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white nationalists

White Nationalist Matthew Heimbach Is Going to Jail

The far-right activist was accused of violating his probation after a trailer park brawl.
Matthew Heimbach (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Matthew Heimbach, one of the more prominent figures in America's white nationalist movement, was arrested at an Indiana trailer park back in March for a violent outburst stemming from his involvement in what has to be among the most incestuous—not to mention confusing—love triangles of all time. According to police, the 27-year-old allegedly attacked his wife, Brooke Heimbach, and her stepfather, Matthew Parrott, after an amateur sleuthing operation in which the duo apparently caught Heimbach while he was busy rekindling an extramarital affair with Parrott's wife.

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Besides causing Heimbach to lose the respect of his racist followers, the altercation also essentially imploded the Traditionalist Worker Party. Heimbach and Parrott were the far-right group's co-leaders, and the latter vowed to delete the group's member database and website as a final fuck-you to the guy who had cucked him.

In the latest development of the Jerry Springer episode that keeps on giving, Heimbach was just sentenced to 38 days in jail, local Fox affiliate WDRB reports. But not directly over the trailer park affair. Instead, this sentence stemmed from a March incident in which Heimbach shoved a black college student named Kashiya Nwanguma in the back at a Trump rally after the then-presidential candidate asked supporters to remove protestors from the crowd. Heimbach later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of harassment and was spared jail-time on the condition he not re-offend. The love triangle-related charges—misdemeanor battery and felony domestic battery in the presence of a child under 16—violated the terms of that deal.

Heimbach first rose to prominence in racist circles after starting a White Student Union at Towson University in 2013 that roamed the campus with the stated goal of protecting white students from violent crime. In the years he spent as the chief of the Traditionalist Worker Party, he continuously drifted further to the right—aligning himself with violent racist skinhead groups like the Hammerskins, and appearing prominently at the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville last summer. At least some members of his group also reportedly provided security for Richard Spencer's often violent campus appearances.

In March, Heimbach pleaded not guilty to the charges stemming from allegedly beating up his family in the trailer park incident, and a pre-trial hearing was scheduled for May 30, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

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