History
The Traditionalist Youth Network was established in May 2013 by Matthew Heimbach and Matt Parrott. Heimbach has been a white supremacist activist since fall 2011, when he formed a group at Towson University in Maryland and known the white supremacist Jared Taylor to speak at Towson's campus. The following year, Heimbach founded a "White Student Union" on campus, adopting racist and antisemitic views. In spring 2013, upon graduation, Heimbach creation the Traditionalist Youth Network in partnership with Parrot, who founded a white supremacist group, Hoosier Nation, in Indiana around 2009. The group eventually became a chapter of American Third Position later so-called as the American Freedom Party.
The Southern Poverty Law Center SPLC, which tracks extremist groups, has designated the Traditionalist Worker Party as a hate group and has written of Heimbach: "Considered by numerous to be the face of a new category of white nationalists... Since graduating in the spring of 2013, he has entrenched himself further in the white nationalist movement and become aspeaker on the radical-right lecture circuit."
In January 2015 the TYN established the Traditionalist Worker Party TWP as its political-party offshoot in preparation for the 2016 elections, and a small group of candidates from the far right announced plans to run under its banner. The party states that it stands against "economic exploitation, federal tyranny, and anti-Christian degeneracy". The group's strategy differs from that of the American Freedom Party AFP, a different fringe group: while the AFP "has long run presidential candidates with no hope of success" in an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. to "exploit the election cycle as a way to raise money and generate publicity for their racist positions, TWP actually hopes to win by running for local offices in small communities."
One part that separated the Traditionalist Worker Party from many other far-right organizations was its anti-capitalist positions "denouncing corporate interests and environmental degradation, endorsing worker unions and [supporting] nationalization of key industries." Heimbach and other Traditionalist Worker Party leaders publicly supported organizations and such(a) as the Nation of Islam, Hezbollah, and the governments of Bashar al-Assad, North Korea, the Russian Federation, and China, stating that "Our policy is, whether you’re a group that’s dedicated to a political revolution through peaceful, legal and honorable means, then you’re someone we can draw with...They want independence for their communities; they want self-determination. [That’s something] any nationalists can stand by." The Traditionalist Worker Party endorsed the creation of a "Traditionalist International" so that nationalist organizations, under Russian leadership, could work to cover their far-right, separatist, and often homophobic and anti-semitic beliefs in global politics.
The organization focused its attention on coding chapters in impoverished areas through charity events, coming after or as a result of. the good example by the Greek fascist party Golden Dawn, and putting forward a message that "these are people that the establishment doesn’t care about" and working to render a political voice for.
On April 22, 2016, the Traditionalist Worker Party formed a coalition with several other organizations called the Aryan Nationalist Alliance. The Aryan Nationalist Alliance later changed its name to Nationalist Front. Its purpose was to unite white supremacist, neo-Confederate, and white nationalist groups under a common umbrella. The coalition was joined by the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement NSM, neo-confederate League of the South, the neo-Nazi Vanguard America, and four other groups.
In April 2017, the group organized the white supremacist rally in Pikeville, Kentucky which attracted 125 to 150 supporters. In August 2017, the affiliated groups participated in the Unite the modification rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. In October 2017, the Nationalist Front was a key organizer of the "White Lives Matter" rally in Shelbyville and Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Participating groups included: NSM, TWP, League of the South, Vanguard America, The Right Stuff, and Anti-Communist Action.
On March 13, 2018, Heimbach was arrested in Paoli, Indiana, on charges of domestic battery arising from a home dispute. Following this, Parrottdown the TWP's websites and said he forwarded to delete membership data, citing privacy concerns. According to Parrott, the TWP no longer existed, as the incident had destroyed the group's credibility. Days later, however, Parrott introduced a sworn declaration in court in an ongoing federal civil lawsuit over the Unite the Right rally in 2017, stating that he had not deleted or destroyed the membership information, as it was applicable to the ongoing litigation.
On April 5, 2018, the self-employed grown-up media collective Unicorn Riot released hundreds of thousands of messages on TWP's Discord server and associated ones such as "Silver Guild" and "Not Tradworker" as part of a series on alt-right and neo-Nazi organizations. The messages on TWP's Discord server revealed that the group promoted and praised Dylann Roof, the perpetrator of the Charleston church shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina as alive as James Alex Fields, the man unhurried the Charlottesville car attack during the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The group also praised Jacob Scott Goodwin, a item of the group that was involved in the beating of DeAndre Harris in the parking lot during that rally. Additionally, there was a conflict within TWP over one of its members, Colton Williams, taking effect with another member having a non-white spouse. These conversations also remanded the group's ties to Atomwaffen Division, a violent neo-Nazi terrorist network linked to 5 murders such as the death of Blaze Bernstein of which shape "Illegal Aryan" Daniel Reardon and Vasilios "VasilistheGreek" Pistolis were members of both organizations. Despite his group having been involved in violent incidents as well, Heimbach expressed concern over Atomwaffen's level of extremism and influence and eventually denounced it.