites’ hearts and minds right now (understandably), but there needs to be hope, love, and inspiration, too. Let white nationalists be an inspiration to the others who have not yet ditched civic nationalism. A lot of them will come when they realize that having white nationalist interests does not make you evil, stupid, ignorant, unloving and hateful, or backwards.
(**) The only problem here is that non-white men appreciate white women’s good appearances, too, and it draws too much attention from them. I try to avoid that.
The problem with this formula is that such persons generally are incentivized to move in other directions, as high IQ white men who are well ‘put-together’ have life options far beyond prowhite activism. I noticed no later than the 80s that this was the true ‘genius’ of the antiwhite system: the really best white men had all sorts of opportunities to lead fantastic individual lives (as long as they could live the lie, and ignore with good conscience the enveloping tragedy of their people). That’s why one has to admire men like Revilo Oliver, William Pierce, Sam Francis, Joe Sobran, Murray Rothbard (neither a white nat nor even a white man, but went hard against The System, and paid for it), Jared Taylor, Peter Brimelow, Kevin MacDonald (though he shrewdly stayed his pen until he at least had tenure), and Greg Johnson. I would add David Duke, too. (Pat Buchanan was probably the most successful of this entire crew, in that he managed to say so much that needed saying, and even seriously run for the Presidency, yet somehow survived canceling or even media marginalization – not that the Left and the neocons didn’t try).
What is really needed is less “aesthetic” than character quality. I’ve always thought Taylor was the model. He tells hard truths, but is never inflammatory (as was Oliver, who was more learned and a better writer, but probably much less effective as an influencer). He was and is truthful but disciplined, and very presentable in his person. But above all, he had the character not to pursue the more comfortable life he might have had in order to awaken his people.
Note the IQ differences between the above men (with the possible exception of Duke) and lesser lights like Spencer and the seemingly ridiculous Heimbach. I went (1979-83) for my undergrad to one of the most academically elite universities. I probably could not have gotten in after 2000, maybe even after 1990, due to a radical increase in ‘diversity’ quotas that started in the late 80s, but did not peak until the 00s. I think my school is now around 50% nonwhite. It was barely over 10% nonwhite (including foreign students) in the early 80s, but that’s counting Jews, who were 25-30% {!!!} of my graduating class, as ‘white’. Most of the ‘white’ men admitted now are, I think, either Jews; multigenerational alumni ‘legacies’; high level athletes; weird types with single super-talents or unique [non-academic] accomplishments (“I started a soup kitchen in Tegucigalpa my junior summer …”); or the children of very wealthy or celebrity parents … along with a tiny number of the truly brilliant whites that even woke Ivies really want and need in order to uphold their elite academic status. I was accepted at several back in ’79 solely for academic achievement and potential; but as a middle class, non-Jewish, straight white guy with no outstanding talents or high school accomplishments, and merely excellent but not exceptional grades/SAT scores, I doubt I could gain admission to any of them today. I’ve often thought over the past 20 years that whites like me, the ‘backbone’ of the Ivies in the postwar era (before that, Ivies were mostly for upper class kids, heavily tilted to the East Coast, and especially the various ‘feeder’ boarding schools sprinkled throughout the area), are being “ethnically cleansed” from the Ivies (how else would you describe it?).
The point of my digression is to emphasize that all throughout this intense period of racial dispossession (at least from the 80s through the 00s; prior to the 80s, racial dispossession was mostly only apparent to discerning types like Wilmot Robertson, the big racial issue for most on the Right being crime control; whereas since 2012-13 or so, the assault on whiteness has been less dispossessionist than openly hostile, persecutorial, and oppressive), the best quality whites, at least in terms of raw IQ, the ones who could see what was happening and should have been fighting back en masse, instead were essentially bought off by the System. IOWs, for the three decades from the election of Reagan to the reelection of Obama, not only did most whites still think of themselves as the real Americans, and this as their country, the best quality whites had all sorts of fairly equal chances to compete in life and succeed. Maybe conservatives were kept out of academia and most media, and working class whites were being screwed by immigrant labor competition as well as economic globalization, but for the smartest whites, the ones who should have been leaders of our people, there was a Devil’s Bargain: keep your head down, pretend you don’t notice race, focus on your career, and you can do really well for yourself.
I wonder if this Bargain still applies in the Woke ’20s. My sense from talking with friends with children ranging in age from their teens to their 30s is that it does not. More specifically, whereas from the 80s-00s, a high quality white man had a realistic chance to lead a good life (even as opportunities for his less intelligent and educated working class brethren were continuously shrinking over the whole period), today only the absolutely most brilliant or talented white men, the truly indispensable ones, have a ‘shot’ at a grand life. And the vise is only going to get tighter across this decade. What will be the ideological opportunities and political consequences when vast numbers of smart and talented white men, men for whom “the world would have been their oyster” in their fathers’ day, start realizing that the America Dream is dead for them, and this due to racism (real racism)? I am hoping that once enough white men realize they have neither privilege nor power nor even the prerogatives of historic citizenship – that the System is no longer even interested in buying them off – there will finally be an exodus away from patriotism, and its allied belief in the reformability of the System, towards a white identity politics. Though I’m pessimistic in many ways, I think this hope is a realistic one, based on what I’ve witnessed in my own life of nearly 60 years.
I think you’ve nailed it. Men of ability can keep their heads down and have a good, bourgeois life in the “system,” so long as not rocking the boat. Men of exceptional talent are siphoned away from our race to serve the Diversitron. They can even marry “diverse” spouses and receive the full privileges and immunities of the system, or at least close to them.
I agree with your assessment, except that I think Spencer has good abilities, and that his failings were mainly due to character or lack of patience.
Maybe talented white males are excluded from the hyper elite institutions, but we still rule at the local or state levels and can win stable careers in the professions. These people too stay clear of the taboo topics. For example, they may complain about AA and minority disfunction. I allude about differences in group IQ and criminality. They cut me off and say something like “this is not a useful conversation.”
This post could be expanded into an interesting article.
The Stahlhelm is full on Producers tier Hollywood/Broadway self parody. Does Heimbach keep pigeons on the roof too?
I’m seeing a repeat of the 80’s and 90’s happening right before my eyes..
This is very interesting. It’s most likely antifa, or antifa adjacent people who did this. It’s something the Reed Ross’s or Shane Burley’s of the world salivate for. It might even be a leftist journalist himself who carried it out
Great story. For the benefit of us newbs not familiar with all the Dramatis Personae, it would help to define or list what the various acronyms are. For example, I could never find out who/what “TRS” is.
Also, it seems that the new C-C paywall system is working. I’m noticing more comments here and not the amount of inappropriate or trolling comments that non or poorly-moderated websites get.
I’ll disagree with the comment: “high IQ white men who are well ‘put-together’ have life options far beyond prowhite activism”. Maybe some could be altruistic, and also having above avg IQ’s, they decide to focus their energies on white identitarianism rather than on more Haitian relief efforts? Also, the influx of Indian and Chinese H1B engineers /scientists /mathematicians are making even the brightest American citizens unemployable in these fields. Not to brag, but I also do weight-lifting to stay in shape.
Usual caveats apply. I really wish there was an edit comment function as I’m sure there’s a spelling mistake somewhere.
“After college, Heimbach and his right-hand man Matt Parrot started the Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP). While the Alt-Right was pioneering new and innovative methods on online white activism, Heimbach chose instead to stick to the failed model of 1990s skinheads complete with uniforms, fascistic symbolism, and ostentatious displays of Nazi fetishism, with predictable results.”
Definitely disagree with this, Heimbach was so unlike those people of the 1990’s in that he was promoting Third Position politics with an Anti-American bent to it. I would say that going out and marching is very surface level; many different far left groups also go out and march. It doesn’t mean that it’s a tactic of a certain group. Many Far-right groups back in the day weren’t anti-American in the sense that they hated the founding culture of the USA. Heimbach was promoting reactionary nonsense with Russian Orthodoxy, and he wasn’t appealing to White American sensibilities. He had sympathies to 3rd World dictators like Kim Jong. They had their own symbols, they weren’t using older symbols from the Far-Right in general.
The failure of the Alt-Right didn’t come down to using older tactics, it came down to poor leadership strategy in my opinion that manifested differently across groups, while also not appealing to people that we needed to connect with. Think of your average white neighbor. But all in all, Spencer was always the leader of the Alt-Right whether we want to admit it or not. It was always a decentralized movement with massive diversity, which also included libertarian AnCaps and Reactionaries. His tweets and public speeches tended to inspire his followers or any person sympathetic to some of his views. This is very much different from the past Far-right groups that had specific ideologies with hard liners. I think overall people are seduced by trying to make connections to the past in order to make historical scapegoats.
Matt Heimbach was a good campus organizer but petered out to his point of incompetence as a post-college leader.
Heimbach always seemed a little off from the beginning. Very smart, prepared and well spoken. Yet, he was all too willing to go cartoonishly extreme for the cameras. His ego pushed him into failed strategies that ruined his life. Now he is trying to salvage something, but it is just more pathetic parasitism. Everyone should reject him and his ilk.
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